Yurk

From Wikipedia's entry on the band Renaissance:

"As touring began to grind on them, the band gradually dissolved one by one."

I do not think that was what the writer meant to say...

Alchemy

The song, that is. Here, for anyone who wishes to listen.

Something I hadn't considered...

Alan Moore, in an interview to which cherylmmorgan links, says, among other things:

"To me, all creativity is magic,” he says. “Ideas start out in the empty void of your head – and they end up as a material thing, like a book you can hold in your hand. That is the magical process. It’s an alchemical thing. Yes, we do get the gold out of it but that’s not the most important thing. It’s the work itself. That’s the reward. That’s better than money.”

So far so good, and I tend to believe that myself. What he does not add, but as a practising occultist will certainly know (let's face it, people who watched Charmed know it), is that there is a rule about magic: you aren't allowed to make money from it*. I genuinely hadn't made that connection...but I'd be very surprised if he hasn't.

Hmmmm.

*As with everything in this area, there are many different interpretations of this. Some occultists figure it's okay to charge for materials, but not for the actual spellcasting. Some discriminate between things like divination, which is mostly looking at what's there and interpreting it, and actual magic. Some think it's all right to ask for donations but not to set a fee. And some simply don't give a toss, possibly because they know they are not actually doing magic. EDIT: and, as I should have pointed out, there are innumerable different types of magic and their attitudes to doing it for cash are all different. I was speaking from my own, largely indirect, knowledge, which because it comes from books is automatically suspect (see Pratchett passim).