This Is Halloween?

Mark claimed he was unable to resist devouring Halloween candy, so we didn’t have any the morning of Halloween. This necessitated a run to the local chain grocery — Mark insisted that I needed supervision buying Halloween candy — where we discovered a two-for-one sale on fun-sized Skittles and Twix bars. And aisles of Christmas decorations.

“Hmm,” Mark said as we went home. “We didn’t get fine chocolates for ourselves.”

“True,” I said.

He baked gluten-free brownies.

On the pumpkin front, this year is very low key. I gave the single pumpkin I impulse bought last week a jagged lid and carved a skull out of the pumpkin’s thick rind with holes for the eyes and nose. The teeth look a little like a car’s radiator grille. It’s very basic. Sometimes I like it, other times I’m dissatisfied with how crude it feels. In retrospect, I should have drilled holes around its brows and stuck in marigolds.

At least we have a ton of paper bats adorning the walls. Which I like.

Mark has put up the blower-powered Eldritch Horror: large, purple, inflatable, light-up tentacles. It’s under the front rhododendron and behind some plastic old-timey graveyard fencing. It looks very effective, and it’s the one Halloween Thing Mark seems to be into because he wants to order another one for more tentaclely fun.

I wasn’t sure what the night was going to be like, weather-wise. A dense (and possibly freezing) fog advisory for the morning meant a grey pall over everything. The predicted clearing came around 4:30 PM. At least there wasn’t a deluge. Or — thinking back to Minnesota decades ago — snow and dented parked cars.

I set up the long folding table, placed a green tablecloth over it, and set up the wooden skull, the ceramic jack-o-lantern my Aunt Joanne made, the light-up skull candles, the lava lamps, the spiky-winged siren-ladies crystal ball stand, the blue glass orb, and various tea candle votive ware.

I really wanted to set up a cauldron with an old copper punch bowl and our sonic fog machine, but after an hour of searching the garage and loft, I could not locate it. I am sure I saw it over the summer when we were reorganizing the bedrooms, and it is not in any of the places I recall seeing it. Undoubtedly I will find it this week when I’m tearing the house apart looking for something else.

I did find my RollerBlades (and wrist guards), so I threw on my large black-and-purple cloak, put on the RollerBlades, and swooped around the street for a quarter hour. Apparently, the Dragon Dancing I’ve been doing has been good for my balance: my muscle memory kicked in and it felt like I’d been RollerBlading forever instead of only once a year. Real bats did not join me as I glided up and down the street (as they did once, several years ago), but yes, Saint-Saëns’s Danse Macabre was playing in my head. (“Look, Aoife, John’s back. He didn’t need his cell phone to call the ambulance from the middle of the street at all…”)

Our first group of trick-or-treaters appeared shortly after six. Which was a little late; usually the little-little kids are making the rounds by 5:30 PM. “Oh. More Skittles,” one grateful little ghoul said.

Since Aoife was going a little nuts, I figured it would be a better night if the doorbell wasn’t rung too much, so I set up the square card table in the driveway, next to the garage and in front of the skull jack-o-lantern, with a white tablecloth, two white camping lights, and my tarot cards. (Setting up a flood-lit path to a tarot card reading booth in the backyard had been vetoed earlier that afternoon.)

I shuffled and shuffled the cards. I murmured the invocation to the circle and four quarters. I broke out The Book of Art and a pen. I shuffled the cards some more. I heard trick-or-treaters shrieking from several blocks away. I shuffled the cards and attempted to formulate a question. The night grew cold, and so did my hands.

I settled on a nine-card spread and shuffled the cards some more. This was probably a mistake, as the spread I chose is more suited for a yes-or-no answer with temporal cards filling in the why, and I was asking a “how do I” question about community. The most interesting aspect of the reading was that it started with the King of Cups (fire expressed as water) reversed, and ended with the Queen of Wands (water expressed as fire) reversed. Why, yes, The Chariot reversed showed up, too. And the Two of Pentacles, reversed.

I wrote the cards down in The Book of Art; all suits represented, three upright, six reversed. I will need to do more research, but I’m pretty sure the spread was pointing out that “you’re the common factor in all your failed relationships,” and that focusing on one thing might help. And possibly (looks at Seven of Pentacles sitting in the middle of the spread) I’ve confused “community” with “legacy.”

At some point I managed to coerce Cicero — who had managed to sneak out of the house, even though he’s a black cat on Halloween — into my lap and partially under my cloak. We both appreciated each other’s body heat. I gathered up the spread cards, noticed that they had a faint trace of condensation on them, and started shuffling the cards once more for a series of practice readings — two crossed cards over a line of three cards — to flex my cartomancy muscles.

Around 7:45 PM the second group of trick-or-treaters, three little girls, slowly approached the table. “Aw,” one said when Cicero leapt out of my lap and into the shadows of the neighbor’s shrubbery. They were very polite and effusively thankful for the candy loot, and somehow managed to scamper off before anyone could ask for or be offered a one-card tarot draw.

By 8:00 PM, it was clear that no other trick-or-treaters were going to walk by our house. I dismissed the circle and the quarters, pulled up shop, and asked Mark if he wanted to go looking at neighborhood jack-o-lanterns. At first he was happy letting me go by myself, but then changed his mind and we were walking up the hill.

Our street was dark. On the next block we passed by one house with a jack-o-lantern and orange lights, and another house with the resident dog’s dog toys dramatically lit up and hanging from a tree.

We continued to climb the hill and turned the corner onto a dark street. I was stunned. We passed the silhouettes of houses. In the distance, a railing glowed with white and orange lights. We passed an empty porch with a single smiling jack-o-lantern: the piece of its pumpkin grin had been split and stuck on the sides as ears (or horns).

“What the hell?” I asked. In my memory, this street had been Halloween Central, packed with teeming hordes of trick-or-treaters — light-up jellyfish, vampires, witches, Sith, ghosts, fairies, Mario Brothers, pirates, Minions, princesses, X-men, and the occasional sexy werewolf — and homeowners in lawn chairs holding block parties in their driveways. “It’s like someone sucked the Spirit of Halloween out of this town!”

“Well, the Y had a trunk-or-treat party from about five to eight.”

“Trunk-or-treat,” I scoffed. We turned the corner to the apex of the hill. The former Halloween Party Houses appeared to be mostly empty, although there was an axolotl distributing candy to two small trick-or-treaters at one front door. We turned the corner to another empty street.

“Well,” said Mark, “pumpkins aren’t very ecological and their transportation has a big carbon footprint. I could see folks deciding not to do jack-o-lanterns this year.”

“What the hell?” I asked the darkness. Aside from a giant inflatable pumpkin-headed scarecrow, we were the only ones on the street.

“You’ll have to sign up for trunk-or-treat at the Y next year,” said Mark. “You could decorate the car, and it’s a social event and you like people.”

“Ugh,” I said. “Trunk-or-treat is lame — Oh, look, they’ve got a good ghost projection.”

“Traditions change,” Mark said. “And so do neighborhoods; the closest neighbor kids are graduating from high school.” Mark pointed out a car that had been working its way down the street, pausing at any house with a hint of Halloween to disgorge three kids, collect them, and repeat the process five houses later.

“I guess the night peaked at seven?” I hazarded. We passed a house projecting a swarm of multicolored objects that turned out to be witches on broomsticks.

“Let’s go down this way,” I said, hoping to find more Halloween activity on a busier street.

“What the hell?” I said a moment later as the only thing lighting up were the street lamps. A car drove by.

“My poor husband,” Mark said. “People are probably at events downtown. The Eugene Ballet’s fundraiser party is at the Hult Center. And Halloween has become yet another holiday event for adults to drink, like Cinco de Mayo.”

“Win Money! Money! Money!?” I said in my best A Charlie Brown Christmas voice.

“Your decorations are the Most Sincere,” Mark said as we returned home.

I mused on trunk-or-treat to try to pin down exactly what my problem is with it. I vaguely remember it appearing in Octobers about ten to twenty (?) years ago, and thinking it was odd and anemic even back then. It seemed like it was a work-around for extra-rural families who literally lived five miles away from each other — which is fine and I get it — but in urban settings, the replacement of the trek from house to house to five steps to the next car’s trunk felt like an incredibly tame and domesticated consolation prize. A little more research reminded me that it started as a conservative American church movement to replace the folk tradition with something more Godly, transforming it from a mysterious interstitial period to a safe, sanitized, candy distribution event. And it’s occurring to me that trunk-or-treat would be a recommendation side-bar in any October edition of The Fearful Parent Magazine (Informing Parents On Ways Your Child Could Die In Seconds This Month, sponsored by the Baby-Industrial-Military Complex).

I want my Halloween to be a journey about choosing what masks we wear and what masks we take off, and a way to collectively examine our chaotic fears and wishes and desires — the tricks — and the ways we appease and order them — the treats.

And yes, when I was a child, a costume was a cool by-product of collecting tons of candy from the neighborhood (that I’m one hundred percent sure my parents did not pillage).

I suppose I’d do trunk-or-treat if I could do Sexy Trunk-or-Treat (cue Jeffrey’s dad from the movie Jeffrey woodenly saying, “That’s so hot.”).

---

“So,” said Mark. “Today is All Saints Day, right?” Then he brought out the gilt angels and put them on the mantel.

Shadows of Prognostication

I got a COVID vaccination and a flu vaccination this Friday. I timed it for ten in the morning so that the chills wouldn’t hit me until around midnight. My body must be getting used to the COVID vaccine, because the chills and fever response has been getting less extreme every time I get the shots. At least this time I wasn’t cold and shivering for what seemed like forever and wrung out with sweat afterward. This time it was just some minor random chills, no real fever (I never felt hot enough to take my temperature), and a desire to sleep through most of Saturday, with bouts of comfort reading old Mercedes Lackey novels (“…for Evil’s still lurking / and that’s the next book!”).

The act of sleeping while my body generated new antibodies seemed appropriate for Saturday’s new moon, and gave me an excuse to feel tired and like a not-very-creative, inactive lump. In sweatpants and my bathrobe. And a hot bath was in there, somewhere.

Coincidental with the new moon came the news that one of our friends has a serious health issue. I’m still processing it, and thoughts, feelings, and images — departed friends; memento mori; actuarial tables; appropriate rituals; the tension between wanting a long, healthy life and knowing that living beyond ninety means that one could be the last of one’s old friends left standing; the Six of Cups, the Eight of Swords, the Hanged Man, the Tower, and various other imagined tarot cards — have not settled down into static clarity. As our friend texted, “treatment is going to suck.” This is one of those things one does not want to Google. I’m not ashamed to say that I ran to my health app to double-check my records for various tests, and I guess I’m glad after all that my recently retired primary healthcare provider was old-school and lab-panel-happy.

I suspect tonight’s scrying ritual and meditation for the new moon will be interesting.

Reading the Tea Leaves

Friday night Mark fell asleep early and I decided that I would do a tarot reading outside under the half-moon. This was partially an excuse to take advantage of the clear night and light eight beeswax candles at the cardinal points and cross-quarter points of the brick circle. Because eight candles burning in a circle looks cool.

I gathered candles, matches, cards, a flashlight, a small folding table, a copper tray, and The Book of Art and headed outside.

There was a slight pause as I had the disappointing realization that one, if not several, outdoor concerts were filling the air with… music. (Last time it was *Earth, Wind, and Fire* performing at the Cuthbert Amphitheater, two miles away.) I decided the music was dim enough that the fountain would mask it and continued with my plan.

As I was setting things up, there was a sudden thump, and something medium-sized, white, with a wedge-shaped front crashed to the ground out of the old-wooden-fort-cum-grape-arbor. I think it was an opossum. “Whoa!” I said. “Hello.”

I clapped my hands a few times to let whatever it was know I was there.

It scampered along the edge of the candle light, along the west end of the yard, and toward the tool shed.

Summoned by my clapping (which typically means SQUIRREL!), Aoife raced out of the house and silently and vigorously patrolled the shadowy foliage in the area between the tool shed and the grapes.

I continued to light candles, and began a formal invocation of the ritual circle, and invitation to the Powers of the Four Watchtowers. Aoife continued to guard the perimeter—at one point she did add to the concert music floating through the air by whacking the tin sides of the shed with her tail (this is usually a sign that she’s scented wildlife cowering under the shed’s foundation).

I chose to do a general bellwether, five card spread. 1. Situation/environment: Death. Change and transformation. 2. Crossing Obstacle / side-quest: Four of Swords, reversed. Emerging from rest. This would be like a butterfly coming out of a chrysalis. 3. Temperance, reversed. Churning resources; spinning one’s wheels. 4. Strength. Animal drives and reason working together. 5. Knight of Swords. Air expressed as Air; mental agility; reminder to stay focused and sustain efforts. In this particular reading the three cards don’t represent a past-present-future progression so much as showing a way the Strength is a balance point between inward churning and outward charging.

I did a count: two swords; three major arcana. Two reversed cards; three upright cards. The interpretation of the five-card spread I did boiled down to: you’re moving forward by leaving old things behind; take a moment to ground; don’t confuse stability or balance and stagnation; don’t confuse the opposite of stagnation for undirected frenzy.

I wrote the cards down in the Book of Art, bade “hail and farewell” to the Four Quarters, dismissed the ritual circle, and brought all of the equipment inside. A little light reading before I fell asleep reminded me that Death, Temperance, and The Devil are connected with “The Dark Night of the Soul” and related paths to Tiphareth on the Tree of Life.

I suppose that this reading might have something to do with my job, my retirement, Mark’s much sooner upcoming retirement, and how long I’m going to have to continue to work until my pension benefits and social security benefits will provide sufficient retirement income (Don’t Lose The Day Jobbe just yet).

---

The next morning, Mark stopped on the threshold between the kitchen nook and the living room. “There’s something on the floor here.” He stepped back and forth. “What is this? Did you spill sugar or salt on the floor?”

“No,” I said.

He reached for the hand vacuum. “Huh, it’s kind of black. Were you doing Secret Pagan Rituals while I was asleep?”

“Well… actually—“

“Hah! You were Agitating the (Astral) Cooties, weren’t you?” He vacuumed the floor. For someone who claims to be a religious non-participant, Mark has an intricate theology of the Cycles and Habits of the Common Astral Cootie, which boils down to: “Leave The Cooties Alone.”

This is what I get for reading 1980’s Starhawk aura cleansing techniques to him.

“Not exactly,” I said. “I just did a tarot reading outside.”

He turned off the vacuum. “What did you do?”

“I just put eight candles on the brick circle and did a tarot reading.”

“Were you burning myrrh?”

“I thought about it, but I just lit beeswax candles.”

“And why did you light the candles?”

“Well, they’re cool. And they were on the circle, so they formed a barrier.”

“Ah ha! You raised energy and Summoned the Cooties, and you’re handsome and the Cooties wanted to get to you but they couldn’t.”

“It was just a ritual circle and tarot cards. Oh—something large, white, and wedge-shaped dropped out of the arbor. I think it was an opossum... Aoife came out and chased it and then was on silent patrol.”

“What?! There’s no such thing as albino opossums in Oregon!” He reached for his smartphone. “(AI’s love me.) What does seeing a white possum during ritual mean?” He then read out two answers, which boiled down to protective spirit animal or deceiving demons. “Ooh. The poor AI; one source is an Instagram feed, the other is a goofy Facebook page…. I’m going to go with the protective animal.”

“It was running away from the grapes.”

“Oh, these men. That just proves my point; it was running away from The Cooties that you stirred up.”

“Oh, you know, I wonder if the black stuff was the remains of a match; I brought in the folding table when I was through.”

“So you brought stuff into the house! And The Cooties followed you in!”

“I’d dismissed the circle after the tarot reading….”

“You put a barrier around yourself, but you didn’t put a barrier around the house, did you!?”

“Well, the ritual circle keeps—”

“It’s the old ‘Where Did You Send The Cooties?’ question all over again.”

I was not awake enough to point out that my raising a ritual circle for a candlelight backyard tarot reading was different from a ritual cleaning and banishment performed by one of Mark’s Pagan housemates back in the late 1990’s.

Mark claims his irritation with myrrh is proof of an affinity with The Astral Cooties. “I’m surprised I didn’t feel anything. I didn’t have any odd dreams…. Although, I did wake up at 1 AM with a headache.”

By this time I needed to get to the Y to clink weights, so the conversation ended. I suppose that I’m going to have to ritually sweep the floors in front of him and bid The Cooties a formal farewell and adieu.

But, by the time I got back from the Y, Mark decided that the black substance on the floor was not the result of Cooties but actually the remains of a teabag that ruptured when he was straghtening up the beverage supplies cart in our kitchen.

I’m sure there’s a metaphor in there, somewhere.

May 2022 Lunar Eclipse

Yesterday was an eclipse full moon.  The sky was partly cloudy, and there were some sprinkles, but it was clear enough that I set up the backyard circle for a solitary ritual (with patchouli incense!) and did a tarot card reading for myself.  This particular eclipse was supposed to be especially good for divination (and sex magic!).  

I laughed when the first card I pulled, representing my general state, was the Moon.  I grunted when the second card, representing obstacles, was The High Priestess reversed.   The following seven cards were mostly swords and pentacles, and I'm still trying to figure out what they mean as a whole -- but it's along the lines of challenge your unconscious assumptions to make sure they jive with reality and then actually do something.  I think--this reading was one of the more disjointed ones.  I probably should have done a Celtic Cross spread instead of the past-present-future spread that I used, or reframed my question as a yes-or-no question instead of a what-should-I question.

After the ritual, I grabbed my camera and went up the hill to see the eclipse.  There was a bank of clouds on the horizon, so the actual 8:29 moonrise was obscured.  The eclipse totality was to begin shortly.  

When I got to the reservoir, there were about a hundred people there.  I walked through crowds of milling people, cyclists, and shrieking children to the eastern end of the reservoir, to where folks with tripods, telescopes and cameras were.  I thought maybe I'd see some astronomy friends, J&C O, but they weren't there.  Neither was the moon.  

The sky was still light, and it seemed as if the eastern clouds and haze became more substantial.  After a while, folks perceived an orange glow in the grey overcast.   A hush fell on the crowd as people adjusted telescopes or peered through the vapors between trees.  Then someone started playing an electric guitar battle or something and the clouds thickened.  

Shortly after full totality, the clouds drew away from the moon enough to make it visible.  Everyone appreciated the orange color.  And then a limb of cloud would obscure the moon again.  Focusing the camera was difficult; the moon wouldn't be out long enough to confirm the focus, and between the clouds and dimness, the best strategy was to focus on a star (once it was dark enough for them to be visible) and then swing the camera back at the moon — assuming it was visible enough to find.  

I think I got about five passable photos of the moon out of about eighty.  

Court of Wands Lizard

Here's a lizard.









I'm not sure what kind of lizard it is, although I'm pretty sure it's not a Blue-Bellied Lizard.








It was following a curb; I managed to get ahead of it and stood very still  and was rewarded with it scampering up to my shoes.








It reminds me of the lizards that Pamala Coleman Smith drew on the court cards for the suit of Wands.  








I always tell myself that nature close-ups like this will be useful for when I want to sketch, but the truth is I usually end up forgetting I have a photo resource to work from when I finally sit down with paper and pencil (or screen and mouse) to try to create an image.

First Monday of December

Looking back, I've gotten out of the habit of posting my workouts.  I was fairly good last week, I worked out Saturday, Monday and Wednesday before Thanksgiving.  I continue to do the rowing machine to about 160 calories or so.  I've switched my routine to the weights-with-strings station and I upped my dumbbells to 30 lbs.

I'm going to try doing planks at random times during breaks between other stuff; I tried it in the craft store the other day while I was waiting for the cutter-plotter to finish a job.

Later... this afternoon I did 200 calories on the rowing machine in 15 minutes.  And I managed not to drop a 30 pound dumbbell onto my foot laughing when "I Guess You're Just What I Needed" started playing.  

Writing... I submitted my erotica.  I think in terms of writing it was interesting because it forced me to write from a character's POV that I don't necessarily share.  When I'm writing science fiction or fantasy, it's hard for me not to be in the character's POV as they fly a starship or cast a spell.  When the POV character did something in this story, I thought, "Ugh. I would never do that."  Anyway, we'll see what happens. 

I finished up a short story to bring to the Wordos table for next week.  I also polished up a 800 word romance (still needs work).  I've got some other things that are close.  The writing goal for December is to finish up the half-completed drafts and polish up things the Wordos critiqued.  There's a prompt swap story I need to work on, and also the Wordo's holiday short.   And I should submit manuscripts now before the rejections start rolling in.

Dreams:  I had a Dr. Who dream, which turned into a Returning to Arcosanti Dream, which ended with me tearfully singing "Memr'y" from Cats with someone who had created a steam-driven foundry out of snow (The foundry was cool.  But the duet?  Really?  That was twenty years ago...and it was doomed before it began...).   I'm guessing this might have been sparked by reading about the tarot card Strength, because I did a Significant Tarot Reading for this person, which turned out to be more about me (sigh).

Cat Owl Eye Dream

Saturday morning, I had a dream about labyrinths and woke up with a dream image in my head (see to the left).  In the dream, a bunch of us had to traverse a magical labyrinth and the only way to do it was to close our eyes and paint squares above and below our eyes and painted eyes on our lids.   Sunday morning, I had a long, involved dream, which featured more eye imagery.  

The premise was that there was a Vampire, who worked in a business skyscraper (or possibly a a castle, or maybe a business castle) and had a suburbanite family as a cover.  The family knew they were his cover, and the mom appreciated that he kept them in a really nice Mac-mansion.  (While he wasn't exactly the "Bad Businessman" I used to dream about in my twenties, he was certainly the bad guy in this dream... although now that I think about it, he didn't do anything particularly vampiric except maybe live in a castle.)

The part I remember the best was that a oracular Cat worked for the Vampire.  "Work" is probably too strong a word, as they had a sort of genie and lamp owner relationship.  I think the Cat came with the castle.  I'm not entirely sure, but I think the Cat was our cat, Smokey.  

In order for the Cat to tell the Vampire's fortune, he popped out his left eye and turned into a barn owl (it was a bloodless, goreless procedure).  The one-eyed-barn-own-cat then perched on a stand in front of a screen divided into a five-by-five grid with tarot cards on it.  I recall that one cell was X'ed out and the Owl was giving a reading to the Vampire. 

I think at this point in the dream, the Vampire's castle was under some sort of attack or infiltration.  There was an exchange between the Cat-owl and the Vampire, where-in the Vampire complained that the Cat-Owl never did anything for him, and the Cat-Owl replied (in a New York accent) "You've never done anything for me." 

Afterward, the owl flew some place where there was an eye (I'm not quite clear on the dream's plot at this point, but there was an eye or an agate or something laying on the ground, possibly in front of the suburbanite cover family's house), pressed his face into it and turned back into a cat. 

Ocean Wave Dream

Whew, a storm blew in this morning.  I always expect the neighbor's house and the hill to protect us from storms blowing in from the west, but the really big ones with lots of rain always rattle the bedroom windows.  I was expecting things to be blown around when I went into our backyard, but the wind sounded worse than it was.  We need the rain, and I wish I didn't feel the change so strongly in my hands and feet.  In the course of the morning we've had direct sunshine, a rainbow, and more rain.

Crazy out of control car dream this morning.  I was driving a small jeep with Mark and T.E and somehow I was driving off the road (oh, the joy of the failing to control the car dreams) between houses and then somehow managed to drive into someone's house (the car turned into a plastic kids car and through the magic of dream-logic, with simultaneously fit in the car and in the house's entry hall).

There was some more that I've forgotten, but we ended up on a train or bus.  Sitting across from us was a guardian swordswoman in a 18890 man's suit (dark Dorthy Hamill hair bob) and a young (blonde?) girl with Tarot cards.  The swordswoman carried a two-handed broadsword.  The girl offered to read the Tarot cards for the swordswoman, who firmly declined, saying that the present was a gift and that trying to poke holes through the present to peer into the future was to deny the gift.  (Man, I must have been channeling Mark...)

But the best part was when the train--which turned into a bus--carried us to the ocean.  I was wrapped in my fish quilt (my sister made it), which was larger in the dream.  I went out onto a platform that ran along the side and front of the bus-train.  

The bus drove through some sort of camping ground, and then onto a short flat beach.  There was a row of VW bus/vans parked along the dunes.  The dream threatened to turn into a Frankie Avalon/Annette Funicello movie...  But the bus went to the ocean, and a wave came to meet the bus.  I was wrapped in the quilt, which trailed behind me out of the vehicle and a little over the front edge.  When the ocean wave touched my quilt, the blues and greens in both merged together and it was like I was wrapped in a warm ocean.

Winter Ides 2013

It's mid-winter, or the Ides of Winter. In my personal spiritual belief system, this is a time to prepare for renewal by releasing static, moribund structures. It's also when the first hints of buds appear on the trees and when the frogs start singing in the slough a few blocks from our house.

The personal issue in front of me the last year is a recognition that I don't have infinate amounts of time, that I've got some bad time-use and organizational habits, and that there's so much that I would like to do (if I weren't so tired). If I were doing a tarot reading right now, I'd be pulling the seven of cups, the card of airy-fairy diffused force. In tarot, the sevens have to do with making the best of limited resources. Part of the antidote to the flightiness of the seven of cups is to have the patience and strength to focus on one (or two, maybe three) things, even if the results don't appear right away. It also helps to make good choices.

I'm thinking that the best thing I can do is to gently remind myself of my yearly goals when I find myself thinking, "I'm too tired to do X, I'll just relax a little with Facebook/G-plus/Twitter/Pinterest." If I'm too tired to do X, then I should go to sleep (Mark would add, "Or eat some vegetables and take a walk!")

What are my goals? I want to have more stories in the mail, with the hope that more stories in the mail will result in more sales. I want to take more spiritual pauses to pay attention to the motion of the sun, moon and stars and the connections between me and not-me. And... I need to get into some sort of exercise routine because I want to not puff so much when I walk up the hill and I want to look good naked.

I think that last paragraph is a We Three song...

Writing Tarot Cards

It's that time of year when writers write about fortune tellers and the tarot. So I thought I'd post about things that make me wince when authors write about the cards in urban or historical fantasy.


The One-Card Spread. One mistake a writer can make is to reduce a character's tarot card reading into an interpretation of a single card. Focusing on only one card is akin to casting a horoscope based on a person's birth or sun sign, or assigning a character a personality based on hair color.

Most tarot readings involve dealing out about ten cards into what is called a spread. While some spreads have a card designated "the final outcome," not all spreads do. Remember, the final outcome card is always modified by the other cards. Generally, a spread will have cards for the recent past, the present, and a possible future; it will indicate resources and obstacles; and it will have a card that is indicative of the client's character or current state of mind.


An Excruciatingly Detailed Spread. This is the flip side to the previous pitfall. Unless you're writing a guide to giving readings, or a story for a tarot anthology, overly detailed readings are like overly detailed fight scenes. The more detail an author includes, the more likely someone familiar with tarot will spot a mistake (or at least a different interpretation). All the story's reader ultimately cares about is what the cards say and what they mean emotionally to a character.


Over-Specific Cartomancy. The fortune teller deals out the cards, looks at the client, and says, "Tonight, your boyfriend, Steve, will be hit by a red Matrix while he is walking back from Seven Eleven, sipping a Pepsi...." In the stories I've seen this level of detail in, the cards have been cursed to always foretell disaster.

Alas, the cards usually aren't that specific, and if you write them that way, the audience members will wonder why tarot readers haven't won the lottery. A lot.

Take a cue from the Pythia of Delphi and make any advice from the cards obscure (although if a character is convinced the King of Swords in the "obstacles" position is their mean old Uncle Ben, that's an entirely different matter).


Popular Misinterpretations. Probably the most common mistake authors make is forgetting that there are seventy-eight different tarot cards and focusing on one of the more famous ones. Unfortunately, the famous cards are commonly misunderstood because they have emotionally laden and misleading titles.

• The Death Card. Out of all the cards writers choose, Death is probably the most overused and abused tarot card in the deck. If a character has Death show up in their tarot card reading, that does not mean they are going to die; it means that they are going through some sort of transformation, like graduating from school. Repeat after me, "There is no death; only transformation."
• The Lovers Card. Second after Death, the Lovers card is the other most overused and abused tarot card. The Lovers is not, as its name implies, about falling in love, it's about choice. A character getting the Lovers in a tarot reading isn't assured of a good romance or love.
• The Devil Card. This card isn't about Lucifer, Satan, or the powers of Hell. It's about willfully being bound to things material and denying the spiritual aspects of the world.

Remember, like most anything, if you're going to write about tarot cards, a little research is your friend. Most tarot decks sold in the United States come with a little guide book of simple meanings. If you can't get your hands on a new deck's guide (or even if you can), find someone familiar with the tarot to be a first reader.


All Tarot Cards are from the Rider-Waite Deck. Most readers are familiar with the Rider-Waite deck, which is an author's freebie -- but don't forget a quick description if the cards are being used for those readers unfamiliar with them.

Tarot cards go back to medieval times (at least), and they looked differently than the Rider-Waite cards developed around the turn of the 20th century for the Order of the Golden Dawn. Remember to have your Regency, Elizabethan or Arthurian characters use precursors to the Rider-Waite deck. Older decks may have different suits. I've seen medieval (non-tarot) playing cards with suits based on hunting (leashes, horns, etc), and typically older tarot decks call the suit of wands or staves the suit of batons. I've also read a fantasy story where the suits were (I believe) ores, waves, flames, and clouds.

Contemporary decks may feature round cards, feminist themes, Art Nouveau aesthetics, collage decks, cat and dragon decks, and even a deck commissioned by Aleister Crowley (more on him below). There's even a deck based on the Rider-Waite deck where everyone is wearing clothing -- it's the sort of deck one could use to give a reading for one's grandmother and not have her have a heart attack when, say, The Lovers appear. (Assuming she didn't have a heart attack when the tarot cards were first mentioned.)


Aleister Crowley's Thoth Deck. Ah yes; I can already smell the stench of sulfur rising from the deck. Whenever an author wants to show that the tarot cards are evil, the card reader is evil, or that dirty work is afoot, out comes Crowley's Thoth Deck, with the Lust card (his version of the Strength card) right on top. It's the story equivalent of having a bad guy from a movie clack a rifle magazine, sell drugs, or molest children.

If you really want to show that the card reader is wicked, have them over-charge their clients, lead them on with promises of future secrets revealed at the next reading, and make them lie during readings to set the client up to fall in love with a fellow charlatan.

Remember, an ethical card reader will remind a client of the client's responsibility to make their own life choices, so if you want to show an evil reader, make their tarot reading style unethical.


The Tarot Cards Come Alive. This isn't so much wincable as it is has been done before in contemporary fantasy (and comic books), which is not too surprising since many modern tarot guides suggest that students have a focused daydream on a particular card as part of a meditation on its meaning.

Just, um, play nice with the card folks who are naked, okay?