I've been going through The Necromancer's Apprentice giving it a final once over. I realized (actually a while ago) that it's a lot different editing a full manuscript than it is editing for my fanfiction posts. When I've got the whole thing sitting in front of me, it's easier to decide which whole scenes to chop out... not that I regret leaving in all those fluffy non-plot-moving scenes in my fanfiction. I know that my readers enjoy the fluff, and frankly, so do I. (Besides, at the moment at least, in Necromancer's Apprentice, there isn't much call for fluff. I'm expecting more fluff in my NaNoWriMo novel since it's officially a romance and the Necromancer's Apprentice most definitely is not.)
Of course, I'm also about 10 years older and hopefully more skilled than I was when I wrote the first draft of the Necromancer's Apprentice. I owe a lot of that to writing fanfiction and the wonderful people who have supported me through that.
I think I've developed a better Editor's eye 'in my old age' and that makes me feel good about my growth as a writer.
Editing is a vital skill for every writer to have. It's more than just catching your own spelling, grammar and punctuation errors (and, at least in my case, remember whether you're writing in American or British English! I write my Torchwood fanfiction using British spelling and punctuation rules and it's nearly impossible not to have some of that creep into the rest of my writing.) Everyone can (should) get someone else to help them with copy-editing/beta reading to ferret out all the typos and things spell-check can't catch. After a while, your own eyes simply gloss over missing and wrong words. What you have to do for yourself is to learn to detect from you story--no easy task, it's something you've been slaving loving over for the past six months to a year, possibly even longer. You're invested emotionally and intellectually in these characters and their story; you care about what happens. This manuscript is you baby! But it won't grow unless you cut out the things that are holding it down. It's only once you've detached yourself from your work emotionally, that can you ask yourself the hard questions: Is this scene necessary? Does it contribute anything, either to plot or character development? Is this a good place to tell instead of show... what's that? Yeah, there's a thought for you. Writer's wisdom (or at least writing magazines and teachers) tell us to always "show, don't tell." But if you showed every single little thing, even a short story would be twice as long. So no, I think there are definitely places where you can tell rather than show, as long as you tell it in an entertaining way. (I've cut a number of scenes that either a) re-told/showed the same thing or b) no, really, worked better to just tell the reader what the characters discussed in a couple of paragraphs, rather than to show them the entire four page conversation. Absolutely nothing was lost and the plot moved along better, became tighter.) You might even find yourself cutting out whole characters or sections of back story if they don't contribute in some way to either plot or character development.
So parting thoughts: don't be afraid to take a metaphorical hatchet to your novel. After all, one has to weed the garden and prune the trees in order for them to grow into beautiful plants.
And now... two more hours of editing, then off to sew and in just a little over twenty four hours, I'm headed with the family down to Atlanta, GA for DragonCon! (Holy spumoni, Batman! When I hit this with spell check, I only had one spelling error! Goddess bless, Ms. Good would be proud! She was my Creative Writing teacher in the 9th grade.)
Tuesday, August 31
Tuesday, August 24
NaNoWriMo, 2010, Character Creation Begins
1954
by Helen Pattskyn
Genre: Romance
Creating Characters:
Characters are the life-blood of any novel, and my work in particular is very character driven. A plot is important, of course, but most of my stories start out with the who and evolve into the what, how, why and when.
Since this one actually started with a when and a what and even a little bit of a why, I started out working backwards…but that’s ok. I am capable of flexibility, honest!
Almost immediately, I knew what some of the core issues were going to be (aside from the Big Issues of the 1950's). I wanted one fellow who was pretty comfortable in his skin and I decided to give him understanding, well educated parents because frankly in the 1950’s gay men and lesbians faced huge opposition, so there needed to be a few allies worked into the story from the get-go. Of course, that doesn't mean they never ask their son questions like: Why can’t you find a lady with the same ‘issues’ you have and come to some sort of an ‘agreement’? Hey, I said they were understanding and educated, not that they were prefect!
I also knew right away that this particular man was a high school science teacher and a Christian (sincerely so). Why? Well, I had this snip of conversation in my head of the two men talking and the other guy wondering how someone can be gay, a science teacher and still have faith in God. (I also like to ‘mix it up’ a little where religion is concerned; just because I’m Wiccan it doesn’t mean that all of my main characters are going to be. And really, a gay Pagan in 1950? Yowzers, talk about having the deck stacked against you…) As for why a high school teacher… can you imagine a more difficult place to be a gay man? (Minds out of the gutters, kiddies, I meant, can you imagine the environment? There is no way a high school teacher could come out of the closet if he didn’t want to end up fired. Or worse.)
Now, on to the other guy. He’s not so comfortable in his skin, and to make matters worse, he works for the Federal Government… but I don’t want him to be an FBI agent or anything like that, so he’s a letter carrier. It’s a mundane job, he’s hardly exposed to national secrets, but the point remains, Uncle Sam is his boss and according to President Eisenhower, the United States Government is not going to employ “sexual inverts” and “perverts” because they pose a risk to national security. (The idea is that homosexuals are easier to blackmail, never mind that no one is all that likely to blackmail a letter carrier.) He’s Christian, too, but only because going to church is one of those things that a person just does. He lost his faith a long time ago. (And no, faith and religion aren’t going to play a major part… except, well it was the 50’s and religion and faith did play a major part. But you know what I mean. The message isn’t one of finding faith in God, it’s one of finding faith in one’s self. Or Self, I suppose.)
Ok, on with the show… our letter carrier has a sister who is very comfortable with his sexual orientation, and she just happens to be a high school English teacher. Guess who one of her colleagues is?
So now I have three main characters and at least two supporting characters (plus a high school full of students and teachers) to think about. Since I’ve already got a few plot points (I’ll share those later on), I know that the principal is going to be a reasonable important supporting character—or at least someone we’re going to see—so that person (man? woman? No clue yet) needs to be a little more fleshed out than say the girl who sits in the third row during second hour… you can see where character development takes up a lot of a writer’s brain.
…………………………………………
The first thing I needed to suss out was what the heck was I going to name these people. When writing something set in another era, I rely on old census reports to tell me the most (and least) popular names of the era. I wouldn’t want to make the mistake of naming someone born in the 20’s (because if the book is set in 50’s, the people were born in the 20’s or 30’s… so it’s important to get the census report for the right year!) Anyway, I wouldn’t want to name my girl born in 1920-something McKenzie or Baily; names like that as female first names is a strictly modern phenomenon.
Of course, I could at this point get away with using some of my favorite boy names: Marion, Beverly and Ashley… but I think I’ll stick with something conventionally ‘masculine’ here.
I decided I liked the name Maggie—Margret—for the sister/match maker. She knows her colleague is gay… my husband told me that there was a guy in his dad’s army unit who was gay. Everybody knew he was gay but nobody cared (or at least Dad and his buddies didn’t care) because they were all out there fighting for the same cause, all willing to die for one another. So I decided that Maggie knows about her science teacher colleague because her husband and he were in the army together... in Korea. Both served in WWII, but didn’t meet until Korea. Her colleague/friend came back from that war. Her husband didn’t. This has left her feeling bitter towards the military (he was retired, but was called back to active duty when Korea happened—I’m given to understand that depending on his area of expertise, this is very believable. It sounded good to me, anyway!) The point is that now she’s a single mom raising a couple of young kids…which also explains why she’s still working. Oh, the parents? They live on a farm in Oklahoma. We’ll come to them in a little while. Just assume that they’re typical hard working farmer types living in relative poverty outside of a very small town. Kinda like if you took the Waltons off the mountain and put them on a prairie, but with fewer kids. After the Donnelly family, from the Necromancer’s Apprentice, I’m done with honking huge families for a while. It’s a pain to come up with that many individual children, each with his or her own individual personality…but I guess there should be more than two. I’ll stew on it.
In the meantime, I decided to name the letter carrier Tom (or Tommy—he hates Tommy, but it’s what she calls him.) He was probably in the army, too, for WWII at least, because most men were.
It took a while, but eventually I named the science teacher Robert (it was very popular in the 20’s). Last name: MacLeod. I love a good Scottish name! No accents and no Gaelic this time, however. (Enid’s father, from the Necromancer’s Apprentice, speaks with an accent and uses a lot of Scottish idioms. On this one, I’ve got enough to worry about getting the parlance of the 1950’s down right!)
Oops, Robert needs a middle name. Hmmm… Adam. There’s a nice…erm, excuse me, a swell Christian name for you. Robert Adam MacLeod. Doesn’t he sound dreamy already?
Let’s start getting to know Robert (I’m starting with him because I’ve got Tommy lodged in my head pretty well already. I like to start with the characters I have the least handle on and move up to the ones I feel like already know.)
Robert Adam MacLeod – age 33. That means he was born in 1921.
His age is a semi-arbitrary decision. He needs to be old enough to have served in WWII, and be educated. A lot of servicemen came back from the War and went to college. I figure Robert was one of them. I think that’s where he had his first ‘real’ gay experience, too. Anyway, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor in 1941. So Robert would have been 20—he probably was already in college, but enlisted to do his patriotic duty. He’s a very patriotic guy, I think. Very clear about right and wrong.
Because I’m witch, I suppose, and a student of astrology, I always do a birth chart for my characters (sometimes I read their tarot cards too. No joke. My cards are always very subjective when I read for myself anyway, picking up on the slightest bad mood, so reading for my characters is easy.) Anyway, I love Sagittarian men, so I think I’ll make Robert a Sag.
December 5 sounds like a good birthday. Which means he’s actually 32, because I’m not starting the story in December. That’s the other reason it’s important to know characters’ birthdays.
Robert was born at 1 a.m. (I usually pick easy round numbers for time of birth) in San Diego, CA. (he just feels like he should be from the West Coast guy. Maybe it’s because of this movie I watched a couple of weeks ago called A … or maybe The… Single Man. It was really depressing, but gave a decent look at what it was to be gay man in the 50’s.)
So now that I have a birth day and time, I can do a quick computerized chart and see if what I get matches up with what I’m starting to feel about Robert’s personality. If it doesn’t mesh up, I’ll choose a different date within the range for Sagittarius because that much I’m dead set on.
On 5 December, 1921, the Moon was in Aquarius—so far, so good. Given his hour and place of birth, Robert would have a Libra Ascendant. Perfect. No need to look at other dates/times. (I love it when it’s perfect on the first go—I feel like it means I’m on to something good!)
Since the Moon also tells us something about a person’s mother, and their relationship with her, it is clear that Robert’s mother is more accepting of his sexuality than his father—Aquarian energy is indicative of those who embrace new ideas… in worst case scenarios they are rebels without a clue, however… but I’m not feeling that from Mama MacLeod. Whatever she fights for, she knows what she's doing.
It looks like Robert’s Mars is in Scorpio (when reading for gay men, I tend to look at Mars rather than Venus to tell me something about the mates they attract.) I’m pretty familiar with Mars in Scorpio, that’s where my Mars is (mine is in the 12th House, though. Robert’s is in his 2nd. The second house is concerned with mattes of the home and finances.) Mars in Scorp energy denotes a streak of possessiveness in relationships. It also speaks of a person who will challenge themselves (in all areas of life, not just sexually…but sexually will think little of breaking taboos. So far that sounds exactly like the character I want Robert to be!)
On the other hand, his Venus is in Libra (which is a very comfortable position for Venus, just like Mars is at home in Scorpio.) Having his Ascendant, or rising sign in Libra also only serves to reinforce the idea that life should be fair. This tells me that Robert’s heart is going to year for equality, for balance, or ma’at (although he would never call it that, he’s a Christian!) Knowing some of the things I already do about Tommy, I’m seeing a fight in their future about how you met my parents, now why won’t you take me home to meet yours! (Maybe on this particular parental visit, Robert and Mom have a heart to heart about his sexual orientation… see why I do up charts for my characters?) But I’m assuming you remember back to when I said Tommy and Maggie’s folks were farmers in Oklahoma? That’s a far cry from the big city intellectuals I see Robert’s folks as.
Libra Ascendant people are also supposed to be attractive as well as charming. That swell. (Why is it that every time I say ‘swell’, I feel like I sound sarcastic?) So I’m starting to get an image of a fit, attractive man who takes care of his body. He’s from the West Coast, so he may know how to surf… not blond-blond, but maybe a darker sandy blond. Blue eyes. Classically handsome features.
Let’s go back to that Moon in Aquarius. The Moon rules over our inner selves, our private natures, the things that others don’t necessarily see when they first meet us. Robert’s Moon is in his Fifth House, which is the house of creativity and recreation. Aquarius is an Air sign. Air rules the head, the intellect. It can also be pretty hard to pin down. He might be the sort of man to read three and four books at a time. The Fifth House also rules over romance and relationships. Again, breaking taboos and social norms isn’t going to be a major problem for this man. It doesn’t mean he’s an idiot about it, it just means that he has the inner capacity to be rebellious. Again, that fits exactly with the person I want him to be.
Robert has his Chiron in Aries in his Seventh House. This is a painful placement all the way around, because while the Fifth House gives us some idea of who we flirt with, the Seventh House is indicative of who we are likely to marry. Chiron is the wounded healer, and often crops up in a chart in areas where we tend to experience pain. Now we can look at this positively and say it’s also where we have the capacity to heal others…but we get that ability because, like Chiron, it’s the place in our lives where we have been hurt so hard and so many times that we’ve learned which ‘cures’ work best. Chiron is the antithesis of Aries; where Aries is ego, Chiron is pure selflessness… which is all well and good, except that if you give ‘til it hurts, it HURTS! This in itself can be a hard lesson to learn. So now I’ve got another layer to Robert’s personality…
According to Jeremy Neal, “As ever with Chiron, there is some measure of bad childhood programming involved and we may have subsumed the lesson of an overly selfish parent with Chiron in Aries here.”
So taking what I’ve already discovered about Robert’s mother, that their relationship was distant because she was off fighting some cause or another… Civil Rights seems about right for the era… she managed to impart a measure of Chiron-like hurt. Her selfishness wasn’t that she didn’t care about her children, it was that she (at least seemed) to care more about her cause. I’m starting to think that his parents might be divorced—talk about a scandal! (And usually when I’m doing this, these sorts of notes would be in six notebooks written over the course of several weeks, sometimes well after I’ve started my story… I guess this is better…)
Ok, so now that I’m starting to get a feel for Mom, I want to make some notes about her. Just because there’s something Aquarius about her relationship with her son doesn’t mean that she herself is an Aquarius. In fact, I’d rather she wasn’t. She should be a Cardinal sign—those are the movers and shakers of the Zodiac and Mom sounds like a mover and a shaker to me. And I guess it’s time to name her. I was thinking about Edith, because I like the name, but now I’m thinking she needs a stronger name. Dorothy was a popular name in the 20’s—Dorothy is also the name of one of my favorite Doctor Who companions (she was named after Baum’s Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz) and Mom is starting to remind me a little of a grown up version of the Doctor’s Dorothy.
Cancer, Libra, Capricorn and Aries are the four cardinal signs. I’m thinking Dorothy MacLeod is more of a Libra than anything else. Libra energy craves balance. It’s Air, so its tendency is towards aloofness. Libra is ruled by Venus (which is of the Element of Water) and rules Love and Beauty. Libra energy tends to gravitate towards pretty things, art, music, the finer things in life. I’m seeing a woman with a lovely home who fights for equality in her given arena for all she’s worth. I’m not going to bother with a full chart, because I have a pretty solid idea of who she is now. Her moon should be in Leo, because she’s a fighter. She’s also not shy about being in the spotlight… I’m thinking this is the reason for the divorce (something that just wasn’t done back then.)
See, White middle class women were consigned to a certain role in life and if they didn’t like that role, well, too gosh-darned bad. A man could lose his job if his wife didn’t do the things that were expected of her—after all, what kind of man lets his wife run roughshod over him?
Now let’s say that even though Robert grew up in San Diego, he grew up there because that’s where his father lives… Mom lives in Atlanta. (I happen to love Georgia, and I wanted a Southern State to make the situation that much more prickly.) No judge would award custody to the husband in those days as far as I know…well, he might, given the reason Mom and Dad split, but I think Dotty realized that the kids would be better off with their father. She probably got rocks thrown through her front window and crosses burnt on her front lawn… better the kids be somewhere safe. (They may not actually even be divorced, per se, just living separately; it may not be a matter of not being in love, just a matter of keeping the kids safe.)
Which brings me around to siblings, because I think Robert ought to have a sister. Her name is Evelyn—Evvie for short. That’s Evvie, not Eevie. She’s quite adamant about this. She’s 26 years old and I’m not sure she approves (or is even wholly aware) of her brother’s sexuality. (Even if she were, she’s a nurse and homosexuality is a mental illness, after all—and like her brother, she is a Christian, and will not easily reconcile her faith with her brother’s sexual orientation.) She’s married to one of his WWII army buddies, so that could be an interesting dynamic. (Of course he may not know or approve of it, either. Robert was younger during WWII, and much more apt to keep something like that to himself.)
At any rate, here’s the backstory I wrote for Evvie earlier today:
Evelyn Kirso nee MacLeod, age 26
James Kirso, age 32
James and Robert served together during WWII—James came home with Robert on leave and met Evelyn (Evvie, not Eevie), who was then barley 17. It was love at first sight (although the parents didn’t fully approve in the moment.) Every time Evvie wrote a letter to her brother, she always included a short for James as well. Every time Robert wrote her back… by the end of the War, he told the two of them to just come clean with his parents already, he was tired of being a messenger boy.
Two months after James and Robert returned home after the war, James and Evvie were married. Robert served as best man. (Probably about 1945, after the war ended.)
Prior to the end of the war, Evvie finished high school and went on to college where she took an interest in nursing.
Although Evvie and James have been trying to have a child, they have not. She’s had a couple of miscarriages that she doesn’t like to talk about with anyone, least of all her brother. She and Robert aren’t particularly close.
Again, going back to astrology, I think Evvie is an Aries. Aries tend to be stubborn, quick to anger, but also quick to calm down. They can be passionate about what they believe in. So… let’s see, let’s give her an early April birthday… April 4th, at Noon.
That gives her a Moon in Virgo… organized, practical… sometimes maybe a little too much so. Sounds perfect. Except I don’t like that Leo Ascendant. Let’s try again… oops, I just realized I typed in the wrong date. Well, I like that Virgo Moon, so I’m willing to sacrifice the Aries Sun.
28 April, 1928, at 3pm. Sun in Taurus, Moon in Virgo, Virgo Ascendant. That Virgo moon means she has a very different relationship with her mother than her brother does. Virgo is ruled by Mercury.
Taurans, unlike Aries, are slow to anger, but when the do get angry, they will gore the recipient of that anger like a bull gores its opponent. Whereas rams butt heads, bulls plough you under. I think that works nicely. Maybe I’ll make her husband an Aries. I think that might suit better, anyway. (I have an image of his initial outrage when he finds out Robert is gay... and after the initial shock wears off, he remembers...insert war-story here...and realizes that it's all good. Evvie, on the other hand, sees the issue from a more pragmatic stand point, what does her brother think he hopes to accomplish by all this, kinda thing.)
Remember, too, the Cardinal Zodiac sighs are like the Knights of the Tarot--they charge out and get things done. The Fixed signs are like the Kings. They desire order. The Queens are the Mutable signs, soft and feminine, changeable and malliable.
The Court cards are the people in our lives... so looking at what I've got so far,
I'd say that Robert is a Cup personality... probably a Knight. He wants what he wants and leads with his heart. His mother, on the other hand, is the Queen of Swords all the way. Evvie, on the otherhand is every bit a Pentacle... quite possibly also a Queen (that's my card, by the way. Sometimes I little too pragmatic for my own good.) Her husband is a Wand, probably a Knight. Although I haven't touched on Robert and Evvie's father, I've got a mental image of him and he is very much the King of Pentacles. Earth and Air are not overwhelming compatable, even on the best of days...
So now I have one major player, along with his overall background and baggage. Whew. That’s enough for one day, eh?
by Helen Pattskyn
Genre: Romance
Creating Characters:
Characters are the life-blood of any novel, and my work in particular is very character driven. A plot is important, of course, but most of my stories start out with the who and evolve into the what, how, why and when.
Since this one actually started with a when and a what and even a little bit of a why, I started out working backwards…but that’s ok. I am capable of flexibility, honest!
Almost immediately, I knew what some of the core issues were going to be (aside from the Big Issues of the 1950's). I wanted one fellow who was pretty comfortable in his skin and I decided to give him understanding, well educated parents because frankly in the 1950’s gay men and lesbians faced huge opposition, so there needed to be a few allies worked into the story from the get-go. Of course, that doesn't mean they never ask their son questions like: Why can’t you find a lady with the same ‘issues’ you have and come to some sort of an ‘agreement’? Hey, I said they were understanding and educated, not that they were prefect!
I also knew right away that this particular man was a high school science teacher and a Christian (sincerely so). Why? Well, I had this snip of conversation in my head of the two men talking and the other guy wondering how someone can be gay, a science teacher and still have faith in God. (I also like to ‘mix it up’ a little where religion is concerned; just because I’m Wiccan it doesn’t mean that all of my main characters are going to be. And really, a gay Pagan in 1950? Yowzers, talk about having the deck stacked against you…) As for why a high school teacher… can you imagine a more difficult place to be a gay man? (Minds out of the gutters, kiddies, I meant, can you imagine the environment? There is no way a high school teacher could come out of the closet if he didn’t want to end up fired. Or worse.)
Now, on to the other guy. He’s not so comfortable in his skin, and to make matters worse, he works for the Federal Government… but I don’t want him to be an FBI agent or anything like that, so he’s a letter carrier. It’s a mundane job, he’s hardly exposed to national secrets, but the point remains, Uncle Sam is his boss and according to President Eisenhower, the United States Government is not going to employ “sexual inverts” and “perverts” because they pose a risk to national security. (The idea is that homosexuals are easier to blackmail, never mind that no one is all that likely to blackmail a letter carrier.) He’s Christian, too, but only because going to church is one of those things that a person just does. He lost his faith a long time ago. (And no, faith and religion aren’t going to play a major part… except, well it was the 50’s and religion and faith did play a major part. But you know what I mean. The message isn’t one of finding faith in God, it’s one of finding faith in one’s self. Or Self, I suppose.)
Ok, on with the show… our letter carrier has a sister who is very comfortable with his sexual orientation, and she just happens to be a high school English teacher. Guess who one of her colleagues is?
So now I have three main characters and at least two supporting characters (plus a high school full of students and teachers) to think about. Since I’ve already got a few plot points (I’ll share those later on), I know that the principal is going to be a reasonable important supporting character—or at least someone we’re going to see—so that person (man? woman? No clue yet) needs to be a little more fleshed out than say the girl who sits in the third row during second hour… you can see where character development takes up a lot of a writer’s brain.
…………………………………………
The first thing I needed to suss out was what the heck was I going to name these people. When writing something set in another era, I rely on old census reports to tell me the most (and least) popular names of the era. I wouldn’t want to make the mistake of naming someone born in the 20’s (because if the book is set in 50’s, the people were born in the 20’s or 30’s… so it’s important to get the census report for the right year!) Anyway, I wouldn’t want to name my girl born in 1920-something McKenzie or Baily; names like that as female first names is a strictly modern phenomenon.
Of course, I could at this point get away with using some of my favorite boy names: Marion, Beverly and Ashley… but I think I’ll stick with something conventionally ‘masculine’ here.
I decided I liked the name Maggie—Margret—for the sister/match maker. She knows her colleague is gay… my husband told me that there was a guy in his dad’s army unit who was gay. Everybody knew he was gay but nobody cared (or at least Dad and his buddies didn’t care) because they were all out there fighting for the same cause, all willing to die for one another. So I decided that Maggie knows about her science teacher colleague because her husband and he were in the army together... in Korea. Both served in WWII, but didn’t meet until Korea. Her colleague/friend came back from that war. Her husband didn’t. This has left her feeling bitter towards the military (he was retired, but was called back to active duty when Korea happened—I’m given to understand that depending on his area of expertise, this is very believable. It sounded good to me, anyway!) The point is that now she’s a single mom raising a couple of young kids…which also explains why she’s still working. Oh, the parents? They live on a farm in Oklahoma. We’ll come to them in a little while. Just assume that they’re typical hard working farmer types living in relative poverty outside of a very small town. Kinda like if you took the Waltons off the mountain and put them on a prairie, but with fewer kids. After the Donnelly family, from the Necromancer’s Apprentice, I’m done with honking huge families for a while. It’s a pain to come up with that many individual children, each with his or her own individual personality…but I guess there should be more than two. I’ll stew on it.
In the meantime, I decided to name the letter carrier Tom (or Tommy—he hates Tommy, but it’s what she calls him.) He was probably in the army, too, for WWII at least, because most men were.
It took a while, but eventually I named the science teacher Robert (it was very popular in the 20’s). Last name: MacLeod. I love a good Scottish name! No accents and no Gaelic this time, however. (Enid’s father, from the Necromancer’s Apprentice, speaks with an accent and uses a lot of Scottish idioms. On this one, I’ve got enough to worry about getting the parlance of the 1950’s down right!)
Oops, Robert needs a middle name. Hmmm… Adam. There’s a nice…erm, excuse me, a swell Christian name for you. Robert Adam MacLeod. Doesn’t he sound dreamy already?
Let’s start getting to know Robert (I’m starting with him because I’ve got Tommy lodged in my head pretty well already. I like to start with the characters I have the least handle on and move up to the ones I feel like already know.)
Robert Adam MacLeod – age 33. That means he was born in 1921.
His age is a semi-arbitrary decision. He needs to be old enough to have served in WWII, and be educated. A lot of servicemen came back from the War and went to college. I figure Robert was one of them. I think that’s where he had his first ‘real’ gay experience, too. Anyway, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor in 1941. So Robert would have been 20—he probably was already in college, but enlisted to do his patriotic duty. He’s a very patriotic guy, I think. Very clear about right and wrong.
Because I’m witch, I suppose, and a student of astrology, I always do a birth chart for my characters (sometimes I read their tarot cards too. No joke. My cards are always very subjective when I read for myself anyway, picking up on the slightest bad mood, so reading for my characters is easy.) Anyway, I love Sagittarian men, so I think I’ll make Robert a Sag.
December 5 sounds like a good birthday. Which means he’s actually 32, because I’m not starting the story in December. That’s the other reason it’s important to know characters’ birthdays.
Robert was born at 1 a.m. (I usually pick easy round numbers for time of birth) in San Diego, CA. (he just feels like he should be from the West Coast guy. Maybe it’s because of this movie I watched a couple of weeks ago called A … or maybe The… Single Man. It was really depressing, but gave a decent look at what it was to be gay man in the 50’s.)
So now that I have a birth day and time, I can do a quick computerized chart and see if what I get matches up with what I’m starting to feel about Robert’s personality. If it doesn’t mesh up, I’ll choose a different date within the range for Sagittarius because that much I’m dead set on.
On 5 December, 1921, the Moon was in Aquarius—so far, so good. Given his hour and place of birth, Robert would have a Libra Ascendant. Perfect. No need to look at other dates/times. (I love it when it’s perfect on the first go—I feel like it means I’m on to something good!)
Since the Moon also tells us something about a person’s mother, and their relationship with her, it is clear that Robert’s mother is more accepting of his sexuality than his father—Aquarian energy is indicative of those who embrace new ideas… in worst case scenarios they are rebels without a clue, however… but I’m not feeling that from Mama MacLeod. Whatever she fights for, she knows what she's doing.
It looks like Robert’s Mars is in Scorpio (when reading for gay men, I tend to look at Mars rather than Venus to tell me something about the mates they attract.) I’m pretty familiar with Mars in Scorpio, that’s where my Mars is (mine is in the 12th House, though. Robert’s is in his 2nd. The second house is concerned with mattes of the home and finances.) Mars in Scorp energy denotes a streak of possessiveness in relationships. It also speaks of a person who will challenge themselves (in all areas of life, not just sexually…but sexually will think little of breaking taboos. So far that sounds exactly like the character I want Robert to be!)
On the other hand, his Venus is in Libra (which is a very comfortable position for Venus, just like Mars is at home in Scorpio.) Having his Ascendant, or rising sign in Libra also only serves to reinforce the idea that life should be fair. This tells me that Robert’s heart is going to year for equality, for balance, or ma’at (although he would never call it that, he’s a Christian!) Knowing some of the things I already do about Tommy, I’m seeing a fight in their future about how you met my parents, now why won’t you take me home to meet yours! (Maybe on this particular parental visit, Robert and Mom have a heart to heart about his sexual orientation… see why I do up charts for my characters?) But I’m assuming you remember back to when I said Tommy and Maggie’s folks were farmers in Oklahoma? That’s a far cry from the big city intellectuals I see Robert’s folks as.
Libra Ascendant people are also supposed to be attractive as well as charming. That swell. (Why is it that every time I say ‘swell’, I feel like I sound sarcastic?) So I’m starting to get an image of a fit, attractive man who takes care of his body. He’s from the West Coast, so he may know how to surf… not blond-blond, but maybe a darker sandy blond. Blue eyes. Classically handsome features.
Let’s go back to that Moon in Aquarius. The Moon rules over our inner selves, our private natures, the things that others don’t necessarily see when they first meet us. Robert’s Moon is in his Fifth House, which is the house of creativity and recreation. Aquarius is an Air sign. Air rules the head, the intellect. It can also be pretty hard to pin down. He might be the sort of man to read three and four books at a time. The Fifth House also rules over romance and relationships. Again, breaking taboos and social norms isn’t going to be a major problem for this man. It doesn’t mean he’s an idiot about it, it just means that he has the inner capacity to be rebellious. Again, that fits exactly with the person I want him to be.
Robert has his Chiron in Aries in his Seventh House. This is a painful placement all the way around, because while the Fifth House gives us some idea of who we flirt with, the Seventh House is indicative of who we are likely to marry. Chiron is the wounded healer, and often crops up in a chart in areas where we tend to experience pain. Now we can look at this positively and say it’s also where we have the capacity to heal others…but we get that ability because, like Chiron, it’s the place in our lives where we have been hurt so hard and so many times that we’ve learned which ‘cures’ work best. Chiron is the antithesis of Aries; where Aries is ego, Chiron is pure selflessness… which is all well and good, except that if you give ‘til it hurts, it HURTS! This in itself can be a hard lesson to learn. So now I’ve got another layer to Robert’s personality…
According to Jeremy Neal, “As ever with Chiron, there is some measure of bad childhood programming involved and we may have subsumed the lesson of an overly selfish parent with Chiron in Aries here.”
So taking what I’ve already discovered about Robert’s mother, that their relationship was distant because she was off fighting some cause or another… Civil Rights seems about right for the era… she managed to impart a measure of Chiron-like hurt. Her selfishness wasn’t that she didn’t care about her children, it was that she (at least seemed) to care more about her cause. I’m starting to think that his parents might be divorced—talk about a scandal! (And usually when I’m doing this, these sorts of notes would be in six notebooks written over the course of several weeks, sometimes well after I’ve started my story… I guess this is better…)
Ok, so now that I’m starting to get a feel for Mom, I want to make some notes about her. Just because there’s something Aquarius about her relationship with her son doesn’t mean that she herself is an Aquarius. In fact, I’d rather she wasn’t. She should be a Cardinal sign—those are the movers and shakers of the Zodiac and Mom sounds like a mover and a shaker to me. And I guess it’s time to name her. I was thinking about Edith, because I like the name, but now I’m thinking she needs a stronger name. Dorothy was a popular name in the 20’s—Dorothy is also the name of one of my favorite Doctor Who companions (she was named after Baum’s Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz) and Mom is starting to remind me a little of a grown up version of the Doctor’s Dorothy.
Cancer, Libra, Capricorn and Aries are the four cardinal signs. I’m thinking Dorothy MacLeod is more of a Libra than anything else. Libra energy craves balance. It’s Air, so its tendency is towards aloofness. Libra is ruled by Venus (which is of the Element of Water) and rules Love and Beauty. Libra energy tends to gravitate towards pretty things, art, music, the finer things in life. I’m seeing a woman with a lovely home who fights for equality in her given arena for all she’s worth. I’m not going to bother with a full chart, because I have a pretty solid idea of who she is now. Her moon should be in Leo, because she’s a fighter. She’s also not shy about being in the spotlight… I’m thinking this is the reason for the divorce (something that just wasn’t done back then.)
See, White middle class women were consigned to a certain role in life and if they didn’t like that role, well, too gosh-darned bad. A man could lose his job if his wife didn’t do the things that were expected of her—after all, what kind of man lets his wife run roughshod over him?
Now let’s say that even though Robert grew up in San Diego, he grew up there because that’s where his father lives… Mom lives in Atlanta. (I happen to love Georgia, and I wanted a Southern State to make the situation that much more prickly.) No judge would award custody to the husband in those days as far as I know…well, he might, given the reason Mom and Dad split, but I think Dotty realized that the kids would be better off with their father. She probably got rocks thrown through her front window and crosses burnt on her front lawn… better the kids be somewhere safe. (They may not actually even be divorced, per se, just living separately; it may not be a matter of not being in love, just a matter of keeping the kids safe.)
Which brings me around to siblings, because I think Robert ought to have a sister. Her name is Evelyn—Evvie for short. That’s Evvie, not Eevie. She’s quite adamant about this. She’s 26 years old and I’m not sure she approves (or is even wholly aware) of her brother’s sexuality. (Even if she were, she’s a nurse and homosexuality is a mental illness, after all—and like her brother, she is a Christian, and will not easily reconcile her faith with her brother’s sexual orientation.) She’s married to one of his WWII army buddies, so that could be an interesting dynamic. (Of course he may not know or approve of it, either. Robert was younger during WWII, and much more apt to keep something like that to himself.)
At any rate, here’s the backstory I wrote for Evvie earlier today:
Evelyn Kirso nee MacLeod, age 26
James Kirso, age 32
James and Robert served together during WWII—James came home with Robert on leave and met Evelyn (Evvie, not Eevie), who was then barley 17. It was love at first sight (although the parents didn’t fully approve in the moment.) Every time Evvie wrote a letter to her brother, she always included a short for James as well. Every time Robert wrote her back… by the end of the War, he told the two of them to just come clean with his parents already, he was tired of being a messenger boy.
Two months after James and Robert returned home after the war, James and Evvie were married. Robert served as best man. (Probably about 1945, after the war ended.)
Prior to the end of the war, Evvie finished high school and went on to college where she took an interest in nursing.
Although Evvie and James have been trying to have a child, they have not. She’s had a couple of miscarriages that she doesn’t like to talk about with anyone, least of all her brother. She and Robert aren’t particularly close.
Again, going back to astrology, I think Evvie is an Aries. Aries tend to be stubborn, quick to anger, but also quick to calm down. They can be passionate about what they believe in. So… let’s see, let’s give her an early April birthday… April 4th, at Noon.
That gives her a Moon in Virgo… organized, practical… sometimes maybe a little too much so. Sounds perfect. Except I don’t like that Leo Ascendant. Let’s try again… oops, I just realized I typed in the wrong date. Well, I like that Virgo Moon, so I’m willing to sacrifice the Aries Sun.
28 April, 1928, at 3pm. Sun in Taurus, Moon in Virgo, Virgo Ascendant. That Virgo moon means she has a very different relationship with her mother than her brother does. Virgo is ruled by Mercury.
Taurans, unlike Aries, are slow to anger, but when the do get angry, they will gore the recipient of that anger like a bull gores its opponent. Whereas rams butt heads, bulls plough you under. I think that works nicely. Maybe I’ll make her husband an Aries. I think that might suit better, anyway. (I have an image of his initial outrage when he finds out Robert is gay... and after the initial shock wears off, he remembers...insert war-story here...and realizes that it's all good. Evvie, on the other hand, sees the issue from a more pragmatic stand point, what does her brother think he hopes to accomplish by all this, kinda thing.)
Remember, too, the Cardinal Zodiac sighs are like the Knights of the Tarot--they charge out and get things done. The Fixed signs are like the Kings. They desire order. The Queens are the Mutable signs, soft and feminine, changeable and malliable.
The Court cards are the people in our lives... so looking at what I've got so far,
I'd say that Robert is a Cup personality... probably a Knight. He wants what he wants and leads with his heart. His mother, on the other hand, is the Queen of Swords all the way. Evvie, on the otherhand is every bit a Pentacle... quite possibly also a Queen (that's my card, by the way. Sometimes I little too pragmatic for my own good.) Her husband is a Wand, probably a Knight. Although I haven't touched on Robert and Evvie's father, I've got a mental image of him and he is very much the King of Pentacles. Earth and Air are not overwhelming compatable, even on the best of days...
So now I have one major player, along with his overall background and baggage. Whew. That’s enough for one day, eh?
Monday, August 23
Gearing up for NaNoWriMo
Even though it’s only the end of August, with the number of proverbial irons I have in the fire, it’s time to gear up for the National Novel Writing Month in November. See, every year for the last five or six or seven years, I’ve said I was going to do NaNoWriMo. But every year I’ve got too much else going.
What makes this year the exception?
This is the year I’m going to do it anyway!
It just requires a little pre-planning.
……………………………………
The basic premise of the story came to me during a conversation my husband I were having about LGBT rights. Well… actually, it started over a year ago (I just hadn’t realized it at the time), when I got into a ‘heated debate’ (read: I was seeing red but trying to maintain composure) with a young gay man who had just said to me: “Why should I care about gay ‘history’. Gay ‘history’ doesn’t matter—do you study straight history?” (Ok, had he missed the memo where I’m bisexual? Apparently not, he followed it up with how he wished he was bi, so he could just date girls and be ‘normal’.) Like I said, I was seeing red and trying very hard to maintain my composure. I’m not especially sure I succeeded. (And as for the question of ‘straight history’—well duh, what do you think they teach in most schools in this country?!)
Ok, so fast forward twelve or so months to a couple of weeks ago with my hubby sitting watching a program on Logo (a network that caters largely to the LGBT demographic in this country) about gay history. We got to talking about our former house-mate and how ‘young people just don’t get it’. (Gods, do I make us sound like a couple of old codgers or what? We’re only 41… oh, wait, I’m a Capricorn and Caps are ruled by Saturn, so I guess I was always an old codger…but I digress…)
I started thinking about what it really meant to be gay in the forties, fifties and sixties, eras with which I’m at least passingly familiar, and I decided to write a story about just that. I hit on the fifties before doing any research at all, but it turns out to be the perfect era for the story I want to tell. (I’ll admit it, the first thing that went through my head was Leave it to Beaver re-runs. I know life wasn’t at all that idealistic, but it’s a good launching pad, because it’s the image a lot of Americans have about the 1950’s.) After doing a little more research, I set the firm date of 1954. The novel should span about a year of the characters' lives.
“Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Brief Timeline of the Era
World War II went from 1939-1945; after the War, many men (and no few women) came home and started families, leading to what they call the Baby Boom in this country. Suburban areas grew up in places that had before been mostly farmland.
Although African Americans had participated in WWII, in all branches of the United States military, it wasn’t until after the War ended that President Truman issued an executive order integrating the U.S. military.
The Korean “War” broke out in 1950 and lasted for three years.
In 1951, color TV was invented; I Love Lucy hit the air and was sponsored by Philip Morris. (I don’t remember what year it was from, but I saw an old black and white television commercial for cigarettes featuring Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble! They were puffing on cigarettes talking about how good their particular brand tasted.)
In more serious news…
In 1950, Sen. Joseph McCarthy began a “Communist Witch Hunt” in the United States. Along with ferreting out possible Communists, McCarthy’s contemporaries went tooth and nail after “sexual inverts” and “perverts” as well. In 1953, President Dwight D. Eisenhower issues an executive mandate prohibiting gay men and lesbians from holding federal jobs. As a result, dozens of people lost their jobs, their livelihoods and their standing in the community. Many took their own lives.
At this point in history, homosexuality was still considered by the psychiatric community to be a mental illness, therefore it was curable. The “cure” included electroshock therapy.
In 1954, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional. Across the country, white parents kept their children home from schools where black students were going to start attending.
In 1956, the Supreme Court ruled that it was also unconstitutional to permit racial segregation on public transportation.
It wasn’t until 1961 that Illinois became the first state in the union to decriminalize homosexual acts.
“Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that.
Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
……………………………………
My plan is to blog everything I write for NaNoWriMo as I write... yikes! is right! Yes, that means anyone who reads this gets to see a very rough draft, since the whole point of NaNo is to churn out words, not to edit and polish those words until they shine with perfection.
It also means that between now and November, I need to wrap up on a couple of other projects and get my characters sorted, because just like real people don't start out as fully formed human beings at age 20 or 30 or 40, fictional characters don't either. I'll be starting a page (see left panel) for my NaNo project, which currently has the working title of simply 1954. Not real inspired, huh? Hopefully I'll come up with something better as I'm writing.
What makes this year the exception?
This is the year I’m going to do it anyway!
It just requires a little pre-planning.
……………………………………
The basic premise of the story came to me during a conversation my husband I were having about LGBT rights. Well… actually, it started over a year ago (I just hadn’t realized it at the time), when I got into a ‘heated debate’ (read: I was seeing red but trying to maintain composure) with a young gay man who had just said to me: “Why should I care about gay ‘history’. Gay ‘history’ doesn’t matter—do you study straight history?” (Ok, had he missed the memo where I’m bisexual? Apparently not, he followed it up with how he wished he was bi, so he could just date girls and be ‘normal’.) Like I said, I was seeing red and trying very hard to maintain my composure. I’m not especially sure I succeeded. (And as for the question of ‘straight history’—well duh, what do you think they teach in most schools in this country?!)
Ok, so fast forward twelve or so months to a couple of weeks ago with my hubby sitting watching a program on Logo (a network that caters largely to the LGBT demographic in this country) about gay history. We got to talking about our former house-mate and how ‘young people just don’t get it’. (Gods, do I make us sound like a couple of old codgers or what? We’re only 41… oh, wait, I’m a Capricorn and Caps are ruled by Saturn, so I guess I was always an old codger…but I digress…)
I started thinking about what it really meant to be gay in the forties, fifties and sixties, eras with which I’m at least passingly familiar, and I decided to write a story about just that. I hit on the fifties before doing any research at all, but it turns out to be the perfect era for the story I want to tell. (I’ll admit it, the first thing that went through my head was Leave it to Beaver re-runs. I know life wasn’t at all that idealistic, but it’s a good launching pad, because it’s the image a lot of Americans have about the 1950’s.) After doing a little more research, I set the firm date of 1954. The novel should span about a year of the characters' lives.
“Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Brief Timeline of the Era
World War II went from 1939-1945; after the War, many men (and no few women) came home and started families, leading to what they call the Baby Boom in this country. Suburban areas grew up in places that had before been mostly farmland.
Although African Americans had participated in WWII, in all branches of the United States military, it wasn’t until after the War ended that President Truman issued an executive order integrating the U.S. military.
The Korean “War” broke out in 1950 and lasted for three years.
In 1951, color TV was invented; I Love Lucy hit the air and was sponsored by Philip Morris. (I don’t remember what year it was from, but I saw an old black and white television commercial for cigarettes featuring Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble! They were puffing on cigarettes talking about how good their particular brand tasted.)
In more serious news…
In 1950, Sen. Joseph McCarthy began a “Communist Witch Hunt” in the United States. Along with ferreting out possible Communists, McCarthy’s contemporaries went tooth and nail after “sexual inverts” and “perverts” as well. In 1953, President Dwight D. Eisenhower issues an executive mandate prohibiting gay men and lesbians from holding federal jobs. As a result, dozens of people lost their jobs, their livelihoods and their standing in the community. Many took their own lives.
At this point in history, homosexuality was still considered by the psychiatric community to be a mental illness, therefore it was curable. The “cure” included electroshock therapy.
In 1954, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional. Across the country, white parents kept their children home from schools where black students were going to start attending.
In 1956, the Supreme Court ruled that it was also unconstitutional to permit racial segregation on public transportation.
It wasn’t until 1961 that Illinois became the first state in the union to decriminalize homosexual acts.
“Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that.
Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
……………………………………
My plan is to blog everything I write for NaNoWriMo as I write... yikes! is right! Yes, that means anyone who reads this gets to see a very rough draft, since the whole point of NaNo is to churn out words, not to edit and polish those words until they shine with perfection.
It also means that between now and November, I need to wrap up on a couple of other projects and get my characters sorted, because just like real people don't start out as fully formed human beings at age 20 or 30 or 40, fictional characters don't either. I'll be starting a page (see left panel) for my NaNo project, which currently has the working title of simply 1954. Not real inspired, huh? Hopefully I'll come up with something better as I'm writing.
Friday, August 20
Unexpectedly Published!
Have you ever had a rough week... ok, make that a rough month... and than had something so unexpectedly wonderful happen that your faith in the Universe (or at least certain individuals within it) is almost completely renewed?
I've had a hard week--stircly emotionally speaking. My husband's work has been *super* stressful, which affects me because he's my husband and I love him, so I hate seeing him like this. My own week has left me feeling like my heart chakra took a beating and a half. (Probably because it did.) I'm not going to get into the details on a public forum, but suffice it to say, we all have times when we really wonder about ma'at--the balance or order of the cosmos--and if people are really worth all the grife and trouble they put us through.
But then something wonderful happens.
My something wonderful arrived in the mail in the form of a 721 page book (Good Gods! Did we really write that many pages?!) with my name standing alongside the names of two other fantastically talented ladies on the front cover. The book, The Adventures of the Bonny Welshman, came as a complete surprise to me, but it couldn't have come at a better time.
And now I get to say I'm published and I didn't even do it myself! :D
So a huge public thank you to Whit for making my day, today. I needed it in a way you couldn't imagine (or at least that you didn't know; I think we all have these sorts of days/weeks/months. The "puppies" are beautiful, by the way!) I really hadn't had any intention of giving up on people, it's just not in my nature (Venus in Pisces, remember?) but it's just gobsmackingly amazing when something so profoundly simple yet fantastically wonderful happens... only I guess it didn't just happen, someone made it happen.
I've had a hard week--stircly emotionally speaking. My husband's work has been *super* stressful, which affects me because he's my husband and I love him, so I hate seeing him like this. My own week has left me feeling like my heart chakra took a beating and a half. (Probably because it did.) I'm not going to get into the details on a public forum, but suffice it to say, we all have times when we really wonder about ma'at--the balance or order of the cosmos--and if people are really worth all the grife and trouble they put us through.
But then something wonderful happens.
My something wonderful arrived in the mail in the form of a 721 page book (Good Gods! Did we really write that many pages?!) with my name standing alongside the names of two other fantastically talented ladies on the front cover. The book, The Adventures of the Bonny Welshman, came as a complete surprise to me, but it couldn't have come at a better time.
And now I get to say I'm published and I didn't even do it myself! :D
So a huge public thank you to Whit for making my day, today. I needed it in a way you couldn't imagine (or at least that you didn't know; I think we all have these sorts of days/weeks/months. The "puppies" are beautiful, by the way!) I really hadn't had any intention of giving up on people, it's just not in my nature (Venus in Pisces, remember?) but it's just gobsmackingly amazing when something so profoundly simple yet fantastically wonderful happens... only I guess it didn't just happen, someone made it happen.
Sunday, August 15
My Tarot--The Magician: Thoth, God of the Moon, inventor of writing
See that weird little symbol in the lower left hand corner? The one that looks a little like a backwards C with a thing hanging down. That's the Hebrew letter 'Peh'. Peh is not the letter associated with the Magician by the Golden Dawn, but I think Peh makes more sense here than Bet/h, the letter the GD puts onto the Magician card (sorry, guys, just an opinion, really. ;-) (Bet means "house".)
Ok, so why Peh? Simple: In most of versions of the Sepher Yetzira that I’ve seen (which admittedly boils down to only a couple), Peh is crowned with ‘dominance’ or ‘power’ and connected to the planet Mercury in the Heavens (whom the Greeks correlated to Hermes and the Egyptian God Thoth) -- and the Magician, to me, is definitely a dominant personality in the tarot! He is the master of the tools, or suits of the deck, the coin, the cup, the staff and the blade.
As the inventor of writing, Thoth was certainly a master craftsman. In some stories He is also depicted as the closest things the Egyptians had to a trickster god, other than perhaps Bes. Order was pretty high up on the Egyptians’ list of priorities, so trickery wasn’t something especially prized most of the time, except when it was used extremely judiciously. Isis used trickery quite successfully against both Re and Set.
The Magician, then, is as much a crafty master as he is a master craftsman and his craft is all about words—and that’s what Peh is all about. Spoken language. The power to create through articulation. Peh even looks like a little mouth with a waggling tongue inside.
The other planetary symbol I put on the card is for the asteroid Athene. Athene is very much a Goddess of intellect and strength, and like Hermes, She's on the gender neutral side. This is important, because the Magician doesn't have a 'female' counterpart; the card must embody both masculine and feminine qualities. (I know many people pair up the Magician and the High Priestess, but the Hierophant is her real counterpart in the deck.)
The zodiac sign associated with this card is Gemini, whose ruling planet is Mercury. Gemini is mutable Air--Air of Air and all about communication and persuits of the mind.
Having the Magician crop up in a reading means that someone, either the querant or someone close to him, has the tools necessary to get the job done, regardless of what that job happens to be—and you can bet that however the job is to be accomplished, words, creation or the power of the intellect will figure into it. The Magician is *not* about brute strength or overwhelming emotion. The question, however, is how are you going to use those tools… are you (or someone in a position to assist you) a wise teacher, an earnest student, or a snake oil salesman looking to make a quick buck? When the Magician comes up reversed, it can be a good indication of the latter. Or it can mean that there is some block to your ability to use the tools you have—and again, you can bet that block is going to be intellectual because Hermes is all about the powers of the mind. By the way, He’s also the God of thieves.
The Rune on this card is Ansuz. Ansuz is all about messages, insight, the power of words and communication. Go figure, huh? Ansuz is associated with the Norse God Odin (who is often seen as being similar to Mercury—yes, Mercury, no, not Zeus. Odin is a God who concerns himself, amongst other things, with commerce, travel and good fortune. He’s also seen as somewhat duplicitous in that he always has his own agenda, just like the Magician. If his agenda and yours are in harmony, cool, if not, best be mindful.) Ansuz, when it comes up reversed, is also associated with Loki, who is also often associated with Hermes/Mercury in both his capacity as a messenger and a trickster. (And just for the record, I think Loki, just like Set, gets a bit of a bad rep. There were very few “all-bad” Gods in the ancient world.)
Rather than the Ogdoadic colours, I have used the “of” colour for each element (in other words, Earth of Earth is green, Air of Air is grey and so on) because the Magician is truly a “Master of the Elements.” Likewise, the Zodiac glyphs are pictured over His head, along with the familiar Mobius Strip.
Sunday, August 8
Shepherd's Pie
Ok, so I'm *not* going to be blogging about a lot of deeply personal stuff... and really, shepherd's pie isn't exactly "personal", but I couldn't get over the (positive) reactions to my shepherd's pie yesterday (no, really, that's not some weird euphemism, we are talking ground meat and potatoes!) So for posterity's sake (or something), the I thought I'd share the recipe.
Ingredients:
1. About a pound of ground beef (which I had on hand and *seriously* needed to use! Yours, of course, could be fresh as daisies.)
2. A dozen small potatoes. I chop mine in half and toss them into a pot with boiling water, no muss, no fuss.
3. A stick of butter (for the potatoes once they're cooked)
4. Some milk... I dunno, maybe half a cup--I eyeball it.
5. Ditto on the paprika, but I like it a lot, so probably a good teaspoon went into the meat as it was browning.
6. I threw in some garlic powder because I was too lazy to chop up a clove of garlic, but that would work, too.
7. A good dash of dill (love dill!)
8. A bag of frozen veggies--I happened to have half a bag of stir-fry veggies and half a bag of peas and carrots, but I think mixed veg would work pretty well. I wouldn't suggest California mix or anything like that.
9. One pouch of Knorr brown gravy mix--seriously, the only gravy mix I ever buy.
Directions:
1.Brown the beef with paprika, dill and garlic powder (and anything else you fancy, I suppose.)
2. Add in whatever frozen veggies you like (fresh veg would work too, and would really be my first choice, but I've always got these half-bags left over in my freezer...) I think the important thing was that it was about one to one on the veg to meat ratio and the veggies were all small (i.e. peas, tiny carrot slices, etc.)
3.I put in the gravy mix last--note, I did not make the gravy, I just put in the mix! I added a couple of tablespoons of water to give it a *little* liquid-ness (is that a word?), but *not* a lot. It did *not* have a pot pie consistency (it wasn't gooing gravy all over the place.)
4. Boil the potatoes until tender. Drain. (Really this is going at the same time as the above steps. I put on the potatoes and beef at the same time.)
5. Mash the potatoes with butter and milk. (I suppose you could skip the butter if you wanted, or substitute margarine. When I'm doing special mashed potatoes, I add in garlic and an egg yoke or two, which would also be good here.)
6. Line the bottom of a pie (big) pan with mashed potatoes. Spoon in beef/veg mix. Put more potatoes on top.
7.Serve.
8. Listen to more compliments than a pile of left-overs deserved (but I am *not* complaining! And seriously, I had some myself and it was good. There were no left overs and there was a lot more food on the table, so it wasn't like it was shepherd's pie or nothing.)
9.Blog about it the next day! (this step is optional, of course!)
Ingredients:
1. About a pound of ground beef (which I had on hand and *seriously* needed to use! Yours, of course, could be fresh as daisies.)
2. A dozen small potatoes. I chop mine in half and toss them into a pot with boiling water, no muss, no fuss.
3. A stick of butter (for the potatoes once they're cooked)
4. Some milk... I dunno, maybe half a cup--I eyeball it.
5. Ditto on the paprika, but I like it a lot, so probably a good teaspoon went into the meat as it was browning.
6. I threw in some garlic powder because I was too lazy to chop up a clove of garlic, but that would work, too.
7. A good dash of dill (love dill!)
8. A bag of frozen veggies--I happened to have half a bag of stir-fry veggies and half a bag of peas and carrots, but I think mixed veg would work pretty well. I wouldn't suggest California mix or anything like that.
9. One pouch of Knorr brown gravy mix--seriously, the only gravy mix I ever buy.
Directions:
1.Brown the beef with paprika, dill and garlic powder (and anything else you fancy, I suppose.)
2. Add in whatever frozen veggies you like (fresh veg would work too, and would really be my first choice, but I've always got these half-bags left over in my freezer...) I think the important thing was that it was about one to one on the veg to meat ratio and the veggies were all small (i.e. peas, tiny carrot slices, etc.)
3.I put in the gravy mix last--note, I did not make the gravy, I just put in the mix! I added a couple of tablespoons of water to give it a *little* liquid-ness (is that a word?), but *not* a lot. It did *not* have a pot pie consistency (it wasn't gooing gravy all over the place.)
4. Boil the potatoes until tender. Drain. (Really this is going at the same time as the above steps. I put on the potatoes and beef at the same time.)
5. Mash the potatoes with butter and milk. (I suppose you could skip the butter if you wanted, or substitute margarine. When I'm doing special mashed potatoes, I add in garlic and an egg yoke or two, which would also be good here.)
6. Line the bottom of a pie (big) pan with mashed potatoes. Spoon in beef/veg mix. Put more potatoes on top.
7.Serve.
8. Listen to more compliments than a pile of left-overs deserved (but I am *not* complaining! And seriously, I had some myself and it was good. There were no left overs and there was a lot more food on the table, so it wasn't like it was shepherd's pie or nothing.)
9.Blog about it the next day! (this step is optional, of course!)
Saturday, August 7
Lammas
Lammas, or Lughnasadh, is the First Harvest Festival of the year; the astrological date is fifteen degrees Leo, which occurs right about...well, right about today!
Lammas is one of the four Cross Quarter Days, or Greater Sabbats; it is one of the four original Celtic festivals. It also marks the beginning of the Season of Autumn on the Wiccan calendar. It is typically celebrated as the grain or fruit harvest, but it isn't the time of plenty that some people think (that comes later in the year at Mabon). If you grow your own vegetables, even just a few tomato plants, you know that things are only just starting to ripen on the vine this month. A few hundred years ago, we would still be eating off of the last of last year's harvest... yep, year old food would be the fare today, plus whatever was starting to come in and whatever meat could be had, either from hunting or fishing, or possibly slaughtering a bull or two. By today we would have some idea of what the harvest was going to look like... and hopefully it would be looking good, because what was coming in over the next couple of months would have to sustain us and our families for an entire year.
Here's what else is going on astrologically today, compliments of astro.com :
Sun in Leo
Moon in Cancer
Mercury in Virgo
Venus in Libra
Mars in Libra
Jupiter in Aries
Saturn in Libra
Uranus in Libra
Neptune in Capricorn
Pluto in Capricorn
The position of the Moon tells us a great deal about how people are generally going to be feeling on any given day, and boy, when it's in Cancer, is feeling the right word! Cancer is all about emotion. Now, that can be a good thing, or it can be a bad thing. If you're generally feeling positive about Life, the Universe, and Everything, a day when the Moon in Cancer will most likely bring about all the best that Cancer has to offer. If things aren't roses and sunshine, a day when the Moon is in Cancer is likely to "inspire" you to change things (particularly if you have a lot of Water in your natal chart to begin with or tend to be easily swayed by Water issues anyway. But even those of us who aren't so Watery--my Moon and Sun are both in Capricorn, right along with my Psyche and Sappho--need to be a little cautious of those "Water inspired" moments today if we don't want to end up all wet! Besides, my Venus is in Pisces; Venus rules the heart and Pisces is a very emotional sign, so despite all that Earth I've got to keep me grounded, I'm still an emotional creature, it just doesn't always show.)
Cancer is a Water sign (and the Moon is also not only a Water "planet", but it is the ruler of Cancer, so being in Cancer today the Moon is very "comfortable"--it's going to do all the things it does easily for us. Isn't that swell? Well, it can be...)
Water is all about nurturing and healing; it is also the element of the subconscious mind, the psyche and our Inner Child. Water can be very transformitive, particularly the kind or transformation that starts from deep within, the kind that is fueled by those Watery-emotions (which are usually pretty positive. Water is love and compassion, after all.) Generally Water's transformitive process is more gentle than Fire's, but recall that Water isn't all soft rains and crystal pools. Water is tidal waves and whirlpools and flash floods.
Remember when I was talking about the Moon Card in the Tarot? (The Moon Card isn't actually associated with the Moon in the sky according to the Golden Dawn, Pisces and Neptune are associated with the Moon Card; the GD associates the Moon in the sky with the Priestess Card which does make sense, but, really, how can the Moon not be associated with the Moon? At any rate...) When the Moon Tarot Card comes up in a reading, you can expect a lot of tumultuousness in your life (remember when I was talking about my tarot and I described my favorite Moon card ever, the kraken dragging the pirate ship down to Davy Jones' locker? Yeah, that kind of tumultuousness.)
(If you don't know already, the other Water signs are Scorpio and Pisces--if you've got Cancer, Scorpio or Pisces featured heavily or "stragegically placed"--like me and my Venus, which is another Water planet, by the way--in your chart, you can expect Water to weigh in on your life heavily today.)
Cancer is one of the Cardinal Signs (the others are Libra, Aries and Capricorn.)
Cardinal signs don't generally beat around the bush (of course in a person, other factors in the chart, like me and my Venus/Pisces, come into play, but here we're talking about what's going on in the sky today, not in any one person's birth chart). Cardinal signs resourceful. Moreover, they motivated to make things happen--and they're usually pretty good at making the (sometimes tough) decisions necessary, too. In other words, if they don't like what's going on, they're going to change it (remember that tumultous change we were talking about just a moment ago?) So when a Cardinal sign is prominant in a day's horoscope (yes, days have horoscopes just like people), change may very well be in the air... and today of all days, when the Wheel is turning, when are shifting from the Season of Fire (Summer) into the Season of Water (Autumn), I think we're going to see some changes... hopefully they'll all be for the better (or more to the point, we'll still think they're for the better when we wake up tomorrow after eating, drinking and being merry tonight!)
“Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses, you build up a whole suit of armor, so that nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life...You give them a piece of you. They didn't ask for it. They did something dumb one day, like kiss you or smile at you, and then your life isn't your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so simple a phrase like 'maybe we should be just friends' turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It's a soul-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. I hate love.”
Neil Gaiman
Lammas is one of the four Cross Quarter Days, or Greater Sabbats; it is one of the four original Celtic festivals. It also marks the beginning of the Season of Autumn on the Wiccan calendar. It is typically celebrated as the grain or fruit harvest, but it isn't the time of plenty that some people think (that comes later in the year at Mabon). If you grow your own vegetables, even just a few tomato plants, you know that things are only just starting to ripen on the vine this month. A few hundred years ago, we would still be eating off of the last of last year's harvest... yep, year old food would be the fare today, plus whatever was starting to come in and whatever meat could be had, either from hunting or fishing, or possibly slaughtering a bull or two. By today we would have some idea of what the harvest was going to look like... and hopefully it would be looking good, because what was coming in over the next couple of months would have to sustain us and our families for an entire year.
Here's what else is going on astrologically today, compliments of astro.com :
Sun in Leo
Moon in Cancer
Mercury in Virgo
Venus in Libra
Mars in Libra
Jupiter in Aries
Saturn in Libra
Uranus in Libra
Neptune in Capricorn
Pluto in Capricorn
The position of the Moon tells us a great deal about how people are generally going to be feeling on any given day, and boy, when it's in Cancer, is feeling the right word! Cancer is all about emotion. Now, that can be a good thing, or it can be a bad thing. If you're generally feeling positive about Life, the Universe, and Everything, a day when the Moon in Cancer will most likely bring about all the best that Cancer has to offer. If things aren't roses and sunshine, a day when the Moon is in Cancer is likely to "inspire" you to change things (particularly if you have a lot of Water in your natal chart to begin with or tend to be easily swayed by Water issues anyway. But even those of us who aren't so Watery--my Moon and Sun are both in Capricorn, right along with my Psyche and Sappho--need to be a little cautious of those "Water inspired" moments today if we don't want to end up all wet! Besides, my Venus is in Pisces; Venus rules the heart and Pisces is a very emotional sign, so despite all that Earth I've got to keep me grounded, I'm still an emotional creature, it just doesn't always show.)
Cancer is a Water sign (and the Moon is also not only a Water "planet", but it is the ruler of Cancer, so being in Cancer today the Moon is very "comfortable"--it's going to do all the things it does easily for us. Isn't that swell? Well, it can be...)
Water is all about nurturing and healing; it is also the element of the subconscious mind, the psyche and our Inner Child. Water can be very transformitive, particularly the kind or transformation that starts from deep within, the kind that is fueled by those Watery-emotions (which are usually pretty positive. Water is love and compassion, after all.) Generally Water's transformitive process is more gentle than Fire's, but recall that Water isn't all soft rains and crystal pools. Water is tidal waves and whirlpools and flash floods.
Remember when I was talking about the Moon Card in the Tarot? (The Moon Card isn't actually associated with the Moon in the sky according to the Golden Dawn, Pisces and Neptune are associated with the Moon Card; the GD associates the Moon in the sky with the Priestess Card which does make sense, but, really, how can the Moon not be associated with the Moon? At any rate...) When the Moon Tarot Card comes up in a reading, you can expect a lot of tumultuousness in your life (remember when I was talking about my tarot and I described my favorite Moon card ever, the kraken dragging the pirate ship down to Davy Jones' locker? Yeah, that kind of tumultuousness.)
(If you don't know already, the other Water signs are Scorpio and Pisces--if you've got Cancer, Scorpio or Pisces featured heavily or "stragegically placed"--like me and my Venus, which is another Water planet, by the way--in your chart, you can expect Water to weigh in on your life heavily today.)
Cancer is one of the Cardinal Signs (the others are Libra, Aries and Capricorn.)
Cardinal signs don't generally beat around the bush (of course in a person, other factors in the chart, like me and my Venus/Pisces, come into play, but here we're talking about what's going on in the sky today, not in any one person's birth chart). Cardinal signs resourceful. Moreover, they motivated to make things happen--and they're usually pretty good at making the (sometimes tough) decisions necessary, too. In other words, if they don't like what's going on, they're going to change it (remember that tumultous change we were talking about just a moment ago?) So when a Cardinal sign is prominant in a day's horoscope (yes, days have horoscopes just like people), change may very well be in the air... and today of all days, when the Wheel is turning, when are shifting from the Season of Fire (Summer) into the Season of Water (Autumn), I think we're going to see some changes... hopefully they'll all be for the better (or more to the point, we'll still think they're for the better when we wake up tomorrow after eating, drinking and being merry tonight!)
“Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses, you build up a whole suit of armor, so that nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life...You give them a piece of you. They didn't ask for it. They did something dumb one day, like kiss you or smile at you, and then your life isn't your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so simple a phrase like 'maybe we should be just friends' turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It's a soul-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. I hate love.”
Neil Gaiman
Wednesday, August 4
My Tarot 0 -- The Innocent
0 “The Innocent”
Young Horus setting out upon the Path
Although the rainbow isn’t an Egyptian symbol (of which I’m aware), here Horus crosses over the rainbow bridge, the symbolic passage between Heaven and Earth in many other cultures, carrying with Him only a few meagre possessions in His pack. He is just setting out on the journey that will eventually end in His being crowned Pharaoh over both Upper and Lower Egypt… but the journey is a long and perilous one, and one that could well be described as a fool’s errand. After all, how can such a young man hope to overthrow His uncle, Set?
Behind Horus are Nut and two mounts that represent the God, Aker, the guardian of the Horizon (the Gates of the Duat, the Nether World.) In the sky, the Big Dipper—known to the Egyptians as the Plough—can be seen, as well as a Ba Bird (anyone who notices that that Ba Bird looks a little like Yud with wings can go have a cookie on me!)
Instead of a dog nipping at His heels, Horus has as his companion the diminutive god Bes, who at times is a ‘fool’ or jester figure Himself (and at other times, He is the Magician.) Don’t be deceived by His stature and appearance, though. Bes can be a fierce enemy or a protective friend.
The “0” card is placed upon the Eleventh Path of the Tree of Life, along with the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet, the Alef, which is formed by two Yuds and a Vav. The Yuds represent the Macrocosm and the Microcosm, with the Vav connecting them, bridging Heaven with Earth, bridging the Divine Spark out there with the Divine Spark within each of us. The meaning of Alef is “ox”, an animal associated with the tilling or aeration of the soil (ergo, the Plough overhead.)
Alef is one of the three “Mother Letters”, and is attributed to Elemental Air, the first breath taken at birth, the breath of the Divine that gives the Soul life, the first rushing forth of energy after the Big Bang. Humans can live without food for a few weeks, without water for a few days, without air for only a few minutes.
Astrologically, this card is Uranus (Fire of Air) in Aquarius (Fixed Air).
The Norse Rune on this card is dagaz, a rune that speaks to us of breaking through barriers, of awakenings, transformation, new beginnings, and clarity. The literal meaning of the run is “day” which can imply a sort of divine light guiding the soul on its journey. (If you're interested in my sources, please see the sidebar to the right for websites and books on Kabbalah, Runes, Tarot and Astrology.)
The Innocent is the Spirit in search of experience. He represents the mystical cleverness bereft of reason within us, the childlike ability to tune into the inner workings of the world. In early decks, this card was often pictured with the image of a bearded mad man or wild man, a beggar or a bard. This caste of outcasts was usually excused form social norms and permitted to break the rules of society with impunity.
The Ba bird behind Him reminds us that He is not alone, He is being watched over by the Spirit of his Ancestors and His own Past Incarnations, in essence His own inner wisdom will guide Him, IF he listens to it.
He holds in His hand a purple lotus, a flower denoting mystical qualities.
In other decks, the Fool is frequently accompanied by a dog, sometimes seen as his animal desires, sometimes as the call of the “real world”, nipping at his heels and distracting Him; the dog or other animal companion can be seen as providing the Fool with a “reality check”, a link to the everyday world, a reminder not to get so caught up in the energy of Uranus in Aquarius that he becomes a “rebel without a clue.”
Although it cannot be seen in all modern cards, The Fool is often shown walking off a cliff. This raises the question “Is The Fool making a mistake, or is The Fool making a leap of faith?”
The Fool in all cases represents child-like innocence and the beginning of a journey. He has all of the tools he needs for that journey in his sack (these are the same tools the Magician has on his table), although he usually doesn't know that yet. When Horus set out to become King of Egypt, his rightful inheritance from his father, Osirus, He didn't know He already had all the tools He needed for the job. It took courage and conviction to claim what was His. We must all find that sort of courage and conviction every single day of our lives, because each new day is a new journey, the opportunity--the obligation--to set out on a new Path of fresh discovery. And like Horus, we are not alone upon the Path.
Tell Target & Best Buy: It's Time To Make It Right!
Target and Best Buy have donated over $250,000 to a political committee supporting a rabidly anti-equality candidate for Governor of Minnesota, where both are headquartered – a man with ties to a Christian rock band that advocates violence and death to gays.
The news is all the more shocking because both of these companies have long records of providing fair and equitable workplaces for their lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) employees.
My Tarot-History and Introduction
About 20 years ago, I purchased my first tarot deck (the Renaissance Tarot; shortly thereafter, I purchased the Arthurian Tarot as well.) It took me about five years before I really got serious about reading tarot, though. (Honestly, I bought my first deck because witches read tarot, right? ;-)
I still read off the Renaissance Deck--I had lost my original deck some years ago, but recently decided to get another copy after realizing I didn't own an LGBT-friendly deck. There aren't many gay-themed decks out there and I'm really not especially fond of most of them. The Renaissance Deck is the exception to that. It's a beautifully designed tarot that is friendly not only to the LGBT community, but also isn't likely to frighten off straight clients, either, which frankly, is always a bonus.
I also read with the Sacred Rose (my favorite deck), Robin Wood (the best beginner deck, IMHO), Fenestra (a recent purchase--I love the art, even if it's a little monochromatic for my personal taste as a reader, but a lot of clients seem to gravitate towards it, so I always have it with me when I read), and the Russian Tarot (of St. Petersburg) and Secret Tarot (by Jane Lyle). I own about a dozen decks in all--which honestly makes me not a very serious collector. Most tarot deck collectors have well over two dozen decks... over the years I've probably owned that many, but I've whittled down my collection to the dozen or so decks I really enjoy, either for reading or for the artwork.
Every deck has its own personality; Robin's deck, for example, is a very Pagan friendly deck and I love it for that...but I don't have the same feeling towards the Hierophant as she does and I have a very different opinion of the Magician than she. On the other hand, her Judgment card is amazing (it's called Rebirth and depicts a phoenix rising from a cauldron, a very Pagan symbol for rebirth and renewal, which is exactly what the Judgment card is really all about.) Her Devil card is equally perfect; it's much better than the depiction of the Devil as Pan, as I've seen in a couple of other Pagan-themed Tarot decks. Robin's Devil is based on the idea of the "monkey trap", which is exactly what the Devil card is all about: Grasping hold of material things to the point where it's become a detriment.
The very best Three of Swords I've ever seen is from a deck called the Cosmic Tarot. The rest of the deck is ok, but the Three of Swords is absolutely perfect. (It shows two people, each gripping a sword tightly in hand; a third sword lies broken in front of them. They are so busy hanging onto their own pain, that they can't see the bigger issue, the broken sword.) (Please note that "best" is an extremely subjective word. When I say "best", what I really mean is "best for me".)
I don't like the Death card in the Fenestra Tarot; I'm not too crazy about the Moon card in that deck either. The best Moon I've seen is from a deck called the Pirate Tarot. I don't like the rest of the deck much at all, but the Moon is exactly right (there's a giant octopus/kraken type beastie dragging a pirate ship down to the depths of Davy Jones Locker.)
The best Hierophant card I've seen is from a deck called the Victorian Romantic deck--it's out of print and out of my price range, but Google Images are a Deity send when doing research on the tarot! The VR deck's Hierophant is an elderly scholar leaning back on a couch with a couple of young students... the idea of the Hierophant is organized learning, higher education, a teacher who bridges Heaven and Earth to give his students access to the Divine. (Obviously there are other meanings, most of which have to do with organized religion. But to me, that's not a bad thing. Some people have knee-jerk reactions when it comes to organized religion.)
So, about three years ago, I found myself lamenting that there are all of these single perfect cards, but not a single perfect deck... oh wait, I'm an artist! I can make my own deck!! And while I'm at it, wouldn't it be fun to learn more about the Qabala? I mean, it's something I want to study more and lots of people combine Qabala and Tarot...oh, and astrology, too...
If anyone is reading this thinking I'd bit off more than I could chew, you're right! It took about an hour to figure out that there is no standard for cross-referencing Tarot and Qabala or Tarot and astrology or astrology and Qabala. Sure, there's Uncle Al and the Golden Dawn, et. al., but they're not the only resources out there. In fact, as I got into Tarot history, I quickly discovered that there are so many different ways to number the Trumps, it's mind boggling.
The long story short is that I shelved the project for almost a year. But it wouldn't stop niggling at the back of my brain. So eventually I pulled it back out again, dusted off my notes, and did some more research. The first thing I decided to do was stop studying Qabala and start studying Kabbalah instead. Huh? Aren't they just different spellings for the same?
No.
Qabala is distinctly Ceremonial flavored. Kabbalah is Jewish, down to earth, and that appeals to a quiet little earth witch like myself. Once I started working with that system, things fell into place much more comfortably... I just have to work with the bits about God in the singular masculine sense. For the most part, it doesn't bother me because my belief is Deity is Deity, it doesn't matter so much by what name we call Him/Her/Them.
Last year, I started working on my deck in earnest. It's been slow going; I have lots of other projects going so I don't think I'm going to finish my tarot this year as I'd hoped.
Oh yeah, and just for "fun", at the eleventh hour (literally, the day I was supposed to hang my work), I decided that it might be "fun" to add runic correspondences to my cards, never mind that they're on an Egyptian theme! I am an eclectic witch, after all. (And no, I would never mix those systems in ritual or magic, but for the purpose of reading tarot, it really does add an extra level of understanding to the cards, and that I do find useful.)
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My Tarot: An (official) Introduction
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My numbering of the Trumps may seem a bit off to anyone who isn’t familiar with some of the older decks out there. If you’re familiar with Tarot history, you know that there are more ways to number the Trumps than you can swish and flick your magic wand at.
I decided to include Astrology, Kabbalah and Runes in my deck because I thought it would be a “fun” way to increase my personal knowledge base…hmmm. Yeah. Probably enough said, right there. I found WAY too much information on some things and not enough on others… In the end, I opted correspondences that made sense to me. The system isn’t perfect, some cards just don’t have “easy” Runic and/or Kabbalahlistic correspondences. I’m certainly not trying to argue that any of these systems influenced one another in antiquity.
About the set up of the cards: The Astrology of the Kabbalah is placed in the ring around the image. The Astrology of the Card is placed outside the ring (and may be at odds with other sources out there.) Both the Astrology of the Card and that of the Kabbalah associated with the Card are sometimes hinted at within the image itself. And because there was nowhere else to put it, the Rune associated with the card is next to the Hebrew letter. Since there are more Runes than cards, two cards get two Runes, which actually worked out pretty well.
For no other reason that I like the colours, I have chosen to use the Ogdoadic colour scales for the Paths. Those colours are (usually) featured around the ring.
Lastly, I changed a few names on the cards, because really, who could in good conscious call a young Horus “the Fool”? (The Egyptian theme is just because I’m a bit of an Egyptophile, not because of any pseudo-mystical connection between Egypt and the tarot and no, it doesn’t escape me that using a Jewish mystical system with Egyptian Gods and throwing in Norse rues is just a little… eclectic.)
Symbolism of the Lotus: I realize that these are actually Buddhist Colour associations, but they work nonetheless… and let’s face it, I already had a mish-mash of symbols going, so why not add one more?
Red lotus
This symbolizes the original nature of the heart (hrdaya). It is the lotus of love, compassion, passion, activity and all the qualities of the heart.
Blue lotus
This is the symbol of the victory of the spirit over the senses, of intelligence and wisdom, of knowledge. It is the lotus of Manjusri, and also one of the attributes of Prajnaparamita, the embodiment of the ‘perfection of wisdom’.
Pink lotus
This is the supreme lotus, generally reserved for the highest deity; sometimes confused with the white lotus it is the lotus of the historical Buddha.
Purple lotus
This is the mystic lotus. The eight petals represent the Noble Eightfold Path and the eight principal acolyte deities of the central deity on the mandalas. The flowers may be depicted presented in a cup or on a tray, as a symbol of homage.
White lotus
This represents the state of spiritual perfection and total mental purity (bodhi).
I still read off the Renaissance Deck--I had lost my original deck some years ago, but recently decided to get another copy after realizing I didn't own an LGBT-friendly deck. There aren't many gay-themed decks out there and I'm really not especially fond of most of them. The Renaissance Deck is the exception to that. It's a beautifully designed tarot that is friendly not only to the LGBT community, but also isn't likely to frighten off straight clients, either, which frankly, is always a bonus.
I also read with the Sacred Rose (my favorite deck), Robin Wood (the best beginner deck, IMHO), Fenestra (a recent purchase--I love the art, even if it's a little monochromatic for my personal taste as a reader, but a lot of clients seem to gravitate towards it, so I always have it with me when I read), and the Russian Tarot (of St. Petersburg) and Secret Tarot (by Jane Lyle). I own about a dozen decks in all--which honestly makes me not a very serious collector. Most tarot deck collectors have well over two dozen decks... over the years I've probably owned that many, but I've whittled down my collection to the dozen or so decks I really enjoy, either for reading or for the artwork.
Every deck has its own personality; Robin's deck, for example, is a very Pagan friendly deck and I love it for that...but I don't have the same feeling towards the Hierophant as she does and I have a very different opinion of the Magician than she. On the other hand, her Judgment card is amazing (it's called Rebirth and depicts a phoenix rising from a cauldron, a very Pagan symbol for rebirth and renewal, which is exactly what the Judgment card is really all about.) Her Devil card is equally perfect; it's much better than the depiction of the Devil as Pan, as I've seen in a couple of other Pagan-themed Tarot decks. Robin's Devil is based on the idea of the "monkey trap", which is exactly what the Devil card is all about: Grasping hold of material things to the point where it's become a detriment.
The very best Three of Swords I've ever seen is from a deck called the Cosmic Tarot. The rest of the deck is ok, but the Three of Swords is absolutely perfect. (It shows two people, each gripping a sword tightly in hand; a third sword lies broken in front of them. They are so busy hanging onto their own pain, that they can't see the bigger issue, the broken sword.) (Please note that "best" is an extremely subjective word. When I say "best", what I really mean is "best for me".)
I don't like the Death card in the Fenestra Tarot; I'm not too crazy about the Moon card in that deck either. The best Moon I've seen is from a deck called the Pirate Tarot. I don't like the rest of the deck much at all, but the Moon is exactly right (there's a giant octopus/kraken type beastie dragging a pirate ship down to the depths of Davy Jones Locker.)
The best Hierophant card I've seen is from a deck called the Victorian Romantic deck--it's out of print and out of my price range, but Google Images are a Deity send when doing research on the tarot! The VR deck's Hierophant is an elderly scholar leaning back on a couch with a couple of young students... the idea of the Hierophant is organized learning, higher education, a teacher who bridges Heaven and Earth to give his students access to the Divine. (Obviously there are other meanings, most of which have to do with organized religion. But to me, that's not a bad thing. Some people have knee-jerk reactions when it comes to organized religion.)
So, about three years ago, I found myself lamenting that there are all of these single perfect cards, but not a single perfect deck... oh wait, I'm an artist! I can make my own deck!! And while I'm at it, wouldn't it be fun to learn more about the Qabala? I mean, it's something I want to study more and lots of people combine Qabala and Tarot...oh, and astrology, too...
If anyone is reading this thinking I'd bit off more than I could chew, you're right! It took about an hour to figure out that there is no standard for cross-referencing Tarot and Qabala or Tarot and astrology or astrology and Qabala. Sure, there's Uncle Al and the Golden Dawn, et. al., but they're not the only resources out there. In fact, as I got into Tarot history, I quickly discovered that there are so many different ways to number the Trumps, it's mind boggling.
The long story short is that I shelved the project for almost a year. But it wouldn't stop niggling at the back of my brain. So eventually I pulled it back out again, dusted off my notes, and did some more research. The first thing I decided to do was stop studying Qabala and start studying Kabbalah instead. Huh? Aren't they just different spellings for the same?
No.
Qabala is distinctly Ceremonial flavored. Kabbalah is Jewish, down to earth, and that appeals to a quiet little earth witch like myself. Once I started working with that system, things fell into place much more comfortably... I just have to work with the bits about God in the singular masculine sense. For the most part, it doesn't bother me because my belief is Deity is Deity, it doesn't matter so much by what name we call Him/Her/Them.
Last year, I started working on my deck in earnest. It's been slow going; I have lots of other projects going so I don't think I'm going to finish my tarot this year as I'd hoped.
Oh yeah, and just for "fun", at the eleventh hour (literally, the day I was supposed to hang my work), I decided that it might be "fun" to add runic correspondences to my cards, never mind that they're on an Egyptian theme! I am an eclectic witch, after all. (And no, I would never mix those systems in ritual or magic, but for the purpose of reading tarot, it really does add an extra level of understanding to the cards, and that I do find useful.)
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My Tarot: An (official) Introduction
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My numbering of the Trumps may seem a bit off to anyone who isn’t familiar with some of the older decks out there. If you’re familiar with Tarot history, you know that there are more ways to number the Trumps than you can swish and flick your magic wand at.
I decided to include Astrology, Kabbalah and Runes in my deck because I thought it would be a “fun” way to increase my personal knowledge base…hmmm. Yeah. Probably enough said, right there. I found WAY too much information on some things and not enough on others… In the end, I opted correspondences that made sense to me. The system isn’t perfect, some cards just don’t have “easy” Runic and/or Kabbalahlistic correspondences. I’m certainly not trying to argue that any of these systems influenced one another in antiquity.
About the set up of the cards: The Astrology of the Kabbalah is placed in the ring around the image. The Astrology of the Card is placed outside the ring (and may be at odds with other sources out there.) Both the Astrology of the Card and that of the Kabbalah associated with the Card are sometimes hinted at within the image itself. And because there was nowhere else to put it, the Rune associated with the card is next to the Hebrew letter. Since there are more Runes than cards, two cards get two Runes, which actually worked out pretty well.
For no other reason that I like the colours, I have chosen to use the Ogdoadic colour scales for the Paths. Those colours are (usually) featured around the ring.
Lastly, I changed a few names on the cards, because really, who could in good conscious call a young Horus “the Fool”? (The Egyptian theme is just because I’m a bit of an Egyptophile, not because of any pseudo-mystical connection between Egypt and the tarot and no, it doesn’t escape me that using a Jewish mystical system with Egyptian Gods and throwing in Norse rues is just a little… eclectic.)
Symbolism of the Lotus: I realize that these are actually Buddhist Colour associations, but they work nonetheless… and let’s face it, I already had a mish-mash of symbols going, so why not add one more?
Red lotus
This symbolizes the original nature of the heart (hrdaya). It is the lotus of love, compassion, passion, activity and all the qualities of the heart.
Blue lotus
This is the symbol of the victory of the spirit over the senses, of intelligence and wisdom, of knowledge. It is the lotus of Manjusri, and also one of the attributes of Prajnaparamita, the embodiment of the ‘perfection of wisdom’.
Pink lotus
This is the supreme lotus, generally reserved for the highest deity; sometimes confused with the white lotus it is the lotus of the historical Buddha.
Purple lotus
This is the mystic lotus. The eight petals represent the Noble Eightfold Path and the eight principal acolyte deities of the central deity on the mandalas. The flowers may be depicted presented in a cup or on a tray, as a symbol of homage.
White lotus
This represents the state of spiritual perfection and total mental purity (bodhi).
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