Attending PantheaCon

At the end of this week, I’ll be driving down to San Jose to attend PantheaCon. More specifically, I’ll be promoting my work in Women’s Voices in Magic and the writing/editing I do with Immanion Press/Megalithica. This is my first time attending this convention and I’m looking forward to meeting people and promoting my spirituality. If you’re attending PantheaCon, look me up. I’d love to chat and get together.

Click the Read More button to view the date/time/locations of the two panels I’m on.

Making art

Apparently writing a 50,000 word novel this month wasn’t enough for me or my creative muse. Last night I finally got around to finishing up a project that I had been slacking on for a few months now. During the summer I discovered a site that makes and sells stone and beaded bracelet-pendulums and thought it was a nifty idea. Even better was the fact that I already had many stones and beads laying around at home, like they were waiting for me to stumble upon this idea.

Beltane 2009

Beltane was spectacular this year. Overall it had a mellow energy, tinged with spurts of silly. Which was perfect for me and Kender. Our spot overlooked the Santiam River, the maypole dance (in the pouring rain) was hecka fun and I loved being able to connect to my community, fellow pagans and freaks. All hail Queen Jen and her King, Ogg. ‘Tis the year of Bellydancing and Booze!

Hosting the Tarot

Last night I lead my first GEM meeting. I decided to share a concept that Katrina Wynne teaches in her Transformative Tarot Counseling program. It’s called Tarot Alive, and it is a playful approach to using tarot. It combines role-play, numerology (to help with card selection), and meditation to show people how to embody the energies of the major arcana. Effectively they become the personality in the card.

It was my hope that by sharing Tarot Alive with others that it would present them some practical ways to use tarot, and the archetypes, as personal assistants on their path. For example, they could perform variants of this experiment to embody other personalities to receive help or assistance with blocks in their lives.

Feeding Your Daemons when sick

I’ve been sick for the past 4 days. Last night, while in bed, I sorta broke down and cried a bit. I hate being sick. I hate feeling lousy, constantly not being able to breathe, and not being able to exert any control over getting things done in my life. I felt frustrated and helpless at the mercy of the plague in my chest.

That’s when I looked up and saw the book sitting on my shelf. Awhile ago, my friend Taylor recommended I get a copy of Feeding Your Demons to read and use. I read the book and it has certainly changed the way I look at healing myself and coming to terms with “dis-eases”. I have yet to make it a habit though because as soon as I felt ill, I should have broke out that book and gone over the five step process. Instead, it took me four days of feeling miserable before I even REALIZED that I should ask the plague what it wanted.

So before going to bed, I laid there with myself and the plague and asked it what it wanted. It appeared to me as a gooey, blob of grey crap in my chest. It wanted my life, to drown me and consume me. I didn’t like hearing that but I gave it as much of my life-force as I could actually give. And as sick as I was, it was not a whole lot. I continued to give this blob my life, hoping that if I gave it willingly, that it would loosen up and let go of my poor strangled chest.

The second part of this process is that you end up seeing the demon transformed into some sort of helper, after its been fed. As much as I fed this blob, I didn’t end up seeing my helper. Instead, a dinosaur/dragon appeared. This beast told me that it was not my helper but it was an intermediary between being sick and the final product. This beast would hunt the ick in my lungs down and chase it out of me. I thanked the beast for it’s help and allowed myself to drift off into sleep.

While I don’t feel 100% better today, I DO feel slightly better.

I got pulled

Corrine Kenner, of Tarot for Writers fame, emailed me today saying that she enjoyed my review of her book. She liked it so much that her publicist pulled a quote from it and put it on the book’s Amazon.com page. Locate my quote under the Editorial Reviews section as D*I*Y Planner. I feel honored. She also emailed me a sneak peek of the Tarot for Writers Workbook, a companion guide.

I saw a sign

Driving home from a magical group meeting on Friday I saw the strangest thing in the sky. A streak of green, then a speckled trail of gold entered the top right corner of my windshield. It seemed to come out of nowhere and lasted a few seconds. It was gone almost as quickly as it flickered into view.

I thought it to be the strangest single firework display I had ever seen. Then I mentioned it to kender (who got home around 11:30 from snowboarding) and he told me it was a comet. A google search later, I discovered that it may have been Comet Lulin, which had been passing by Earth during that time. I’m glad I saw it.

Towards a Tarot Degree

I’ve wanted tarot certification for awhile now. Therefore it shouldn’t be a surprise that one of my 2009 goals is to get certified. This is important to me. I want validation on my knowledge and I when I teach tarot classes, I want to tell people that they can trust me and my knowledge because I’ve taken classes and gotten certification. Kender and I agreed that once we got our 2008 tax return he’d get a new Macbook Pro and I’d use my portion to pay for tarot classes. Our return hit the bank account Friday (insert much happy dancing here) and we put the order in for his new system yesterday.

I just finished paying for the Tarot School’s Correspondence Degree Program. It’s a 15-month program designed to solidify and certify people in tarot. I’m excited… looking forward to the start! This is one of two programs I’m going to get certified in. The other one is a “Transformational Tarot” and focuses more on how tarot can transform your life.

The Beltane Fire

A few months ago, me and my friend Michelle were at Bed, Bath, and Bondage (Beyond). We were shopping for a few kitchen utilities. I stumbled upon a box of “Everlasting Tealight Candles” and immediately had to have them. These tealight candles are watch-battery operated and perfect for leaving unattended in the outdoors. Which makes them perfect for festival camping. There were 26 or so in the box and I had visions of lights making a festival campsite cozy and inviting and fun. Not to mention visible when stumbling back to camp after a fun night of dancing, burning and laughing.

We used them, not all of them, but we DID use them during Beltane festival last weekend. I put two on the makeshift dining table; two sat on the table Ember brought with her; I put two in our hotel motel; and I gave one or two to Ember for her tent. They gave off some light Friday and Saturday and all was good.

Review: Archeon Tarot

Artwork and Book Written by Timothy Lantz
Published by US Games Systems, Inc.
ISBN 1-57281-488-8

The Archeon is a very personal deck. It contains the personal mythology and beliefs of visionary artist Timothy Lantz. The Archeon Tarot defines and explores Lantz’s symbolism and mythology in a very contemporary and graphic fashion. The card’s imagery is absolutely stunning. Lantz uses a digital canvas to create the cards and explore the very depths of his soul. Long before this tarot deck was even published, I had seen images of the cards on his website. And I was impressed with what I saw. The cards are a wonderful blend of dark, gothic, carnivale mixed with elements of the mystical and fantastic. But don’t let the darkness of the deck’s imagery fool you because within each card there is a strong sense of light and beauty. Each card’s image contains dazzling backgrounds and characters expressing realistic emotions; each layer thick with symbolism. Even the cards’ back include snippets of Lantz’s personal mythology and symbolism.