Yay!! I got my Grail Tarot! Thank you, Mommy

OK, so I decide that tonight I finally want to go and see the new "Twilight" movie, "Breaking Dawn" part 1.  I get to the ticket kiosk, swap my Christmas gift movie voucher for the ticket (for the only show of the day, according to the web-site) and go off to CNA to put my other gift voucher to good use.  I got myself a set of Colleen art/colouring pencils.

That done and dusted I made my way to Dulcé's for some hot chocolate (cocoa fans, I suggest the Belgian Hot Chocolate!).  I still debated making eyes at the cute waiter, but didn't have the guts.  Anyway, I paid my hot chocolates, got up and started making my way to the cinema.  Thankfully I discovered right outside Dulcé's that the fekking ticket was missing.  I can't tell you how many times I checked my bag (where I so do NOT put same-day tickets anyway) and my pockets.  I want to cry.

Anyway, that's neither here nor there.  As I am wont to do when I have a table to myself, I did some research and came across mention of a novel called "Nova", originally written in the 1960's.  It's a science-fiction novel ("space opera") playing off around the year 3172.  It seems to be a very involved novel, and in fact got some good praise and was well-received, but the point of interest for me in this novel is its use of tarot as an accurate science.  one of the characters, The Mouse, is in fact made fun of for being sceptical of it (ironic, since the character is identified as a Gypsy).

Beyond that, I am actually surprised by how much tarot-related literature there is out there.  I don't mean only in terms of tutorials and psychological analyses, but poetry, fantasy, science fiction and "how to" books for the business aspect of the cards.  In this list, include "Fortune's Lover by Rachel Pollack (who has a whole collection of tarot-related literature to her name), "Tarot" by Piers Anthony, "Professional Tarot"  by Christine Jette, and any of the highly involved companion books to the Thoth Tarot, which (as far as I've seen) all deal not only with the psychology, but the Kabbala, symbolism and occult in this deck as well.  Phew, let's all take a deep breath here!

I actually just ordered the "Professional Tarot:  the Business of Reading, Consulting and Teaching".  The delivery date is marked at the 2nd of Jan, so let's see.  I'm curious to see what the author says about making the tarot a viable business.  I'll post on it as soon as I've read it.

OK, so back to the Grail Tarot.  I love it!  I've only just started reading the LWB, which starts off with a brief history of the Holy Grail and The Knights Templar.  The artwork is VERY 12th/13th Century (which makes sense, considering the time of the founding of the Templars) with a slight Rensaissance feel.  The artist is an Italian by the name of Giavanni Caselli, who seems to be a paleoanthropologist as well as an artist.  The actual author of the literature is John Matthews, who, with wife Caitlin, is known for over 90 books on Celtic mythology, alternative history for magic and Neoshamanism..  This is all Wikipedia speaking, by the way.

The names of the cards are also quite different from what we're used to, named Stones, Lances and Vessels; the Swords keep their name.  In the Majors, none of the original names have been kept (unless you count "Fortune's Wheel"), with such names as "Sheba" and "Solomon" for Keys 3 and 4; "Lucifer" for Key 15; "The Gnostic Christ" replaces Key 1; and finally, Key 21 is replaced by "The Grail Procession.  The entire major arcana are also renamed "The Seeker's Quest and can be laid out side by side to form a complete story (in most tarot this can't be accomplished fluidly).  Doesn't this remind one of the "Da Vinci Tarot"?

When it comes to the interpretations, they often have an extra, added little aspect, such as the 8 of Stones (Pentacles) still referring to work and details, but also bringing up honesty, prudence and discrimination.  The 7 of Stones, usually the representation for hard work rewarded, here stand for time-outs, getting lost, fear of failure and fruitless efforts.  Have any of my readers ever seen this card to represent such unhappy things?  And reversals don't count, hey?

Anyway, I'm off to bed (^_^)  Below are two images (sadly, not my own) of the Grail Tarot.  If any of you want to see them, let's arrange a visit, shall we?

Much love, friends and fandamily!!

I can get like a dog with a bone sometimes.

Especially when it comes to things I really like, like the tarot.

As it turns out, I'm making a U-turn back to the last blog I posted and digging up Pamela and her "Tarot Café" again, this time in the form of "The Tarot Café Novel" by Chandra Rooney.

Right off the bat you can see (obviously) that it wasn't the original author (Sang-Sun Park) who did the book.  She was the artist for the illustrations, but beyond that, it doesn't seem as though she had any real part in the story.

The plot follows Bryn McAllister, an actress recently appointed to the lead role in a fantasy series, and previously known for her portrayal of Queen Titania from Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream".  Her fiancé, Jack, is missing, and at first Bryn thinks him hard at work on a new series of paintings.  She then starts having dreams, both sleeping and waking, of Jack in the clutches of the Wild Hunt and their lead huntsman, Herne.  Bryn tries to see her usual tarot card reader, Cora (whom TC fans will remember as Divinator Cora from the manga, the female deuteragonist) to try and get a handle on what the dreams are trying to tell her..  However, Cora has moved, and instead Bryn finds her way to Pamela.  Through flashbacks we learn more about the relationship between Jack and Bryn and also really get into Bryn's emotional state.  We also experience the feelings and emotions of Bryn's choices at the end of the book.

The start of each chapter is illustrated in typical Sang-Sun Park style, i.e., an established and well-know tarot card is taken and the face of the main character in the chapter drawn in place of the cards' characters.  These cards are also the cards placed in the reading in each chapter, and the chapters revolve around these placements and their influences in Bryn's life.

The story itself is dark / gothic, drawing on the old feelings people used to get whenever the Wild Hunt was incvolved.  The goth-ness is also heightened by the fact that each of Bryn's dreams plays off at night, when the Wild Hunt typically rode out.

In all, I found the book worth the read and fans of the original "Tarot Café" manga series will be pleased with how close to the original style this novel was written.  There's also an original Sang-Sun Park surprise at the end of the book, so look out for that!

New tarot wish-list item in sight!!

And that tarot wish-list item iiiiisss....  THE HOLY GRAIL TAROT!!  Found a brand new, as yet unopened copy of the box at the second-hand book-shop down the road from us, at RATHER less than the normal shop price.  And would you have it, I don't have the cash available yet.  Let's hope it's still there when I go and collect it.

This is the first blog on doing on request, by the way.  I'm so happy for the request!  My thoughts have been doing the loopies for a while on what to put up here and being asked for something just seemed to help the loopies straighten out a little bit.  Whooppeeeee!!!

It's taken me up to now to figure out what a blog is in any case, and for the life of me, I wouldn't be able to explain it to anyone if I were asked to.  I always saw the advertisement on TV with this woman talking about how her kids are blogging about this and that (you know, the one where she's walking between the fridge and the work-counter and looking like her kitchen gets disinfected every time she steps outside).  Now I get it.  So, who else has a blog?

I have a rather interesting graphic novel (classed under "manga') called the "Tarot Café".  The artist is the Korean Sang-Sun Park and I have to say, her style is incredibly distinct from most manga art styles I've come across.  She likes bold lines and lots of detail and if you don't keep track of  how the story flows, you can get lost.  Her characters are also very modernly dressed and really easy to fall in love with.

Anyway, the main story focuses on Pamela and her quest to die by collecting the beads from Belial/Berial's necklace (as the story goes on, so the first L is replaced by an R).  Pamela is immortal and became so at eh death of her lover, the red dragon Ash, some 800 years ago.  It turns out she was hit on the forehead by the first drop of blood out of his heart as he died.

Pamela was born with the gift of Sight and uses this amazing gift to help the "after-midnight" customers that come through her door.  These customers range from a rare wish-granting cat named Butterfly to the human lover of a Welsh lake faery; a blinded vampire and and various other supernatural beings also count among her special clients.  During the day, she's just Pamela, the owner of the titular Tarot Café who happens to read tarot cards for her clients as well (think Tea & Tarot on the way to Muizenberg and Kalk Bay).

What particularly struck me when I initially looked at the "TC" manga was that Pamela used a rather obscure tarot deck called the Aquarian Tarot, done by the artist David Palladini.  The Aquarian Tarot is very close to my heart for the simple reason that I also own one; in fact, the AT is my primary and oldest deck (in terms of being in my possession).  It was a gift from my aunt when I turned fourteen and Goddess knows, it's stuck by me through thick and thin.  Especially the thin.

The AT is not the only tarot deck Pamela uses in her travels and readings, though.  From her mother she inherited a copy of the Visconti_Sforza Tarot (arguably the oldest known documented tarot deck), while travelling in Turkey a few hundred years later she uses an appropriately-themed deck to read the fortune of a sultan's ghost.  The title of each chapter is a card from various different tarot decks with the cards' faces replaced by the focus character's face for the chapter.  Make sense??  The deck each card is from is given, and the card's meaning is listed under the main image.  Among the most unusual (to me, at least) were images out of the Master Tarot and out of the Herbal Tarot.

Besides the chapter covers' meanings being listed, the cards used throughout the main story itself are also interpreted.  It's lovely to see how listed meanings for cards we all know and love differ slightly from author to author.

OK, enough BABBLING about the "Tarot Café".

I've been thinking of writing a good old-fashioned LETTER!!  But would you believe, very few people even have postal addresses nowadays.  With e-mail and SMS technology making up the bulk of our communication, the pen-and-paper letter has fallen by the wayside.  I mean, I remember getting a letter or a parcel in the post and tearing open the envelope or the wrapping to get to what was inside.  Why did we stop doing that?  The only letters we bother with anymore are the business or legal kind, or even, heaven forbid, advertising.  I challenge everyone who reads this to send me a letter in the post.  You'll have to get hold of me on Facebook for my address, though - definitely not leaving it on here for all sorts of weirdos to get hold of!!!

And for every letter I get, I'll write one back  (^_^)

I'm signing off now.  I do believe this may be my longest blog to date.  Please let me know what you think and don't forget to ask me for my address, heh?

Dee out!!

I need some excitement. And many more readings.

I haven't really been through anything to complain about in my life; in contrast, I've moved around so often one could say that that in itself is the adventure.

But I still want something more.  Problem:  I am a serious chicken when it comes to things.  And thanks to some influences in my life, I tend to be a bit of a miser with what little money I have lately.  I learnt a very interesting trick the other day, though, so if it works I'm so posting it on here.

I've been offered the opportunity to read my cards online on an esoteric website.  No, not online, telephonically. I register with the site, they load my profile, and I log in.  I get called on the extension the website's owners give me and I get paid per minute.  I'm thinking of accepting, but not always being here does make it so that I need to find out how that will work.  Does this count as exciting??  I hope so.

I was thinking (scary!) about something I said to someone a while ago:  I would put my cards before my partner if the choice is ever presented to me.  Is that wrong?  The way I see it, the cards and my reading them are enough a part of me that if you can't accept me reading the cards, you can't accept all of me.  Move along and make space for the next applicant, please!

Is this selfish?

I just proved my sister half-right

Ugh!  I just proved R half-right:  I said "goodnight" and all that twazz - and now I'm sitting on my PC.

Go figure.

As I mentioned on a Facebook status update about two or months ago, I'm a late bloomer when it comes to the good stuff (red wine, skinny jeans, tying cherry stems into knots with my tongue) and Tori Amos is no exception.  They featured her on Top Billing the other night and I have to say, she's a rather interesting woman.  Though, I was reading up on her since around the beginning of this year, all of it starting with something I read somewhere (have a flipping memory like a sieve, me), and I'm now finally starting to get into her music.  I'm not a huge fan of the piano, but she's one of two people who are more than allowed to go at it.  Naturally, I don't like all her stuff, but I'm making notes of what I do like and hoping like heck I manage to find a compilation or two along my life's journey.

I only just realised how LONG overdue my scooter is for her service - can anyone say "bad upkeep"?  Let's hope the dudey I take her to can bring her back up to scratch.  I don't suppose he has much choice, though, if he wants me to pay him anything.  In the same breath, he's been a blessing:  I met him once before through J and his brother, and would you believe, through looking for a motorcycle repairman, M found this dude for me - and it's J's brother's friend.  Small world, huh?

Speaking of which:  goodnight, world.  I can feel the Sandman approaching and I think I'll welcome him with open arms tonight.

Or eyes, as the case may be...