We’ll be at PantheaCon this weekend, enjoying the annual festivities!  And, courtesy of Tarot Media Company, we have gifts for our friends at the conference!

Find me or Rose Red, tell us what you like best about Tarot, and we’ll give you little Tarot something to enjoy.

Find us early in the day, though – we have a limited number of goodies to share!

The good folks at Weiser Books sent me The Witches’ Almanac Issue #30, just in time for the new calendar year – wonderful timing for a wonderful resource!

The theme of this year’s Almanac is Stones and Powers of Earth – quite fitting in this Year of the Emperor.  The earth energies and groundedness associated with the Emperor are perfectly expressed in Stones and Powers of Earth.

The Almanac is the usual interesting and useful compendium of stories, articles, and information to keep one’s magical senses piqued throughout the year. Some of my favorite pieces include an article on cauldrons; an interview with Michael Howard, founder and editor of The Cauldron magazine; a poem about Circe written by Louise Gluck; and an article on Genius Loci (the Spirit of a place) by Shannon Marks.  There are many more pieces on all kinds of magical topics – the Hamsa (healing hand amulet), kitchen magic, and Dia De Los Muertos (The Day of the Dead), and ideas and inspirations to keep your magical senses delighted throughout the year.

Being an Almanac, it of course has monthly calendars (set up by the Lunar month), with the phases of the Moon and special days (including birthdays of famous persons) marked each month.  Did you know that June 9 is Nat King Cole’s birthday?

The calendars also have suggestions for actions to keep in touch with Nature and magic – for example, on April 7, when the Moon enters Gemini, the Almanac encourages the reader to “Exercise your mind” – an excellent notion for the busy Gemini!  On October 10, we’re encouraged to “Try fire gazing”, and on December 8, the Almanac counsels “Watch your temper” – always a good idea!

And, of course, there are horoscopes for the coming year.  2011 sounds intriguing for us Aquarius types – travel, friends, new projects – I’m ready!

The Witches’ Almanac once again provides a valuable combination of information, entertainment, and ideas to make the new year fun and magical!

As December flew by (it goes faster every year, I swear!) I resolved I would actually do my New Year spread within a week of the new year.  I made it!  We did the layout at the December meeting of Tarot House San Francisco, and then I actually did the card-by-card analysis on New Year’s Eve and the night of January 1.  Nothing like reading cards in front of the fire, the room filled with candles and incense, and The Medieval Babes singing to keep one company!

The spread is one I created many years ago, and have adapted over the years as my approach to the coming year – and life in general – has changed.

(The cards are laid out in a line of three across the bottom, topped by a circle of 12 cards, and the final card in the center. The diagram is a bit squished, but I’m certain you can picture it in your imagination. If not, you can download the worksheet for Anastasia’s New Year’s Spread.)

Card  1 represents what to leave behind with the old year.

Card 2 represents what to carry over into the new year.

Card 3 represents what to embrace in the new year.

Cards 4 – 15 represent the months of the year, starting with January.

Card 16 represents the summary of the year.

I used Alexandra Genetti‘s Wheel of  Change Tarot for this spread.  I ended up with 2 Majors, 2 Cups, 3 Wands, 2 Swords, and 7 Disks. Not bad – 7 Disk cards going into an Emperor year!

I pulled the companion book and read about the cards. Even though I’ve been working with this deck for years, I thought it would be interesting to actually re-read Alexandra’s ideas and her meanings. I’m glad I did!  It was helpful and refreshed my work with the deck.

What to Leave Behind: The Three of Disks – a very busy card with many ants working very hard.  What this suggested to me is to stop doing so much – stop being overwhelmed by busy-ness – let go of the excess “doing” and hyperactivity of 201o.  And just get some sleep!

What to Carry Over: The Princess of Wands – an image of a young girl using her magic to create her life.   What I do want to carry over is the magical aspects of the old year, including the many synchronous and perfect connections I made last year.

What to Embrace: The Ace of Swords,reversed – a sword is suspended in midair, surrounded by lightning, meteors, and all kinds of electrical energy.  What this suggests to me is to deepen my thinking on the important items, and to use the prior year’s successes as a foundation for work in the new year.

The fabulous Charlie London suggested moving the first three cards – What to Leave Behind, What to Carry Over, What to Embrace – throughout the year, using the energies along with the energy of the card for that particular month.  This adds even more depth to an already very chewy reading!

The really interesting month seems to be May – I pulled the Magician for that month.  This will definitely be a month to combine the Wands and Sword energy and make things happen!

The other Major Arcana turned up in space #16 – the summary of the year was Temperance, reversed.  I think this is going to be a year of taking calculated risks and meeting challenges in new and interesting ways!

Over at Tarot Media Company, we’re excited about our newest arrival – the 72 Names Cards by Orna Ben-Shoshan!

This remarkable oracle for personal guidance and divination is based on the Kabbalistic “72 Names of God” and the metaphysical artwork of Orna Ben-Shoshan. The 72 card deck is an immediate medium through which you can seek answers to your personal questions and consider the possible outcome.

The “72 Names” cards will guide you along your chosen path in a reliable, accurate and loving way, taking into consideration that every person faces challenges of life in order to grow personally and spiritually. As time goes by, the cards will become your sagest counselor and an essential catalyst for your spiritual growth.

And, we’re happy to present this amazing deck as another Tarot Media Company exclusive!

We at Tarot Media Company are thrilled to present the newest writing from James Wells!  2011 is the Year of the Emperor, and James has prepared a fantastic guide to working with the coming year’s Emperor energies. How might we see the Emperor’s presence in our world? How might you notice his influence in your own life? What might you do with these energies?

This booklet offers guidance for the Emperor year, partnering with the archetypal energies as symbolized by the Tarot cards, thereby aligning ourselves with Life’s rhythms and with the wisdom of the Emperor aspect of our own souls.

Each month’s pages also provide things to look for, suggested activities for alignment, and questions for reflection, from the specific lens of that month’s card. It’s as though the Emperor puts on a different costume each month or that his actions take on different adverbs as the months unfold.

This month-by-month guide will help you to discover and embody Emperor concepts in 2011, and is being distributed exclusively by Tarot Media Company!

The workshop for Saturday, January 8, 2011, will focus on three cards from the Major Arcana – the Magician, the Wheel of Fortune, and the Sun. Why? These cards reduce to the number one, and January is the first month of the western calendar year! How are they similar? How are they different? How can we use their messages to start our year on the right path (and stay on it!)?

Bring your cards, notebook and pen, and favorite singular notions!

Each class runs from 1:00 – 4:30 pm, held in our studio on Potrero Hill. Address and directions will be provided with your registration confirmation.

The class fee is $20.00, and includes class materials, refreshments – and a chance to win a fabulous Tarot treasure! Tarot Media Company is kindly donating an item or two each month for an end-of-workshop prize – one month it might be a raffle, another month a contest – whatever my inspiration devises!

Due to space considerations, we request that you preregister for the class at the Tarot Media Company store.

See you in January!

Author Marianne Costa will be speaking at 8:00 pm at Fields Book Store on Thursday, December 2.  She will be presenting The Way of Tarot: The Spiritual Teacher in the Cards, which she co-authored with Alejandro Jodorowsky.

Costa has worked with Jodorowsky since 1997, co-teaching workshops on Tarot and family tree-therapy. The author of No Woman’s Land, she lives in Paris.

About the book:

Alejandro Jodorowsky’s profound study of the Tarot, which began in the early 1950s, reveals it to be far more than a simple divination device. The Tarot is first and foremost a powerful instrument of self-knowledge and a representation of the structure of the soul. The Way of Tarot shows that the entire deck is structured like a temple, or a mandala, which is both an image of the world and a representation of the divine. The authors use the sacred art of the original Marseille Tarot–created during a time of religious tolerance in the 11th century–to reconnect with the roots of the Tarot’s Western esoteric wisdom. They explain that the Tarot is a “nomadic cathedral” whose parts–the 78 cards or “arcana”–should always be viewed with an awareness of the whole structure. This understanding is essential to fully grasp the Tarot’s hermetic symbolism.

The talented and charming James Ricklef, creator of The Tarot of the Masters, will be in San Francisco over the Thanksgiving weekend.  We’re doing an impromptu and informal get together on Friday, November 26, 2:00 – 4:00 pm, at Borderlands Cafe, 870 Valencia Street in San Francisco.  If you want to meet James, or have met him and want to see him again, now is your chance!

James is also the author of Tarot Tells the Tale; Tarot: Get the Whole Story; The Tarot Affirmations Book; and the Original Tarot Coloring Book.  His original and inventive approach to Tarot is easy to understand and work with, and provides a deeper way to work with Tarot, for yourself and with clients.

James is based in Los Angeles, and doesn’t make it to San Francisco nearly often enough, so this is a great opportunity to meet with him!

There’s no fee for this meeting, but we do ask that you support Borderlands Cafe by purchasing some food and beverage from their enticing menu.

Please email us to let us know you’ll be joining us so we can let the cafe know how many tables we need.  See you on November 26!

Tarot Media Company will release Emily Carding’s Tarot of the Black Mountain in Spring 2011!

This is a beautiful deck (of course, because Emily created it!), based on the culture and folklore of the nation of Montenegro.

Check out these images!

The Empress Card from The Tarot of the Black Mountain

Temperance from The Tarot of the Black Mountain

The Moon from The Tarot of the Black Mountain

You can see a preview here, or check out the full press kit here!

What better way to celebrate this dark and spooky night with a book that explores the dark side of the psyche – and the means of healing it?

Courtesy of Weiser Books, a copy of Crowley’s The Diary of a Drug Fiend landed with a solid thump on my doorstep.  At 368 pages, it is a substantial read, in more ways than one.  It’s a reproduction version, using the original typeface and layout.  Sometimes it’s a bit too much like trying to read the Captcha phrase on a website, but it’s an interesting design, and serves to set the time and place of the story even more than the descriptions of scenery and daily life.  The cover also nicely captures the look of the period:

The Diary of A Drug Fiend, Aleister Crowley

The nominal plot is the spiral of addiction and recovery of young Peter Pendragon and his lover (and later, wife), Lou.  They meet, they recognize something fated in their meeting, and immediately are sidetracked by being introduced to cocaine by a “friend”. (Ah, how often this is the case!)   As with all addictive cycles, it starts all fun and fabulous, until they find themselves strung out, nearly broke, and without supply.  Their situation is somewhat alleviated by the fact that Peter is heir to an estate with a secured income – even with its annual limit – but it does provide them a country home to escape to when they’ve run out of money and it seems they’ve hit bottom.

“Seems” is the key word – they think they’ve hit bottom, but they have so much further to go.  Once they’ve used all their drugs, scared off the servants, and find themselves without a cent or a plan, they decide to end their misery permanently.  They are prevented from this action by King Lamus, a character woven in and out of the story until this point, at which he becomes central in shaping the course for our soon-to-be recovering addicts.

Lamus takes them to the Abbey of Thelema at “Telepylus” to effect their recovery.  This is where – for me – the book actually becomes interesting. Perhaps because of my past, dealing with the addictive experiences of friends and loved ones, the first part of the book was not enjoyable – more like revisiting territory I’d forgotten about, and had no desire or need to revisit.  This was also exacerbated by my impatience with the foolish behavior of addiction – I don’t have patience for it in real life, and I found myself irritated by the destructive behavior in the book.  (This is my issue, and not Crowley’s!)

The Abbey is a closed society of like-minded individuals who, of course, are practitioners of Thelema.  Through the experience of daily life at the Abbey, the description of which serves as an “Introduction to Thelema” course, Peter and Lou shake their addictions and find their True Wills with which to direct their lives.

For me, I’d have rather had a more concise telling of the addiction spiral, and more material on the recovery and exploration of Thelema.  However, Crowley was nothing if not a product of his education, and his schooling in the late Victorian/early Edwardian era shows in the extensive descriptions of the highs and subsequent very low depths.  I understand the literary device of emphasizing the repetition of the addictive behavior and the extremities of thought and action brought on by addiction, but again, for someone how has gone this route, either personally or as a witness to someone else’s journey, it becomes tedious (much like the real life experience) and I do wish that Crowley had offered more in the last section, focusing on recovery, renewal, and spiritual awareness.  However, since more than a bit of it is autobiographical for Crowley, it may be that his dwelling on the addiction spiral was a way of living up to his reputation as “the wickedest man in the world”.

The book rewards patience, and if one can set aside one’s own experience and simply accept the experience of the book for what it is, it can be rewarding. It’s certainly interesting to combine Thelema with addiction recovery, and, were I a recovery counselor, I would probably adopt some of the techniques to work with my clients.