The Lonely Road and "Authenticity"

After the death of my Mentor I made the attempt to re-connect to my upline. I made efforts to "get right" with them, and to establish better communication with my "siblings". My upline wanted nothing to do with me, or in fact with any of the "offspring" of my Mentor. It didn't matter that we were proper, because they just rather didn't like that Mentor was gay as a rainbow flag.

I could react any number of ways, but the bottom line would be - I could take everything I knew and throw it out or I could accept that it damned well works and not really give a f*** about anything else.  I chose for no f***s to be given. I chose to not engage with "coven" anymore, until such time as the Powers see fit to stamp my ass and hand me a passel of neophytes. I will tell them the full history of what they are about to learn, blemishes and all. They, too, can choose.

I'm not telling you to do what I do. I've mentored people and specifically told them to not do what I do. Who would want to do what I do?  I have now been an Occultist for longer than I have not by a good measure.  I saw the online pagan infantcy, its bumbling toddler years, its slow progression to childhood, its tweens... and now its awkward coming-of-age (its just about ready to go off to college, I think, scrambling for the future). The last two years have shown something really unflattering slowly burbling to the surface of online-pagandom's personality... insecurity.

A is for "Authenticity" - the stuff that really, really, doesn't matter.

De-Fluffing Minerals: Quartz (Crystals).

The Second Most Common Mineral On Earth, 

And They Expect You To Pay How Much For It?

Quartz Crystal is a naturally occurring mineral with an impressive range of colors and inclusions. It is the second most common mineral on Earth, with the chemical formula SiO_{2 (Silicon Di-Oxide).}  On a chemical level Quartz is identical to glass, being that glass is made out of sand, and sand is what happens to quartz when the earth does it’s normal, brutal, routine on it. The only real difference is the fracture pattern, and some places have begun faking exceptional quartz "specimens" with cut, polished, glass.

The major categories are Macrocrystalline (Crystals) and Microcrystalline/Cryptocrystalline (Masses). Dozens upon dozens of other minerals are technically nothing more than Crypto Quartz with an inclusion or impurity composed of another mineral.

Macrocrystalline Quartz also comes in a bajillion formations (often called “configurations") which are said to subtly alter the “energy" of the crystal and may include other mineral types (as above) rendering a lot of data and types and far more waffling and wall-feeling on the matter. Right now, I have balanced on my knee a gigantic mofo of a book (hint: It’s purple) with 80 pages dedicated simply to “quartz" (macrocrystalline). Lots of waffling.

The Dead You Know / Diaspora of The Dead / Holy Supper.

Memento Mori

I remember my first experience of "death" - it was a relative, I don't know who. I did not understand why everyone was upset and sad. I did not understand why someone was in a box. The second experience was my great-grandmother passing. I still didn't understand what was going on, or why maw-maw as in a box. But I understood that Maw-maw wasn't in there, not really.

Then, like a lot of kids, I had a short-lived pet and I thought I almost had it, then. It was ugly and awful and why would a good god do a thing like this? And then came living on a farm, where animals dying was normal, and explained. But people? Still clueless on that front, and then a... boy I really had a heart-on for died, and I turned into an emo little turd - I took his death as a personal insult from a spiteful demiurge and a source of torment from the world around me to punish me for some unknown crime.

Then my grandmother died... and I still didn't understand it completely. I understood the mechanics, I understood the biology. I did not understand the psychology - I was a pretty newly minted witchling, and even though she wasn't in her flesh, her spirit was never absent, always visiting in dreams and leaving the scent of her perfume around. She was in 'heaven', her suffering was done - Why are we crying? She was kicking it with big J and the Angels.

But I felt utterly, utterly, guilty for not feeling really, really, really bad. Now, another fifteen or so years later, my last grandparent has left the world. And I get it now. It took me a lot longer than most to leave the swoon of childhood innocence and skillful, wonderful, constructive self-deception to simply mourn.

Offering Recipes 1 - “Wildlife Friendly ‘cakes’”

These cakes are low on “additives”, making them safer for wildlife, and low on salt (which can be omitted entirely) - additions and subtractions can be made. They are not a “dog biscuit” recipe, so you don’t have to worry about that hanging around in the back of your head, either.

Wet Ingredients:
1/2c Honey
2 Md/Lg Eggs.
1/2c Oil

Dry Ingredients:
1c Nuts (Sunflower, Pumpkin, Sterile Hempseed) - if you do not intend to eat them, feel free to substitute any wildlife friendly blend, including songbird seed blends. Dried fruits, BUT NOT RAISINS, may be used. Avoid raisins and chocolate as they are deadly to a lot of animals. 
1 1/2c Wheat flour (have yet to try the gluten-free flour on this one)
1/4tsp Salt.
Mix your wet first, add the dry. Combine.  If it's still too sloppy, add more flour, or more crunchy bits. 

Grease a baking sheet and zap ‘em at 350 for about ten minutes. Cool on racks. They will be soft, chewy, puffy, mountains of joy. If you use a human-and-wildlife-friendly blend of seeds you can chow down too. When made with flaxseed, pumpkin seeds and sunflower kernels these things are filling, and delicious.

Review: The Tarot Nova

Statistics.

What: The Tarot Nova.

Who: Dennis Fairchild and Julie Paschkis

Price: Retails between $5 and $20.

Size: Deck is a smallish, but standard, square-ish size.

Where: I purchased my deck at Barnes and Noble as a kit, here is an Amazon.com link.

Rating: ●●●●○

Upsides: The deck is a smaller, but standard, size. It's incredibly easy to handle and read. The quality is very high and the artwork, while simplistic, is not completely beyond comprehension.

Downsides: The complete Fortune Telling Kit is not without it's shortcomings, due to it's "novelty gift" nature.

Style: This is a standard "tarot deck" in the Waite/Smith Style. The entire deck is done in a marker-art technique of brightly colored, simplistic, scenes and characters on a black background. The back image is a similarly styled floral and celestial motif.The cards are titled outside of the image and there is a generous border all the way around.

The suits, and the Majors, all have colored corners Majors (Purple) are Cups (Blue), Swords (Yellow), Pentacles (Green) and Wands (Red). All cards are pipped with small, complimentary, scenes

Tricks and Treats: It's a pretty standard deck, but one that's appropriate even for children - either to learn to read on, or to be read for with. It is more inclined to respond like a friend would - "He's greedy" rather than "This gentleman may not, perhaps, be the best to get in bed with financially. Winkwinknudgenudge."

Verdict: This is a little, handy, simplistic, non-scary deck that reads very well.

Rating: ●●●●○

Review: The Dee/Baker Tarot

Statistics.

What: The Jonathan Dee Tarot Pack

Who: Jonathan Dee and Shirley Barker.

Price: Retails between $0.01 and $20.

Size: Deck is a standard size, cards are thin and matte finished.

Where: I purchased my deck at Barnes and Noble as a kit, here is an Amazon.com link and one for the Book.

Rating: ●●○○○

Upsides: The deck is a standard size, the cards are fairly sturdy resilient. They are packaged with a thin, hardcovered, book with various meanings and spreads. The layout is clean and simple, easily readable.

Downsides: Tuck boxes are not meant for the long-haul and this one practically disintegrated. The thinness of the cards means they bend very easily - though I think a well-worn deck is a sign of practice. The book is fairly pointless, and at one time it was wrapped in black paper and used as a shelf (on top of candle holders) on my altar. ;)

Style: This is a standard "tarot deck" in the Waite/Smith Style. The entire style of the deck appears to be a pallette knife-work painting. The back image is er... swords, or reeds or stalks on a block-printed-looking background. Faces are the same pallette knife styled art on a flat background of a bright color, depending upon the suit. The cards are titled outside of the image and there is a generous border all the way around.

The suits are Cups (White/Yellow/Blue), Swords (Red/Yellow/Purple), Pentacles (Orange/Green/Yellow) and Wands (White/Red/Orange). Minors are pipped on the number cards, with additions ranging from tiny portraits to pictoral scenes alongside them.

Tricks and Treats: It's a pretty standard deck.

Verdict: This deck has never read for me worth a damn, so I can't really deliver much of a verdict there. It's very, very, very inexpensive. The art style also annoys me.

Rating: ●●○○○

Review: The Hertz Vampire Tarot

Statistics.

What: The Vampire Tarot Deck w/Mini Book.

Who: Written and Illustrated by Nathalie Hertz.

Price: Retails between $5 (sale prices) and $20.

Size: Deck is slimmer, 2.5x5", round-cornered, and "Plasticoat" glossy.

Where: I purchased my deck at Borders, here is an Amazon.com link.

Rating: ●●●○○

Upsides: The deck is packaged in an attractive, semi-durable tuckbox with a small mini-book (stapled, not a folded sheet). The book is 35 pages, which is large for a deck-book. It is black and white. The layout is clean and simple, easily readable. The cards are nicely-sized for smallish hands and durable, which is nice, and the plasti-coat finish is slightly textured which helps with dealing and shuffling. 

Downsides: Tuck boxes are not meant for the long-haul and I assume this one will go the way of others in time... that is to say floppy, falling apart, missing the tuck-tabs...etc. The book is small, concise, and to the point. Almost too short, seeing as it's a deck-book. There are no frills and the spreads are minimal and standard. I really would like to see tarot authors create spreads specifically for certain decks. 

Style: This is a standard "tarot deck" in the Waite/Smith Style. The back image is a simple tribal-gothic swirl of black on red with a border.  Faces are a watercolor style, lineless, painted look with thin borders of black, on which the title and numerals are printed, lined with a thin blood red border directly around the art. The art itself is bordered on two sides with a gothic vine-and-leaf motif on gray, in a "Tombstone" style.
The Majors have a style that is gothic-tribal, with fairytale-like clothing and hairstyles. The "quality" of the art itself is a little lacking in anatomy and perspective, but it fits with the over-all impression of the deck and does not exactly detract from it. The suits are Cups (filled with blood), Swords (held by funerary monuments and statues), Pentacles (depicted as shields, discs, coins and flowers) and Wands (depicted as metal-tipped stakes). Minors are pipped on the number cards, with additions ranging from tiny portraits to pictoral scenes alongside them. Trumps (there are four for each suit) are bestial royalty holding the suit's token.

Tricks and Treats: Like all vampire-associated decks they are trickier to read. Some card meanings are reversed or augmented by the deck and readings can get especially nuanced when it comes to "Strength" in a Vampire tarot.

Verdict: The deck reads pleasantly, it's got a bit of the "Thoth" flair for the dramatic, throwing out whizz-bang cards on blase topics to keep the querent interested. It's very, very, very "Goth" - and that can be a hurdle for some people.

Rating: ●●●○○