Spirit of Place: Birmingham Cinderella Club

This post was inspired by the picture, which I saw in a book about Broad Street (although the boys are apparently in Sutton park). I had never heard of Cinderella Clubs so researched a bit, and to acknowledge my sources, this post is largely a rehash including quotes, of this one.
The Cinderella Club movement was an offshoot of the Labour church movement, and was likewise born in Manchester before spreading to other parts of the country.

The clubs seem to have been run quite independently.  According to theBirmingham Daily Post of 19 December 1890, a Cinderella Club was formed in that city after several citizens of the community had visited Manchester where they had seen one of the Clubs in action.  The Birmingham club was set up to "provide free supper and entertainment once a week to some hundreds of the poorest children in Birmingham." If the report in the paper is to be credited, there can be little doubt of its success. According to that source, the Birmingham club was providing for 350 children each week. Tickets were distributed at schools to children between the ages of 6 and 12 and "the greatest discrimination was exercised" to see that the tickets went only to the very poorest. On the 18th of December, over 1,000 children were fed and entertained at the Birmingham Town Hall

They were admitted in batches, a sufficient number at a time to fill the committee-room.  Each child was served with a metal basin of steaming hot soup, and a spoon with which to eat it.  After they had had their suppers they filed off into the Town Hall, receiving a bun each on the way, and then another detachment took their places.  Supper commenced at six o'clock, and by seven the whole of the children had been fed; but as the last detachment entered the room it was seen that a very large number of cold shivering little ones were at the door without tickets looking wistfully at the more fortunate ones.  That was a pitiable sight, but their hearts were soon cheered and their faced brightened, as they too were allowed to enter, for there was plenty of soup left.

Tarot: stalked by the 8 of Swords

One of these days I will do a whole post about the gorgeous Marseille tarot by Jean Noblet. I am just getting to know mine, which I am doing by shuffling and letting it talk to me.
This week has been an absolutely ridiculous week at work and my Noblet tarot had responded by throwing the 8 of Swords at me. I think of this as the drama queen card, and I think the deck is reflecting my drama queen personality back at me.
I am most familiar with the depiction in the RWS tarot, where the woman is outside the fantasy Jerusalem of that deck, trapped in a soggy nightmare of her own making. Even understood in my favourite French way of reading tarot - where the Major of the same number is manifested in the suit's domain - you get the same thing. The major here is Justice, so the pricks of fortune are what you deserve. This way of reading also works with Waite's transposition of VIII and XI because he gives us Strength in the 8 position.
So the message is the unsubtle one that I must sit on my drama queen tendencies because they will cause me the problems I deserve.
Now let me just throw myself on the floor and scream one more time...

Conflicted about Peace

Source

Today I passed a Quaker meeting house which was displaying the poster which illustrates this post. As usual this small thing set the Hound thinking - perhaps because of the witchly concept of Will in the poster - and it has left me deeply conflicted. In fact I find myself in almost complete disagreement with everything in the poster!
I have a real problem with the concept of peace anyway, if it is the absence of conflict. Readers of this blog will be almost certain to remember the X-Files episode in which a man discovers a genie. She grants Mulder three wishes and the silly man first wishes for world peace. There is a dead silence, and of course he is the only person in the world. To me this sounds like a dream, but of course some people still wouldn't experience peace, even alone. In those circumstances peace would be contingent on the person having really good self esteem and no hidden psychological nasties. Ultimately Mulder realises you can't force people to be good and his final wish is for the genie to be free.
I have been forced to conclude that the absence of conflict is unnatural, and thus the kind of thing people who aren't witches hold up as an ideal. In nature there is a continual ebb and flow of everything, maintaining homeostasis. There is also a process of selection, deciding what will survive. I have a feeling the people who look after number one and stab others in the back are the ones who are more likely to survive! And do very well for themselves.
And yet... I don't want them to. I am always on about some turd or other here, and the reality is that we live in a violent world. I would like there to be peace but I really don't think peace is what I've incarnated for this time.
Here I am actually at the heart of the witch figure as I understand it. We are like mirrors. We give people opportunities to correct their own stuff (history, actions, karma, debt, perceive it as you will). They see themselves reflected in us and don't like it, which is why witches tend to get burned. I see this also as part of the action of homeostasis, and it doesn't really have a long-term goal as it is happening.
I suppose the longer-term goal could be called peace, but unfortunately the world is full of people who lack things like living skills, emotional competence or even consciences. They won't pay attention to a poster about peace, and unfortunately it's them the witch has to move towards peace. It's a hard life being a witch.

Tarot: the Shading on Pam's Deck

One of my favourite thing ever is the comic-book shading of the early editions of the RWS tarot, seen here on the figure in The Star.
Of course my grasshopper mind makes a connection with something else. I was going to say that the comic book image makes a connection between the cards and the individual squares of cartoons, only with the cards you can rearrange them and change the story. Or be rearranged by them. As you will.

The Star is a card I find it difficult to connect with. I think it's the breasts. But this comic-book connection has also made me think of the Tintin adventure, L'Étoile Mystérieuse, about the search for a meteorite which has fallen to earth. It has the exact same surreal feeling of the tarot card, and the sensation that virtually anything can happen. Even a gift falling out of the sky.
The other thing in the Tintin book is the heat. Since I aim to be entertaining on this blog as well as educational I attach a fun game in which Tintin seems to have lost all his clothes. You can dress him again if you wish 😏

Guest Post: a Fictional Tarot Reading

I usually have a guest post when viewing figures for the blog round some significant number. Obviously 107,000 is significant and signifies that 105,000 and 100,000 passed without me noticing. The guest post this time is by Nancy Spain who was a trouser-wearing character if ever there was one, and comes from her novel Cinderella Goes to the Morgue (Thriller Book Club, London, pp. 189-91). Spain's characters Miriam Birdseye and Nathasha duVivien have got mixed up in a pantomime and in a murder investigation involving clothing coupons under wartime rationing. I like this as an illustration of the way describing the cards brings out their meaning. Spain had obviously come across a Rider-Waite-Smith deck.

There was no music in 148a Leazes Gardens. Marilyn let herself in and groped,ccursing, for the electric light switch. The dark hall sprang into relief about her as she went ahead, past various dank waterproofs and hats that made strange shapes in the shadows. She came to the kitchen door and stood outlined against it. Here everything was sweetness and light.
The parrot cage was shrouded in green baize. Tony Gresham and Mrs Furbinger sat on either side of the kitchen table, which this evening wore its red frieze cloth. They were laying out the Major and Minor Arcana with a set of very old German tarot cards. Cups, swords, pentacles and wands were littered in terrifying profusion about the table. As Marylyn and Sergeant Robinson stood at the top of the steps and looked down on their bent heads, one neat and grey and grasped in curls, the other fair and vulnerable, Mrs Furbinger picked up the nine of swords with a little cry of horror. It showed a woman in bed weeping. Nine drawn swords dominated the darkness behind her.
"There," she said, "Tony. Not that I think it has anything to do with your legacy from Mister Banjo. But I knew I done wrong sewing up them clothing coupons for your poor dear mother in that old costoom. I shan't have a moment's peace till I tell the Sergeant all about it."
There was a very faint smell of kippers. It was easy to guess what Tony had had for supper.
"But look, Mrs Furbinger," he was saying earnestly. "Here is the hierophant in the great Arcana."
"That signifies the Pope," said Mrs Furbinger. "That denotes that all will be accomplished as be wished for the querent for the greatest good."
"What is this frightfully upsetting gentleman standing in this box with all that armour?"
The old-fashioned stove twinkled with black-lead. The curtains were drawn closely, excluding the rest of the world.
"That is the chariot of victories with urim and thumim like, on both shoulders and all the earth under him. But look at this three of swords..."
She gave a long sigh, compounded of bronchitis and apprehension. The kettle on the hob also puffed and wheezed and blew out its little plume of steam.
"I think all the swords are terrifying," said Tony and covered his eyes with his hand. I don't know which frightens me most. That one with the man face down, I think, transfixed with swords on the seashore..."
The cards made sinister shapes on the warm red cloth in the friendly room. They represented a future that was fearful and menacing. It was dangerous, like madness. In this kitchen everything was safe.
"You'll get over it in time," said Mrs Furbinger comfortably. "I was just like you over the tarot cards at the start. Particularly the three of pentacles with them beggars in the snow and that stained glass window. Fair gave me the creeps, I can tell you. But I'm altogether over it now..."
And she dealt them out in three packs face downwards, muttering, "To your house, to your heart, what's bound to be."

The tarot reading is never concluded.

Justice

I am finally writing about something which is a bit of a personal problem with me: I have a real issue with the concept of justice.
I think the reason for this is that as it is often understood, justice is seen as coming from outside oneself. Justice is seen to be decided by official arbiters and is closely related to another personal bugbear, which is the idea of rights.
I am not into these concepts for the simple reason that they appeal to external authorities. I believe myself to be a more than adequate agent to decide how I should behave towards others and what is right and wrong. You may say that laws are needed because some people aren't bothered how they behave. Well, they're not going to be bothered by breaking a law either, are they? I don't have an answer to this problem I've created, it's basically to make the point that those who know how to behave don't need laws, in my humble opinion.
There is another problem with justice, which is the blindness of justice, the idea also represented by scales or feathers. The idea that justice takes a full account and metes out what we deserve. There is the problem with this that as we act in various situations we can never truly see everything involved and so can only act on our understanding.
The idea of deserving is also tricky. There is a human tendency to think that we should be treated as we deserve, rather than arbitrarily, which is perceived as being unjust.
Don't get me wrong, if, say, my employers set up policies then ignore them to my disadvantage, I will hold them to them, because that is the contract. But on the whole I don't see things being done with justice in nature. Disasters just...happen, and it is only religious nuts who claim they are caused by gays (we,re powerful, see).
The problem of blame and entitlement is also found in the modern discourse of traditionally disadvantaged groups, which if repeated enough becomes so fixed they remain oppressed. We become what we think.
The idea of justice is also bound up in self image. Some people will always be genuinely happy in their skin. Some people are unhappy and blame themselves, so either end up in a well of misery or change what they do.
Some other people are unhappy and are convinced it's someone else's fault. They either get a chip on their shoulder and become resentful of their perceived oppressor, or they try to level it out by bringing the oppressor down to get a bit of what they've got.
Some other people (and they're really scary) think every human emotion and action is fake and behave accordingly.
I know this may seem to be far from justice, but the purpose of my post is really to express my own dissatisfaction and not to describe a whole alternative social system. The illustration of the Justice card has a purpose, to point out that there is a tradition that the rope around the neck of Justice is the same rope suspending the Hanged Man. Justice is a dangerous thing...

'You attract idiots at their most idiotic,' a friend said the other day. Of course she's right.
It must be something to do with my... I suppose I would have to call it karma, because I don't have another word. The magical actions we undertake literally attract all sorts of other actions and entities, although I'm still not into banishing. I would rather be forced to deal with what my actions attract, since that is usually a learning experience for me. Among the things I have learned are:
1. Some people will never be happy, not even, especially not, when they get exactly what they think they want.
2. Some people just have to be left to make the same mistakes over and over again, because they will never learn from them.
3. Some people are incredibly attached to what they will tell you is the source of their misery, whether a bad relationship or one of the classical sources of oppression like gender or race. The source of their oppression is so much part of their identity they will never be able to cope without it.
4. Some people fear change above all fears. Attentive readers of Uncle Al will recall that this was his definition of 'black' magic.
The opposite approach for the magical practitioner welcomes change, always seeks to examine self as part of a full and frank inventory and recognises that different ' stuff is going to come up as part of our work. Sometimes we end up mediating this to other people. Guess that's why witches get burned, they can't face their own karmic debt.
Hey ho.

Sovereignty

I have been thinking further about the difference of opinion which I talked about in my last post. I'm quite gratified, actually, that I put the sovereignty of the individual at the centre. There was a time when I wouldn't have prioritised the witchly perception that I won't just stand for things as they are, but the change has to happen in me first. The strength of my will makes the change then happen on all planes.
This is a magical turning point for me, seeing how magic my perception actually is 😃

Surprise!

I surprised myself this week by having an altercation with my boss. Now you may say, Don't be ridiculous, Hound, you could start an argument in a phone box. And of course you're right - what surprised me was the position I took, so this post should probably be read in the context of the last one.
I surprised myself by saying that if someone keeps making the same mistake in life, sooner or later they have to come to the conclusion that since they are the common denominator in this, they must put some consideration towards what they are doing themselves to create the problem, and how they can change.
The specific case was about abused women in relationships, and my boss surprised me by having none of it. She told me that the abuse is never the woman's fault, and I agreed. She told me the man needs to take responsibility for the abuse, and I agreed with her. She told me that if you have the sort of mindset where being abused becomes normal, you can't see an alternative, and I agreed with her. I said that in those circumstances the problem is the acceptance of the problem and that is what needs to change first.
She actually horrified me, because it felt like she was allowing no power to the woman. To me the power would be seeing there is a problem, apportioning blame, and then taking the power by doing whatever you have to do next.
Of course I get that it so difficult to do this. I also fully understand the repercussions (a good deal of the fracture in my relationship with my mother is because she refused to believe me about a difficult thing when I was much younger). I suppose what I'm saying is the witchly thing that while bad things happening to you may be the complete fault of another, part of moving on is a frank inventory of how it happened, including how you have yourself allowed the situation to develop. For example I have reflected on what I failed to do when I was in the hellish situation of being managed by Zippy. Of course the irony is that then the universe doesn't present you with the same situation.
So wife beaters are scum and deserve karma. I could tell you the words of a little invocation I say to the goddess in the evening, because it will make my position on wife batterers, queer bashers and paedophiles clear. The thing here is that a victim should not only be a victim. Getting power involves introspection because it you accept power you have to acknowledge when you have failed to exercise power and not been sovereign over your person and life.
The question is 'Will this give me power or take it away?'

Dead Wife Batterers Don't Reoffend.

I'm afraid I don't have his details but if any witches reading this can join in stopping a real c*nt in his tracks the Hound would be very grateful.

A Rare Political Post

You will rarely or never catch me talking about politics in its most restricted sense: the Hound is far too independent to align with any party or view. There is however one view current which is so obviously wrong and economically suicidal that I must comment on how pleased I was today to see a rally against it.
If you want a soundtrack just put the words 'We're not going to Brexit' to the tune below.

A Big Present

Despite having devoted years to developing my curmudgeonly persona, the two abilities I have which never fail to surprise me are my remarkable healing ability and the way I have with animals.
I genuinely don't know how I do healing, and no I can't do warts. What I do is healing rather than curing, dealing with dis-ease rather than disease, and I'm particularly good at pain. The fluffies will have a fit but I can take it and put it somewhere else, in a worthy recipient. I see this as a major witchly work, and someone always comes to my attention who needs a karmic backlash.
The other day I had the most arthritis pain I've ever had and was hobbling along when some fool cannoned straight into me and called me a prick.
So I gave it to him. All of it. I genuinely don't know how I do it but five minutes later I was fine.
And animals similarly, I don't know how I do it. With dogs it's self explanatory, the Goddess thinks it's hilarious the way a status dog with a bit of rough trade holding its lead, rolls over when it sees me!
Other animals too, and this post is illustrated with a new friend who comes to the witch for a chat before going back to savaging some other bird.
Funny thing, being a witch. And magic is definitely better than sex 🙃

Tarot with Personality made Simple

I have two new tarot decks in my possession. I will probably right about the Marseille tarot I have bought at some point, but will not presume to review the Thoth tarot because it would be like saying an iceberg was the wrong shape.
I am finding the way I am reading is changing, and becoming both more complicated and more simple at the same time. The complication is come from the fact that I have pirated a system of counting from the monumental reading pattern devised by the golden dawn, called the opening of the key. The counting method can easily be found online, that is basically a way of selecting further cards for a reading based on the last one you picked. If you count from a significator through the whole deck you tend to end up with around 12 cards for a reading, and I'm finding that I prefer to read more cards now, without fixed positions. Sometimes I read them as if in a progression, but generally just let them speak to me in the way that seems right at the time.
The other more simple way simply to tell the deck to talk to me and then basically have a chat with it. This method brings out the personality of a tarot deck perfectly. Shows its origins in Taverns and gambling, as an actual deck for playing games, in the overly Frank, unsubtle and sometimes bawdy answers it gives. The Thoth deck never lets you forget for a moment that it was designed by the master Therion. It is both learned and frankly rude! It is a deck which would never let the reader get away with self deception and would soon call you out on any affectation.
Speaking of affectation, I have been entertaining myself with videos of f**** Cradock. I am liking them even better now that I have discovered that this speech app stars out her name!

What Witchcraft Values Would Look Like

My last post was heavily geared towards pointing out the hypocrisy of the people we call Christians. They themselves tend to use the classic derailment techniques of pointing out that the church is for Sinners and so on. This is of course nonsense. On no greater authority than my own opinion I am going to express the view that it is reasonable to expect people to be in fact what they claim to be.
I thought it was in their holy scriptures but I find it is actually in the first Latin Christian writer, Tertullian, that we find the classic picture of the pagans of the time commenting on how the Christians love each other. Do the Christians love each other (or anyone else)? Do they f*ck.
This has caused me to reflect on how we would know that the principles of Witchcraft are embodied in a community, or even an individual.
I don't think for an instant that it would be a very harmonious community, since the sort of people who are drawn to witchcraft are usually as willing to collaborate with anyone else as a bear with a sore paw.
It would be made further quarrelsome by the fact that witches tends to be quite assertive. Oh alright since you ask we are usually downright rude.
I think the fact of the assertiveness and possibly rudeness is one of the things which would indicate that the community embodies the Spirit of Witchcraft.
Another think would probably be a Frank attitude to sex. Now you must understand that I am not talking about the strange creepy men who attend pagan festivals. I am talking about an environment in which people are truly free to be sexually themselves without any fear of intimidation or force. This is really the exact opposite of a christian Community.
Nor would the members of a community which embodies the values of Witchcraft work out their will in isolation from each other, since a real magical community would recognise the interdependence of all things. If my perceived will clashes with yours, then one of us is wrong. Of course it's most likely to be you, but you might just have to learn that the hard way.
That would be another hallmark of the witchcraft community, that people would actively expect to receive the consequences of their actions    and not try to avoid them.
I would expect the members of the community to call out somebody who is a creep or a charlatan or harasses people... In fact in the pagan community as it is, the informal gatherings that we have to often involves bitching about each other and we will usually no other groups reputation very well.
This is not actually a blueprint for what a witchcraft community should look like of course, since I myself would rather have my fingernails pulled out then join one, it is just a few reflections prompted by my last post.
You may wonder the connection between the illustration and these few thoughts. Natural body hair, that is the connection. And nipples of course. But you knew that.

Turds: The World Meeting of Families

The Catholic Church is holding its World Meeting of Turds in Ireland. Actually it may be over now, but I had to comment.

My Hero Miss Cleo

Ok, let's get the bad press out of the way first. If you look up this doyenne of 1990s US phone psychic lines you invariably find her name (or one of her many pseudonyms) attached to the word fraud.
People don't get that a high proportion of magic is theatre, creating the right environment for your subconscious to make the change. You might feel it necessary to dress u in turbans or speak patois, for example. It's unreal. That's the point.
But I've suspected for some time that Miss Cleo was the real deal. Witches recognise each other for one thing, and when she tells people suffering with psychic gunk to clean the house, I just knew she was real. That's some ancient magic right there, and you find that in the US and other places in the African diaspora, because slaves took their magic with them.
Of course as always the Hound's nose is not deceived:

And despite being dubbed clairvoyant, Harris also said she never claimed to be one, and instead studied voodoo under a Haitian mambo for 30 years.

“So they refer to me as psychic – because the word voodoo scares just about everybody. So they told me, ‘No, no, no, we can’t use that word; we’re going to call you a psychic.’ I said, ‘But I’m not a psychic!’” she told Vice.

“I’m more a shaman, an elder in a community who has visions and gives direction to people in their village. My clients and my students are my village. I take care of this community. If you sit down at my table, you have to take away a lesson and not just learn what is going to happen tomorrow. I also perform weddings – both gay and straight marriages – and house cleansings and blessings,” she said in an interview with Advocate magazine.

The link above should take you to an interview about her coming out as lesbian. I recognise a magical person when I see one, after all I'm a fraud myself. You didn't really think I was a dog, did you?

Now I'm Being Stalked by the Queen of Cups

Last month I posted that I was being stalked by the four of Wands. With some relief that I can write that that card seems to have stopped stalking me for the present, I am being stalked by the queen of cups.
This is a queen with whom I have never felt a great affinity, always a sure sign that a card represents a shadow side of one's personality (posh, eh?). And so to start at the beginning, what we see is a woman sitting on a stone throne on a beach. The throne is highly and very campily carved with images of cherubs. The solidity of the throne is in contrast to a number of stones on the beach, and naturally also some sand. The waves of the sea, almost to the Queen's feet and I have always thought of her as representing a rock of stability in a changeable world. Not forgetting that cups represents the realm of emotion, she would be the sort of person who would represent affection carried on over many years despite ups and downs in a relationship. The sort of person you know you can rely on and know where you will stand with them.
Because this is a card that I don't gel with very well, I naturally had some difficulty applying this to my own situation, so I pulled some more cards, asking the Queen what it was she had to say to me.
I got the three of Wands and the four of Wands. The whole tarot deck is now screaming at me to get the message of the four of Wands. A water card is there for telling me to stick with the fiery message of the four of Wands to stand by my own will hadn't carry on to the end, at which point I will get a party. I have a feeling there's going to be a lot of steam around, but otherwise business as usual in my life.

How Google Sees Me Revisited

Not for the first time I have been amusing myself by doing a Google image search using a picture of myself and seeing what Google thinks I look like. Using a bare-chested picture of course results in a post with a high nipple count. Any excuse... While it is not the picture I used you can of course check out what my manly chest actually looks like in my profile pic.

https://www.mma-core.com/photos/Jonah_Carrion_Profile_Photo_January_21_2017/136513

While this man's body shape is quite like mine, and it's gratifying that I could look like an MMA artist, Google seems determined to give me a hairy chest I haven't got!

https://www.pof.com/viewprofile.aspx?profile_id=73488539

I can see what's happened here, it's the ink that's done it.

http://valet.ru/user/93883546/

No, not near. I wasn't wearing a hat, these guys have no ink and again there's the chest hair thing.

http://valet.ru/user/81402015/

That's quite some rug you've got going on there. But you don't look like me!

https://twitter.com/thatniggatonne

Just promise not to confuse us if you bump into us in the street.

https://plus.google.com/114037299976597100023

Still more chest hair than I'll ever have.

http://valet.ru/user/145079531/

Ink, yes, but again I didn't have a hat on and Google wants me to be Russian!

https://www.corrieresalentino.it/2013/12/antonio-santoro-ha-litalia-in-pugno-el-dynamita-e-il-nuovo-sfidante-al-titolo-nazionale-dei-superleggeri/

Fond dream...

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSywM5c8Qad63pAn0MIT4Ag

I wish, but again I just can't compete.
Obviously Google is never going to see me as I am lol.

You Can Rely on Birmingham People

...to do the right thing. This weekend it's been Summer in Southside, which reminds me of the series of YouTube videos in which kids meet all sorts of people. In reality, if you stand on a Birmingham street for an afternoon you'll meet all they meet and more.

I'm Being Stalked by the 4 of Wands

I am being stalked by the four of Wands - of course it isn't literally hanging out outside my house waiting for me and making phone calls in which it only heavily breathes without speaking - this is the jargon for a card which keeps reappearing in readings in a particular time.
Normally it wouldn't really be my sort of card, at least as far as it looks in the rider Waite deck. I'm obviously not really a party sort of person! This is that's all probably an example a card in which Pam's illustration may not perfectly match the meaning, and I am beginning to see why the Marseille fanatics I so critical of this deck.
One of these days I am going to memorize the titles given to the cards by the Golden Dawn if it kills me, and

I see that they called this card the Lord of Perfected Work. So it looks as if the party depicted in the card is actually a party celebrating something finished or brought completion in some way.
Another way of understanding tarot cards is a comparison between different decks, and strangely pam perfectly depicts Etteilla's meaning for this card rather than that of the golden dawn: Upright or reversed, prosperity and society are pretty much what she is describing. Of course it is possible that she is intending to unite the two meanings, depicting a celebration of something completed, but unless you know the Golden Dawn's title for this card you would not be able to get it from the illustration, and it is strange that for a deck which supposedly draws so much on the Golden Dawn tradition it's meaning is not that close.
So what have I completed? My idiot colleague at work has left, so that's good, but in typical Hound Style it has revealed a number of other things which have never been dealt with by management and which reinforce my impression that for that and a few other reasons it is time to move on. I am in fact applying for other jobs as I have written, and perhaps the Work completed title signifies that it it's time to move on rather than celebrate. This is also not the end of the work really, card is only number three of the suit so it isn't really the end but maybe perhaps a comma.
Yet another way of understanding the cards is one which is genuinely traditional and certainly predates the golden dawn, also I am not completely sure whether it would also predate Etteilla also it is certainly French. I have written about it before here and it is a way of understanding the minor cards as manifestations of the relevance major card in their suit. So this card for example manifests the energy of the emperor (order, stability, organisation) in the areas of Life detected in Wands (actions, decisions, creativity). It is interesting that this way of understanding gives a much more subtle interpretation to the card, inviting planning, clear thinking, and decisive actions. This interpretation would also be supported by the astrological corresponces in which the Emperor, and the 2, 3, and 4 of Wands are all assigned to Aries. Which is very me, because I am an Aries!
Ok, I get the message. Now will you stop stalking me please?

Spirit of Place: Digbeth Art Gallery Revisited

I girded my loins for an explore today. The art you see in this post is further out than the art I've posted here before, beyond the Custard Factory. This is a completely personal and idiosyncratic choice, simply because nothing really caught my eye closer to the City Centre. The pictures are completely unedited and of course this is to allow a sense of placement and not the result of laziness. My favorite is the one with Chinese script.

Finally a scene which amused me. I hope *that* isn't how they get their spares!

The Trick to Reading Etteilla tarot

I am sure I have written here before about the Etteilla tarot decks and the difficulty which the tarot community have in Reading them. This difficulty is rather ironic because these tarots represent much more what fortune telling was like with tarot cards before the golden dawn got hold of it.
Personally I love these decks and own the last deck produced of this type, which is marketed under the title of the Book of Thoth. Of course we must remember that the fallacy that tarot cards were invented by Egyptians was brand new at this time and allow a certain poetic licence in these cards production! I love this deck also I must confess that for most of its time with me sat in my wardrobe because I have unfortunately bought into the popular idea that this deck is difficult to read. And indeed it is, if you are only used to tarot decks of other traditions and don't the little trick I am going to reveal here. That's right, yet another huge chocolate secret blown open to the public on this blog!
It's taken me forever to find out the secret. What I had already noticed of course was that you cannot simply read these cards the way you would any other tarot deck. I personally have to read them differently anyway because reversals are built into the system with this deck. It is a pitch deck and so you cannot just look at the pictures and define that way the way you often cam nowadays. The deck does have key words on each card. I know that some people think that these are unhelpful, and frankly these people will be gratified rather difficult nature of the keywords on the cards. If you are not able to understand French you're starting on the wrong foot anyway! If nothing else this deck is definitely one which requires work to understand, like all good magical and divinatory Systems.
So anyway we come to the secret, and I'm afraid I can't tell you where I got it from, as usual I read it on the internet and only realised it's truth afterwards when I had clicked away from the site.
The secret to raising this deck is this: Layout a good number of cards, say 5 by 3, and then read them in the wrong direction. No seriously. If you try to read the layouts from left to right you will just get gobbledygook, if you read it from right to left then what the cards have to say suddenly becomes stunningly clear. That cunning old Fox, designing a tarot deck which has to be read the wrong way round!
Another trick is to read the cards in threes, and this seems to be quite a common method of understanding this deck. Personally I'm finding I only do that when it feels right. Otherwise I'm a treat the layout as moving from the past to the Future, or whatever feels right at the time. Hey I'm a witch, you can't expect me to stick to rules to rigidly!

My Daughters Again

Regular readers will remember that I have written about my Magical daughter's here. I sometimes use them as an example of how not to do magic, I created them as an experiment one evening. I know I have written about the magic of servitors here before, and personally I consider it one of the easier and most useful magics. You just create a being to do something you want doing and it's like having staff.
My daughters, however, are A Rather different kettle of fish from some of the Magical servants that you read about in the literature. For a start they seem to have taken on a life of their own and frankly spent their days going around creating absolute havoc for anyone I take a dislike to.
This week I had a follow-up appointment at the rheumatology clinic, my last contact with the nurses there having been to ask for a complaint form because their attitude is terrible. The night before I could feel my daughter's around. This may seem bizarre but I just know when they are there, have minimal control over it except to know that they will always turn up when someone has upset the family, and their presence is usually proved by trail of destruction and Chaos.
This week was no exception. A huge sinkhole opened up in the road that we walked along to work. Then when we got to work one of my colleagues was doing her absolute best to drive the one colleague who I particularly don't like, but is about to leave, into a nervous breakdown.
One thing I will say for my daughter's is that they are very good at developing new skills and this week had definitely been working on there I T skills. My least favourite colleague had ongoing i t problems all day as being driven up the wall by another colleague who will definitely be staying!
Then I went to my appointment. I saw the consultant who put me on the treatment I wanted to be on, but when she asked me if there was anything else, I told her that I wanted to be followed up elsewhere. When she asked me why, I simply had to tell her that it was because the nurses attitude stinks! She looked at me horrified and almost demanded to know problem was with the nurses so I gave her a blow by blow account of all the rude things they have said to me. She invited me to have a seat in the waiting room for a few minutes while she went to talk to them. Naturally I don't know what she said, but I do know that when I went to see them to be weighed they both had faces like slapped asses!
True to form, they were also having IT problems, couldn't even get onto any of their systems and certainly couldn't print me a prescription. So one of them hand wrote a prescription me excruciating detail about the side effects while I smiled at her sweetly. Through gritted teeth she encouraged me to use the nurse helpline if I needed to and I left to take the prescription to the pharmacy next door.
Will come as no surprise that when I got to the pharmacy the pharmacist would not dispense it because they do prescribed a medication that didn't exist has also failed to put any details about me on the prescription! So back I went, and I did convey the pharmacists message that in future they should not spill tea on their prescription pad.
All in all my daughters and I had a very successful day!

Tarot: other animals

I realised after publishing my last post, about the horses in the tarot deck, that I had completely missed one, namely the horse in The Sun card. I have always thought the horse looks slightly embarrassed at carrying the naked child, and given the right heart situation it may even be thinking how ridiculous the amount of drama that is going on is.

I can only conclude that I wasn't concentrating when I wrote that post, because I also manage to miss out one of the more obvious horses on The smith deck, namely the horse which appears on the death card. My excuse for this is that when I think of the death card I don't actually think of that card I think of the Marseille card which of course doesn't show a horse at all. Personally I much prefer the picture of the skeleton treading on parts of dismembered bodies!

But the RWS deck is not short of other animals. One of the ways they often appear is in the carving of the characters Thrones, and usually depicted some characteristic of the character seated on the throne or the personality aspect it depicts. For example the king of Swords has airy butterflies on the back of his throne. The bald-headed emperor on the other hand has rams on his throne, which not only depict logical aspects of his personality but also his character.
The two cards which represents the mid point and end of the journey before beginning a new journey, the wheel of Fortune and the world, both depict animals in their corners which are variously interpreted.

Otherwise animals in the tarot can be interpreted different ways. The dog, for example, often refers to humans faithful companion, and this is very much how the dogs can be interpreted in the Fool and in the ten of pentacles. That said, the dog in the fall is variously interpreted. In some decks the dog is exposing the Fool's bottom and genitals. This is part of the tradition of The Fool being an actual object of shame, and one old deck (I have forgotten which) shows two little boys actually playing with the man's genitals. I'm not making this up! So in One Sense the dog, far from being a faithful companion is a source of embarrassment and humiliation. The other hand I have always thought that he made the warning the walking over the precipice. In the moon card the dog once again plays a different role of howling at the moon, and so can represent a natural source of warning of that which is strange or unknown.

What is represented by The Animals in the tarot cards is sometimes fairly obvious, such as the lion in the strength card. Some of the other animals are not as easily interpreted and in fact maybe more hidden. The Bird ( I'm not sure what sort it is) hillside the woman in the nine of pentacles is very obvious. I smiled at her feet is not so obvious, and neither is the lizard at the feet of the King of Wands. Similarly the queen of Wands's cat is well known, but it can take people a long time to see the rabbits on the queen of pentacles card.
The animals on the tarot cards can represent personality aspects, they can represent warnings, and in fact all the things that animals can represent the World of symbolism and mythology.

Incidentally if this post reads strangely it is because I am writing it free app for voice recognition. My employers have cut up for Dragon software, and in fact are so impressed with if they're thinking of getting it for everyone in the office. This is of course a free version, and has the advantage that in future I can accept no responsibility for the content of anything I right here!
The final picture is one from the filming of akenfield, which I touched on in the recent posts about the imagined country. I neglected to comment in my original post that the camera man looks as if he had a lovely hairy back, and I have since found a picture of him from the front which shows that the front is at least as hairy. This picture has nothing to do with tarot and it's appearance here is purely gratuitous.

Tarot: The Horse

In my recent post about the Magician I wrote about a strange parallel to him in John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever. Now I have found another parallel and so am uncharacteristically surrounded by a veritable stable of horses, since horses aren't exactly lacking in the tarot deck.

I hadn't thought of all the horses having thoughts and opinions up till now. In my humble opinion the Knight of Wands horse has exactly the same expression as Princess Diana in her famous early-nineties interview.

The Knight of Swords' horse is far less coy and is almost the personification (or rather horsification) of the get-to-it energy of the Knights. I hadn't thought about it till today but the horse does the actual work in each of the Knight cards, directed by the knight, who is relatively inactive in comparison.

On the other hand both the Knight and the horse are at rest in the Pentacles Knight, which may go with the suit's heavy, earthy nature. It is however a contemplative rest while the Knight has a good look at his Pentacle. I wish I knew more about horses because I may then be able to make something of the colour.

I have a soft spot for the Knight of Cups's horse, which looks to me like it would be a gentle soul, but then you would be if you have to carry a man carrying a chalice full of water! In real life I'm frightened of horses, cows and other farm animals.

But the comparison which made me start this post was this one. It is unfortunate that the picture was taken in the Queen's stables, because I've always attributed some very sarcastic thoughts to the horse in the 6 of Wands!

In Marseille-style decks the Chariot is drawn by horses rather than the sphinxes in the RWS-influenced decks, and in the Jodorowsky deck I do love the way the horse on the right is winking!
Oh buggrit I've trodden in something...