Day 4

Today's card of the day is The Hanged Man. On the Tree of Life, The Hanged Man follows the path between Geburah and Hod, and it corresponds to the Hebrew letter Mem, which means water. That means despite the often-disruptive Mars energy of Geburah and the intellectual cast of Hod, it's an emotional placement, one that drives us deep into our consciousness.

The Hanged Man is a card of sacrifice. Usually it implies self-sacrifice, or some sort of suspension of movement, but it's also a highly introspective card. With The Hanged Man, you're acutely aware that you're being forced to make a sacrifice, and the lack of forward movement brings with it a tremendous amount of introspection. There's a lot of self-reflection on one's plight that comes with this card, and in the process, it can bring with it a reversal of all previous knowledge. The Tower shatters the foundation of our beliefs, while The Hanged Man keeps us so deep in the waters of consciousness that we have a lot of time to think about exactly how we got to where we are right now, and through our own humbling discoveries, we realize the error of our ways.

It looks like I'll be in for a doozy of a New Year's Eve.

Card of the Day, Day 3

I woke up with a headache, so today's description might be shorter than usual.

Using the Thoth deck, I drew the 2 of Disks. Qabalistically, the twos correspond to Chokmah, the first manifestation from the divine, but it isn't yet structured (that comes with the 3s in Binah). The earth element at Chokmah manifests in fluctuating outer circumstances. The card is thought of as harmony of change, and the use of the Yin-Yang symbol in the card is evocative of that, but also included is the image of the snake eating its tail, hinting at the difficulty inherent in perpetual reversal.

From a divinatory standpoint, the flux manifests as being dissatisfied with any one thing. There's constant change and wandering. It can be going from job to job or person to person, but generally there's a vague sense of dissatisfaction, perhaps even melancholy, where any time a person settles into their life, they become discontent and go in search of greener pastures. It can also refer to a situation where there's a mixture of gain and loss.

Card of the Day, Day 2

Today's card of the day is the Knight of Swords.

The Knight of Swords rules from the 21st degree of Taurus to the 20th degree of Gemini.  Lon Milo Duquette estimates this to be roughly from May 11th to June 10th. He is the fiery part of air, and rests at the Qabalistic point, Chokmah.

The Knight of Swords is a very active, aggressive character. He conveys the image of charging or attack in his actions and attitude. He moves quickly, and can be skilled in the pursuit of whatever has grabbed his attention, but the Knight of Swords is primarily air, which is mental and conscious. That means the movement implied is intellectual in some way, rather than emotional or practical. That he's fueled by fire adds to the urgency of his actions.

The combination of the mental quality of air and the energetic quality of fire make him good at initiating activities that interest him, but bring with it a lack of determination and focus. He can plunge full throttle but lack any clear decisiveness, or even, in the eyes of others, any intention. He is the aggressiveness of the mind unleashed and then distracted, deterred or discouraged, which make all of his efforts futile.

Writing this, it dawns on me that among the court cards in the sword suit, the male court cards are sharp-minded but ungrounded, while the female ones are much more a force to be reckoned with. I suspect that's due at least in part to the included element. The Knight of Swords, as I mentioned, is fiery air while the Prince of Swords is the airy part of air. By contrast, the Queen of Swords is the watery part of air and the Princess of Swords is the earthy part of air. It's almost as if the intellect needs to either become tempered with emotion or practicality to reach the fullest expression of its potential.

That said, while many do believe that the court cards represent the gender of the person they refer to, I find them to be more indicative of someone's astrological placement, either their Sun or their ascendant. In that sense, while technically male, the Knight of Swords could refer to either a man or a woman but expresses qualities we, as a society, tend to consider masculine.

Card of the Day: Day 1

I got the idea to incorporate a card of the day into my "morning" meditations (I usually don't get to bed until 6 AM or later, so my morning tends to be in the late afternoon) to write about in my blog. Today's card was the Princess of Wands. I usually use either the Hermetic or the Thoth, but both were upstairs, so I drew from The Golden Dawn Tarot.

Court cards represent people, generally. They're more embodied than the other cards in the sense of having distinct personalities associated with them. The Knights, Queens, and Princes have astrological correspondences, but the Princesses are unique in that they don't have a specific time of birth associated with them. Resting at Malkuth, they represent the culmination of the energies of the suit that begins with the ace.

The Princess of Wands is the earthy part of fire. On the plus side, she is passionate and enthusiastic. Her emotions, and especially her feelings towards others, are sudden and powerful. The force of those reactions, combined with her energy, can elicit the same strong reactions in others, but as these feelings can be of either great love or profound hatred, that isn't always a good thing. There's a certain chemical attraction with the Princess of Wands, but in that baffling way, where it seems to be less about her physical attributes and more about the energy she's putting out. She can draw people to her in other ways, too. Her enthusiasm can be infectious, and others can find themselves drawn into her world.

On the downside, she can be volatile, and when volatile, she can be utterly reckless in her anger. Her rage is all-consuming and has a lashing out quality to it. The Queen of Wands can alienate through her anger too, but the Princess of Wands brings with her the element of melodrama. She can seem downright theatrical in her reactions, to the point where the same emotions she reacts so strongly to seem contrived, or at least over the top, to others.

I'll have to see how this card plays out, but I'm inclined to interpret it as referring to myself. With an Aries Sun and Leo ascendant, I'm double fire, so the fire suit brought to life makes sense. I'm not going to complain. My Virgo Moon has taken the reins for far too long.

Preview of Minister's Cord

Here's a quick preview of the opening to give you a taste of what's in my new book:

Aletheia probably should have told Edgar what she’d seen. What was wrong with her that she wasn’t telling him?  Don’t. He and Elijah are such good friends and anyhow you aren’t exactly sure what you saw anyways. The first was obvious, the second less so, and the third was downright strange. It felt like a presence, like feeling someone in the room with you, reaching out to touch your shoulder and make first contact, and yet it also had a heavy, brooding quality to it, one that threatened to drag your thoughts down into it and lay claim to them.  I really should tell him.   No, you can’t, and anyhow you shouldn’t be telling people what’s in other people’s heads. It’s like snooping in someone’s diary. You don’t even have the right to be there in the first place. Besides, the dry erase board showed that he was trying hard to control his thoughts.   Still, it was strange. Back in Tokyo, the dream reads were only about Edgar. That made sense. She loved Edgar. She loved Edgar more than life itself. It had always been Edgar, with all the obstacles thrown in their way, with all the reasons each one had to write off the other, he’d been the one that was always at the center of her thoughts. She’d never had anyone know her the way he did, love her the way he did. So of course she could latch on to his emotions and crawl into his psyche. What she couldn’t figure out was why she had also connected with Mae and, even more than Mae, Elijah.   God, the ritual had changed so much.

You can find it in print and on Kindle on Amazon.

The Minister's Cord

Aletheia hasn’t been back in New Orleans for very long. Really, she came back so that her mentor could save her baby from the paranormal threat to it, but along with a suitcase full of clothes, diaries and tarot cards, she brought back with her the troubles in her marriage to Edgar. After Elijah’s ritual to protect her and her daughter, it’s his thoughts, rather than Edgar’s, that she starts dreaming. When she accidentally digs into his most private and painful memories, she knows she has to tell him. He suggests they start working together to control her ability, a daily practice that becomes an intimate exchange of thoughts and feelings—and one she keeps a secret from Edgar. As they grow closer, she finds herself in the throes of a love triangle. Does she stay with the emotionally unstable husband she feels responsible for, or does she leave him for the temple leader she’s admired for so long? As their work together and their time together continues, she finds herself in a battle not just between two suitors, but between her powerful superego and her true will.

The Minister's Cord is now available on Amazon.

Alternate First Chapter of Child of Aokigahara

The Child of Aokigahara is written exclusively from Edgar's point of view. During one of my drafts, I tried an experiment wherein I wrote the first ten chapters from Aletheia's point of view. Check out the first chapter. It gives a different perspective as well as revealing information that didn't make it into the book.

The Ascendant In The Child of Aokigahara

In astrology, the ascendant is the face we show to the world. Determined by one's precise birth time, it's similar to Jung's persona, and is the way we think we should be. It also colors our perspective on things, and can suggest the outlook we have on life. If the sun sign is our core and the moon our automatic behavior, then the ascendant would be our self-image. To delve more deeply into this, I will explore the ascendant of three characters from The Child of Aokigahara: Aletheia, Edgar and Elijah.

Aletheia has a Pisces ascendant. As an Aries Sun, she's fiery and headstrong but with a temper. Her Virgo moon lends her to worrying, being critical and being analytical. But the Pisces ascendant gives one a self-image that is much more emotional and fluidic. Pisces ascendant people tend to idealize others, often putting them up on a pedestal and feeling shattered when they can't stay on. They're compassionate, but can easily fall into self-pity and can be quite unrealistic. In Aletheia's case, she has a strong urge to seem like a caring and sensitive person, but as we see in The Child of Aokigahara, she needs to embrace her fiery Aries core.

In Edgar's case, he has an Aquarius ascendant. His own desired self-image is very different than the one that we see. He wants to seem airy and intellectual, full of new and lofty ideals, humanitarian without getting terribly involved. However, Edgar's core is Pisces, and as we see again and again, the self-pity and escapist tendencies of his Sun sign run deep. His Moon is in Scorpio, which is a very emotionally intense and turbulent placement, so Edgar doesn't have much luck convincing the world that the image he would like to have of himself is the reality.

Elijah has a Scorpio ascendant. People with Scorpio ascendant can often be very brooding and emotional, but in a more private and restrained way than you find with Pisces. They also seek to go deep into the mysteries of life, transforming themselves and transforming others. Regardless, he has a need for absolute transcendence. In Elijah's case, he has both a Scorpio Sun and Scorpio ascendant. His core and his desired self-image are one and the same. It also means these qualities are much more powerful in him. His moon is in Aquarius, which for Elijah has been useful in providing objectivity and self-control, but also fuels the deep reserve of his Sun and ascendant.

To see how these play out, check out The Child of Aokigahara, available in print and on Kindle.

Second Book Published

The long awaited sequel to Collywobbles, The Child of Aokigahara, is now out! Find it on Amazon here.

The Moon Sign

The Moon sign changes every 2.5 days, going through all twelve of the signs in a month. It, along with the ascendant, accounts for many of the differences between people of the same sign, even if born in the same year. The Moon sign rules your past, what you need,  and your innate sense of self. It rules the relationship we had with our mother, how we experienced nurturing and how that experience influences our feelings and attitudes today. It impacts how secure or insecure we feel and also how we nurture others.

My first fictional case study is of The Girl With the Collywobbles protagonist, Aletheia. Aletheia has a Virgo Moon and Aries Sun. A Virgo Moon often manifests as a worrying and cautious personality that overanalyzes situations, themselves and their relationships. They can be critical and fault-finding but also analytical, and they need to guard against developing a martyr complex. This is in marked contrast to her Aries sun sign, which is associated with such qualities as being headstrong, impatient, impulsive and even reckless. Because her sun sign is so different from her moon sign, she experiences an inner conflict between risk-taking and caution. In Aletheia, this manifests as a tendency to take action but analyzing after the fact and sometimes becoming self-critical if that action was foolish or violated her values in some way.

My second fictional case study is of our male lead, Edgar. Edgar has a Pisces Sun and Scorpio Moon. Scorpio Moon people tend to be very intense emotionally. They need to be deeply involved in whatever they're doing and relationships are of absolute importance. Any strong Scorpio placement makes one fascinated by others' emotional motivations as well as their own, but they can also be jealous and possessive, reacting strongly to feelings of betrayal. Sometimes the desire for emotional intensity is so strong that they create drama unnecessarily, and if done to the extreme, this can result in scenarios that create those same feelings of betrayal and disappointment. In Edgar's case, he has a Pisces Sun, already a highly emotional placement. Pisces tend to be moody, sensitive, empathetic, and fantasizing. They're prone to self-pity and are often very escapist. The combination of the two makes for an extremely emotional person, but because of Edgar's Pisces sun, he tries to escape the intense emotions through drug abuse. This, of course, creates more problems than it solves. As the Moon is representative of what one needs, what he needs to be doing is using his Scorpio Moon to probe deeply into his own motivations and to develop a greater sense of his private self.

As you can see, whether the Moon sign is characteristically similar or markedly different from the Sun sign, it presents challenges. It's what we need, but that need is often trumped by our Sun sign. In my opinion the Moon sign is really the most psychoanalytic element of astrology. It's through that where we can see what is really driving us, how we reacted to our early childhood experiences and why we react emotionally the way that we do now.

Next: the ascendant

What I've been working on

I'll be doing a post on the moon signs in the near future. I’ve been hard at work getting my next book, The Child of Aokigahara, ready to come out. It takes place five years after The Girl With the Collywobbles, and includes yokai, yurei, and telepathy. 

My husband is designing the cover and so he wants me to come up with a synopsis. I find this to be the hardest part about writing (well, aside from marketing) but this is a rough draft I came up with somewhere around my third drink last night:

The second book in the series, The Child of Aokigahara marks the beginning of a new arc. It’s five years after the end of The Girl with the Collywobbles and Aletheia is on a reality tv show in Japan, chasing yokai. One day, she and Edgar have a romantic afternoon in Suicide Forest, resulting in her unexpected pregnancy. From that point on, she starts having nightmares and telepathically spying on Edgar’s most humiliating secrets while yokai torment him on all of their shoots. As the paranormal phenomena escalate, Edgar begins to suspect something is deeply wrong. He realizes that their only hope is to leave Japan, preferably enlisting the help of an old occultist friend in New Orleans, but Aletheia is afraid to leave and time is running out. Whether you’re new to The Collywobbles Chronicles or a returning fan, this darkly humorous tale will both haunt and entertain you in equal measure.

If all goes well, I hope to have it out on Createspace by this time next month.

The Sun Sign and Character Development

In astrology, the sun sign represents our wants. It's our character, what we strive to be. Through our sun sign, we seek to distinguish ourselves in some way and carve out a unique identity. If the moon represents our relationship to the maternal figure, then the sun represents how we separate from that figure and leave our mark upon the world. The obvious literary implication, of course, is that the sun sign you choose for your protagonist will be a driving force in his or her efforts to enact change.

However, it would be a mistake to assume that it's only the sun sign that matters. Of course, it helps to know that an Aries will be impulsive and headstrong or a Pisces sensitive and impressionable, but it's really the house that's going to tell you how those identity needs manifest. In addition to the signs, an astrological chart is divided up into twelve houses with various attributes. The rising sign, determined by your time of birth, sets the stage for the whole chart, dictating which planets fall in which houses. For example, in The Girl With the Collywobbles, Aletheia has a first house sun*. This makes her individualistic, as well as giving her a magnetic quality that attracts the attention of others, but can also bring with it a feeling of self-consciousness, as if always being watched. (Something we'll see even more of in the forthcoming sequel, The Child of Aokigahara.) For her, nothing short of absolute individuality will give her a sense of identity.

There are a number of ways in which the sun's driving need for a self can manifest based on what house it's in. For example, a sixth house sun will produce someone whose sense of identity comes through their day-to-day work life. A ninth house sun will give the person an orientation towards philosophy, alternative religions and travel whereas an eleventh house sun produces someone who gets their sense of identity through groups, teams and ideologies.

If you want to get really creative with this, you can make the driving need something that's unrealized as a source of inner conflict. A restraining element elsewhere in the chart could make that natural area of expression harder to realize and therefore could be a hang-up for them. Imagine, for example, someone who has their sun in the tenth house, ruling careers, but who has a lot of planets in more fluidic, adaptable signs. You'll have someone whose sense of identity comes through a career but is held back by their tendency to be changeable and unfocused. The need to have an identity through their career will be at odds with their tendency to get distracted or explore options. The complexity of the chart provides a lot of options for brainstorming your characters' motivations.

Next up: the influence of the moon



*However, this doesn't mean she is an Aries rising. The planets fall in houses depending on the specific degree of a given planet, house, etcetera. In Aletheia's case, she's a Pisces rising with a first house Aries sun.

Character Development and Astrology

I'm fascinated by personality constructs, all personality constructs. I'm particularly interested in the enneagram and Myers-Briggs, and my diaries are full of lengthy analyses of my characters' types. However, I don't like using them to determine my characters' personalities beforehand. Rather, I write the character and after the fact, I mull over what type they might be.

Astrology is another matter entirely.

I find it very useful to come up with a character's chart in advance of writing them. When I wrote Collywobbles, I had a sun sign in mind for Aletheia's character, but didn't immediately create an astrological chart. However, in subsequent books, I've found myself increasingly creating charts in advance of writing a character. I use Astrolabe's free chart generator. Sometimes, I'll have a specific sign in mind for a character, but other times, I'll use a random generator app to determine their sign, as well as where and when they were born. Once I generate the chart, I'll study up on the character implications. Sue Tompkins' book, The Contemporary Astrologer's Handbook, is an invaluable resource for me, and I rely heavily on Howard Sasportas' The Twelve Houses as well.

Astrology gets a bad rap, largely due to people voicing opinions about it who have never delved any deeper than their daily horoscope. I find it to be especially ill-informed when proponents of the Myers-Briggs bash on astrology, since Jung embraced astrology and vice-versa. The truth is, psychoanalysis is a big part of chart interpretation. Authors like Tompkins speak to the underlying motives indicated by a chart, and certain positions, like the moon sign and the fourth house, delve deeply into the early childhood experience. The usefulness in thinking about these things in character development should be obvious. If you know that an Aquarius Moon predicts a detached mother, and your character has a particularly emotional placement (e.g. a Scorpio sun), then already you're getting into some of the underlying conflicts in the character's psyche. Other placements, such as which sun the house falls in or what sort of aspects to Neptune a character has, are equally informative.

I don't adhere religiously to charts. Usually, I'll go through a chart and look for any placements that are particularly interesting and use that as a starting point. I also find it helpful to cross-reference with other characters. I've occasionally had character dynamics leap out at me by glancing at a newly created chart.

In subsequent posts, I'll be going through the planets, explaining what they say about the personality as it can be applied to character creation. I'll get into the houses somewhat too. I'll start with the big ones (the sun, the moon and ascendant) and take it from there. Stay tuned!

 

The Queen of Wands

Since the tarot court cards feature prominently in The Girl With the Collywobbles, I'll be providing in-depth explanations of my characters' court cards. I'm giving a general overview and I'll state which card belongs to which character, but I otherwise won't tie it into the plot on account of potential spoilers. For that reason, these posts will be of interest whether you've read the book yet or not.

The Queen of Wands rules from the 21st degree of Pisces to the 20th degree of Aries. Lon Milo Duquette states that this corresponds to those born between March 11th and April 10th. Pulling charts, I've found that to be off by a couple of days, but it's good for a general ballpark. If you're close to the cutoff, you can find your exact degree here.

The Queen of Wands is a natural leader. She has a magnetic quality about her, the kind of person that's able to draw others to her by the sheer force of her energy. She is kind-hearted, steadfast, and persistent. She exudes a natural confidence, and can be quite loving when the impulse strikes her.

On the down side, she's prone to melancholy and moodiness in general. This leads to brooding and the tendency to take slights where none are intended. Although she does well in attracting both devoted followers and loving suitors, her explosive temper and tendency to misjudge situations can easily alienate her champions. This same tendency to misjudge situations can result in her being easily deceived, a fact that likely plays into the hypersensitivity and occasional panicked outbursts you find in this character.

The Queen of Wands gets a bad rap in a lot of the descriptions. Aleister Crowley's interpretation of this card strikes me as particularly harsh. I'm not sure if that's because as a Libra, he looked unfavorably on his astrological opposite, or if it's a reflection on how women with dominant personalities were (and still are) perceived. Regardless, there's a genuine warmth associated with this card and author Robert Wang reminds us that the placement of her hand on the leopard's head demonstrates the incredible taming power of the Queen. Although capable of great ferocity herself, her natural authority brings the environment under control. This card represents a person with a profound power that can be destructive among the undisciplined, but which is constructive and stabilizing in someone who has mastered self-control.

This card corresponds to our protagonist, Aletheia. Her birthday is April 4th.

It's out!

The Girl With the Collywobbles is now available on Amazon. You can buy it here.

Preview of the Cover

The cover is ready to go! The interior is already finished, so I'll be uploading The Girl With the Collywobbles to Createspace this weekend.

Sneak Peek

Here's a preview of the first page of the book. 

   Aletheia held the covers close to her, tight under her arms like a plush toy that she might have owned as a child. She’d been awake the better part of an hour but couldn’t quite bring herself to place foot on the floor and get out of bed. Last night was another bout of bad dreams and, as if that wasn’t bad enough, Jake nearly forgot to say goodbye again. She startled awake once she heard the door shut. That was when she tore out of the bedroom and then ran out on to the porch barefoot, catching him just as he headed up the walkway towards the old yellow Honda Civic.
“Sorry,” Jake mumbled, sandy brown hair sliding over thick and square black glasses. “So tired, I only got two hours sleep last night, I totally spaced.”
Aletheia wrapped her arms around him. He hugged her with one arm and gave her a peck on the cheek and that was enough to put her in the fetal position under the covers for the next three hours.
Aletheia rolled over and grabbed her phone. She had four missed calls from Arturo and a text message from Thalia. Arturo left no voicemail message but Thalia had responded to Aletheia’s text, Sea slugs and synapses trump girlfriends, with her characteristic graciousness: You know we love you, dear. xoxo. 
Aletheia smiled then and slid out of bed; God, but she treasured her mornings alone. Between her, Jake, and Steve, the house often felt very crowded in the evenings. Steve was their housemate and a member of Jake’s cohort and if ever there was a person to make a place feel crowded, it would be him, eating her food, interrupting their television watching, and invading Aletheia’s precious catch-up time with Jake. In the mornings, though, Aletheia had the place to herself. As she sat on the soft gray couch sipping her coffee, she relished the sanctity of her own thoughts and yet the four missed calls from Arturo nagged at her. She picked up her phone to call him back but his phone went into voicemail after the first ring, the telltale sign that he was already at work. She’d have to wait.
She didn’t want to wait.
She’d have to wait.
No, she’d have to check her feed, she supposed, such that it was. Too early to wade through all of that and really, she ought not to worry, things were so much calmer these days, but no, best to make sure, best to give herself that peace of mind.

Aletheia should have waited.

The only new posting from Arturo was a news article, and with the news article came a comment, and it was really the comment that stopped her in her tracks: when will the NOPD protect us instead of treating us as dispensable? I’ll miss you, sweetie. She hadn’t known the first two very well, three and then two months ago, the first one shocking and unsettling and the second, well, the second one everyone got a little bit nervous, but when no one died the following month, the remaining tarot readers in the square breathed more freely—until now. Aletheia read the article headline, Another Fortune Teller Slaughtered, and, hand trembling, clicked the link.
Thalia Moore, 32, was found dead on the corner of Bourbon Street and Barracks Street at 6:32 this morning.
Aletheia dropped the phone. It spiraled out of her hand, spinning slowly until the rug swallowed it up with a thud. Aletheia was still. For a long time she was still and then for a long time she was drowning and then she thought, What if they find out?

Thalia Flashback

The following is a brief flashback that I had to cut from Collywobbles. Approximately a week before Thalia died, she treated Aletheia to dinner before heading out on the last con they would do together. 


     Aletheia sipped her wine. It went so well with the gnocchi, but she wondered if she ought to be drinking before a job.
     “Dear,” Thalia said. “You are such an amazingly good person, but the world you live in is just so very black and white. Don’t be afraid to let a little sin into your life once in awhile.”
     “I have sin in my life.” Aletheia lifted up the wine glass and pointed to it. “See?”
     Thalia took a sip of her own wine. “That your sin is my virtue only proves my point. You have so much compassion for the weak and helpless but if you never let yourself get out of control, you’ll never know how much our sins can confuse us, how hard it is to know what’s really happening in the moment.”
     “I don’t know. I get plenty confused.”
     “It’s all the thinking. The ivory tower is good for that, but, no, I mean a very different kind of confusion. It would just be so much easier if you went on spring break every now and again. It would help.”

Questions and Answers

Use this post for Questions you may have about The Collywobbles Chronicles. I'll answer any serious questions, as long as I can do so without giving spoilers to upcoming books. I'll answer short questions in the comment thread. Questions requiring longer answers will get dedicated blog posts. This can be anything from questions about a given character's background to details about their lives to story-specific questions. Some examples might include:

-What really happened the night Thalia came over to Edgar's apartment?
-Why did Thalia decide to start selling tarot readings?
-Did Edgar date anyone else in college besides Madeleine?
-What did Lilly do before coming to New Orleans?
-Why doesn't Aletheia have a car?
-Doesn't Aletheia get hot, selling tarot readings in the square in the summer?

These are just a few questions off the top of my head. I'll also be posting the occasional flashbacks, just little tidbits that don't appear in the book but may be of interest.

Elijah and Children of the Voice

Edgar's friend Elijah makes a couple of brief appearances in Collywobbles. His role is an important one, both on account of the information he imparts to Edgar about the occult nature of the killings and the information he gives about Aletheia. He picks up on something very important about her generally and through his astute (not to mention intuitive) reading of her, he is the first person to draw Edgar's attention to the fact that underneath her anger are buried strong feelings. 

Elijah is Edgar's only friend. In fact, his name is something of a nod to the Frank Black song. However, based on everything Elijah says to him, you get the idea that Edgar perhaps isn't all that great at staying in touch with him. That Edgar has so few friends despite being an extravert is owed to what Elijah accurately points out is Edgar's true addiction--love. Edgar's attention remains singularly focused on whoever he happens to be infatuated with at the moment and as a result, he isn't great at maintaining social relationships or keeping social obligations. 

The Children of the Voice is a small order that extends throughout the south and southwest, generally much smaller in number than the O.T.O. It was started by a group of people that had co-membership in both the O.T.O. and The Golden Dawn. Its ceremonies use a priestess, like in the Gnostic Mass, but her function is very different and it's the only real resemblance to Thelemic masses that you see in the invocation ceremonies. The ceremony incorporates standard Golden Dawn practices, such as the Qabalistic Cross, but the main thrust of the ceremony is the acting out of the ascent up the Tree of Life and the Golden Dawn's emphasis on communication with the guardian angel. Theirs is a thirteen degree system: an introductory "ascendant" degree and twelve degrees corresponding to the twelve houses in the horoscope. As it's matched up with the individual's chart, each initiation is, at least to some extent, unique to that person. It incorporates Thelemic notions of True Will and keeps a lot of O.T.O. practices, such as sex magick. 

Elijah is, at the time of Collywobbles, tenth degree and heads up the New Orleans temple.  The temple is actually a partially-converted old playhouse in the Marigny, just off of Elysian Fields. Edgar was really only active in the temple his first couple of years in New Orleans, and at the time Collywobbles takes place, his life has been taken over by selling tarot, dealing drugs and his romantic foibles. He's developed quite a reputation for himself as a lonely guy that will share drugs and so, at the time the book starts, his evenings tend to get filled up by activities which are really bad ideas (his broken turtle incense holder case in point). Still, Elijah encourages him to return, showing both patience and insight. He believes that Edgar has tremendous potential magickally, and he probably isn't wrong about this. We see through Edgar's unicursal hexagram keychain that, when he puts his mind to it, he can achieve impressive magickal feats. The man in the trench coat is unnerving to all who meet him but only Edgar immediately detects the taint. If only Edgar could obtain clarity of mind through self-control (of both his drug use and his emotions) he could realize the potential that Elijah sees in him. 

Aletheia's Chart

Aletheia's full name is Aletheia Nous O'Fallon, showing her mother's fondness for the Ancient Greeks, as well as her mother's interest in philosophy.

Aletheia is an Aries, so she has quite a bit of fire in her. Edgar could no doubt attest to this, given the coffee incident. Her Pisces ascendant causes her to present herself as sensitive and vulnerable, and she often flip-flops between her highly emotional presentation and her feisty Aries sun.

Her moon is in Virgo, which tends to give a critical undercurrent to the personality. In her case, it's more self-critical than critical of others. Virgo moon can also indicate a critical mother, and her own mother was indeed critical. Although Aletheia tells Thalia that her mother didn't expect much of her, a very different picture is painted in her memories. Her mother's criticality is indirect and, at times, dismissive. She was fond of assuming that Aletheia should be able to understand highly complex and abstract texts at a relatively young age, offering very little by way of guidance. Her mother's criticism of the education Aletheia receives in high school also has the implicit message that somehow Aletheia has erred by not having complete mastery of Heidegger by the time she's a teenager. That her mother was experienced as critical is shown by the negative self-image Aletheia has of her own mental processes, namely that she has "a broken brain." The inaccuracy of this self-perception is shown through her memory of Thalia, who thinks that Aletheia's only problem with thinking is that she does it far too much.

Another aspect of her moon is that of worry. Moon in Virgo people are often prone to worrying. This is shown in her character but, of course, Aletheia has a lot to worry about!

Aletheia's moon is in the seventh house, which has interesting repercussions, given the direction her love life goes in throughout Collywobbles.  A seventh house moon is often found among those that have mentally ill partners.

Lastly, her Venus in Aries in the first house lends itself to attracting suitors, and in some cases, men competing over her. Certainly, she isn't lacking for suitors. She dates two different men in the first year that she's in New Orleans. She has certain men hit on her even when it's wildly inappropriate to do so, and of course her greatest suitor--and the most determined one--is Edgar.