Free Giveaway

On Friday, December 29th, I'll be offering free copies of the Kindle version of The Girl With the Collywobbles. Get your copy here.

The State of This Blog

I only update this blog sporadically. I still may from time to time, but to stay up to date on my latest releases, free days and other news, follow me on my Facebook page. I use that one a lot more often.

My number one fan

Kenzi, exploring my recently-arrived copies of The Minister's Cord.

Awhile back, I noticed that when I would do readings, the card on the bottom yielded important information, sometimes as much as the card on the top. This is yesterday's reading. The six of cups is a card of happiness and pleasure in its beginning (and can mean pleasure of the romantic sort, though not exclusively). Decks like the Rider-Waite often misattribute the meaning as nostalgia, when in fact, it's very much a card of immediacy. It's water at Tiphareth, a point of balance and beauty on the Tree of Life, and in this case, the happiness it indicates makes no promise of continuing. 

Underneath it is the 9 of Swords. This is a card of mental anguish. Depression, agonizing, and sometimes even cruelty come with this card. I'd say that yesterday, the bottom card was more accurate than the one on top. It's anyone's guess whether that was because the 9 of Swords marred my ability to see the 6 of Cups manifesting in my life, or whether my intuition was blocked at the moment of drawing from the deck. 

Late-night editing

Chapter of the beast.

The Seven of Cups

Today's card of the day is 7 of Cups.

Sevens correspond Qabalistically to Netzach. Netzach is a place of emotion and everything that entails. On the high side, it can have all of the positive aspects of emotion--love, creativity, empathy and so forth--but on the low side, it can have all of the negative aspects of emotion, such as anger, sadness, envy, and so forth.

Cups rule water, which also corresponds to the emotions. That means, when you get an already emotional suit in the place of Netzach, you get an emotional overdose. This brings forth a lot of those negative emotions, to the point where the person is completely mired in them. The excess corrupts the higher emotional qualities, and the person makes a mess of things by virtue of having taken the feeling too far.

For those of you who are interested in the enneagram, I always consider this card the point of the passion. Lust, envy, wrath, debauchery, all of these are in its purview. When this card comes up, they've been completely indulged. In a reading, I take it to mean that the passion of the type is now firmly in the driver's seat of the personality.

And yet, in spite of all of that, I don't mind this card coming up. I think it's because I have such a soft spot for Netzach. After all, it's from Netzach that we make art that can speak to some sort of collective experience, and it's Netzach that gives us the emotional push we need for our magickal work to be effective. Its neighbor, Hod, is the realm of intellect and language but if we get stuck in Hod, then we'll say a lot of empty words in our rites and daily practices that do nothing because they lack any driving sentiment, and the next point up on the tree is Tiphareth, a place of beauty, harmony and illumination. The card simply serves as a reminder to not get too excessive with our emotional excess.

Updated webpage

I've updated my webpage with links to all of my books on Amazon. Eventually, I want to set it up so that you can order print copies from me as well, and give more detailed descriptions of the books, but for tonight, reacquainting myself with HTML after not having used it in six years is sufficient. You can see my webpage here.

Does this mean I can get back to the actual writing now?

Melancholy

Using the Golden Dawn Magical Tarot, designed by Chic and Sandra Tabatha Cicero, I drew the 3 of Swords. The 3 of Swords is a card of melancholy, alienation and quiet sadness. It's not the deep depression of the 8 of Cups nor is it the bitter disappointment of the 5 of Cups. Swords represent our mental side, and in this case, it's a general state of mind, a backdrop if you will.

Speaking of the Ciceros, my New Year's resolution was to start working through their book, Self-Initiation into the Golden Dawn Tradition. One of their practices for initiation into the Neophyte grade was to start going on mindfulness walks where you stop to smell, see, touch and so forth as a way of grounding yourself. There aren't a lot of places in Chicago proper where I wouldn't feel strange doing that, but we do have Lake Michigan. I resolved to do that today...until I checked the weather forecast. Today it's in the thirties and rainy, and later this week it's supposed to dip down into the single digits. That's the problem with following the advice of people that live in warmer climates. I guess I'll just have to practice mindfulness on my cats!

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.