For the cross quarter holiday and Thelemic holy day, the Feast of Stars, also known as the Feast of Nuit, and Imbolc, I bring you the Dweller Between the Waters, the Daughter of the Firmament. Here is The Star card from my new deck-in-progress, Pharos Tarot. I call this one The Way.
The Star shows the Way, a beacon of celestial navigation. In the Milky Way she dwells, washing herself in a river of dew, using her solar cross window to make thunderbolts…
The Hebrew letter is Heh, meaning “window” (as per the Thoth system) sp the goddess is filtering starlight through a solar cross window. If you want to use tradition, it’s Tzaddi, meaning “hook”. The stars as they pass thru the window and forming swirling thunderbolts with hook-like edges.
Two versions, as two different scanner modes used. I’m undecided. The top one has better detail in the Milky Way edges, but I like the dark blue in the second one as it looks more “night sky”.
” Then there was another passage which was really too secret for anything; all I shall tell you is, there was the most beautiful Goddess that ever was, and she was washing herself in a river of dew. If you ask what she is doing, she says: “I’m making thunderbolts.” It was only starlight, and yet one could see quite clearly, so don’t think I’m making a mistake. ” ~ Liber XCV, The Wake World, by Aleister Crowley
The colors are Violet, Sky Blue, Bluish Mauve, and White Faintly Tinged Purple. I took a bit of artistic liberty in that “Sky Blue” here ranges through all shades of blue one might see in the sky, as I wanted it to be a night sky. The violets and bluish mauve form the nebulae. The stars are “white faintly tinged purple”.
You can see all of the cards posted to date on the Pharos page. More cards to come over the next few days, as the moon wanes and prepares to renew.
A preview of my new work in progress, Pharos Tarot. In honor of today’s auspicious astronomical event, the Mercury-Sun cazimi, I wanted to send out a communication (Mercury) and give you a preview of one of my favorite Pharos Tarot cards, The Sun. I call this one The Lamp. It’s a glyph of illumination and liberty: Light, Love, Liberty, and Life.
The Hebrew letter is Resh, meaning head – the central or front of the head or face. Light enters the face and head, into the pineal gland, through the eye.
The lamp shows the four stations of Liber Resh vel Helios, Crowley’s solar adoration ritual performed four times daily, at each of the stations of the Sun’s journey: sunrise to Ra in his strength (shown by the sun symbol and serpent), noontime to Hathor in her beauty (shown by her horned crown at the apex), sunset to Tum or Atum in his joy, (shown by his white crown), and midnight to Khephra, in his hiding (shown by the winged scarab beetle at bottom).
Twin children dance on the solar barque at the bottom, representing the solar twins as dual forms of Horus or Heru. The active form holds what looks like a one – the pillar. The passive form holds what looks like a zero – the void. Yet they are also the letters I and O, and along with the A between them spell the magical formula IAO. IAO is also another name for the Tetragrammaton, known as the Bringer of Light, and as a godform as a sun god and a gnostic god of the mysteries.
The two V’s on the barque transform IAO into VIAOV. Crowley, adapted IAO for the new Aeon, adding the Hebrew letter Vau to both ends, which he then called the “proper hieroglyph of the Ritual of Self-Initiation in this Aeon of Horus” VIAOV enumerates to 93, like Thelema and Agape. Crowley calls this person who travels through this new process, “Man made God, exalted, eager; he has come consciously to his full stature, and so is ready to set out on his journey to redeem the world.”
The colors are Orange, Gold Yellow, Rich Amber, and Amber, rayed red. More to come on that later.
This post will be added to the main section of this site for the Pharos Tarot, on the tab called “Pharos” above. You can go there to see all of the posted cards in one place, with all updated information
UPDATE August 2019: The page previously linked here below is temporarily password protected, as I am in process of redoing several of the cards. You can see some of the original cards in the regular posts, beginning with the previous post titled, “It begins with The Sea”.
Pharos Tarot has been given it’s very own page, with a link at the header of the website. Future posts on the deck will be consolidated there as the cards are revealed. Please check there, for new expanded information on the first card revealed (the Hanged Man), and for an overview of the concept of this deck.
As we go through the journey of the Major Arcana, these individual posts on each card will be added to the link above, making the information easier to find in one place as we travel.
You can follow along one episode at a time, with the individual card posts, or see them as a collection of posts on the summary Pharos tab above.
Have all the little things gotten you down? Things not going your way? Work stuff, holidays, post holidays, overall blah? The dark days, the altogether too short planetary hours?
If in the northern hemisphere it is just too dreary. In the southern hemisphere maybe it is the sweltering heat. If in the US, then it could be all sorts of things getting you down.
Magickal constipation? Too much Capricorn in the air? Artistic struggles? Either way something has harshed your mellow.
Local artist p.BKr channelled that feeling of discontent and created a new sculptural series. Introducing the Harshmellows:
The Harshmellows. By artist p.BKr
Handmade, upcycled, made of ultimately recyclable materials.
The Harshmellow family knows how you feel, because they were created out of stress and compressed paper napkins.
Contact Atu House if you would like to adopt them. They have a good home but they are never content.
This is the first card I chose to post for Pharos Tarot, a new tarot journey and deck in progress.
I thought it should start by showing a Mother letter, as after all everything comes from them. Since this is a journey of water, I thought the Hanged Man is a good place to start. I call this card The Sea, where it begins.
The Hanged Man is Mem, one of the three Mother letters, corresponding to water. Pharos Tarot is a watercolor deck, and watercolor is all about the interplay of water, pigment, and light. One could say even that as a medium it best describes the elemental journey. It certainly involves water, and fire (light) but also air as it dries and earth in the form of pigment.
This deck is about my exploration of the medium of watercolor. It felt like the medium that would be best for this deck, as it is also an exploration of color, and watercolors are known for their luminous quality as light plays through their transparency. Watercolor is a medium I’ve never used much before, so it is very new to me and it is extremely challenging. I wanted an artistic challenge. But that means making a lot of mistakes. I have a lot of cards done, almost all the Majors, but several of them are going to be redone, as along the way the seas have been rough. I’m learning to ride the waves.
At the end of September, ATO House publishing, my imprint, had a booth at the North Quabbin Garlic and Arts Festival. It was the first time I’ve done such a thing. I made a TON of matted art prints to decorate the booth, and not all of them sold out so I still have a bunch of prints of both Tabula Mundi and Rosetta Tarot, matted to fit standard frames in 8×10″, 11×14″, and 16×20″. Plus a few cards matted to fit a 5×7″ frame. So what to do with all these prints? Well some of them will be used for our give aways, where we give out prizes every week on our Fortune’s Wheelhouse podcast. Patrons at the Fortune’s Wheelhouse Patreon site at the $3 level and above are automatically entered to win. But I can only give away so many there, and I don’t want to just stuff all this colorful art in a closet. So for the rest of the month of October or until these run out, there will be a special BOGO or “Buy one – Get one free” at www.tarotcart.com. Here is how it will work. You buy a print, whichever one you want, any size, using the drop down card selection on the site. I’ll then send you a free one, in the same size, from the available selections already made for the Garlic Festival. For the second one, you can make a request of a few cards of either deck you might prefer and I’ll fulfill the request if I can, but otherwise I will select for you based on what prints I already have made. Because the idea for this sale is to move some of these already made matted artworks to an appreciative home. These make a great gift, and are inexpensive to mail, and I’ll ship both for the cost of the shipping one, so you could buy one for yourself, then re use the shipping envelope to send the free one to a friend! Your holiday shopping done, almost for free!
All you have to do to get this offer is buy a print on www.tarotcart.com, and in the comment field, say BOGO and tell me if you have any preferences for the free one, or would just prefer a surprise. As I said it is first come first serve and I cannot guarantee your free print will be able to be your choice, but I printed most of the majors in each size, of each deck, and some of the minors. They are all nice though, trust me! They are matted and ready to frame and printed in vibrant, 100 year archival color inks, and signed.
I also made those “prayer flags” out of the extra large majors edition of Tabula Mundi, both the black and white and the color edition. You can see them hanging to decorate the booth. The cards are permanently attached to a 3 inch wide double satin ribbon, with grommets attached every few cards, and thin satin ties to hang them. The cards are centered in an area about 8 ft 8 inches long, with extra ribbon on each side making it around ten feet long but adjustable down to the card area if desired. So they will fit along any size room’s wall, pretty much. I have two in color and two in black and white. You can see them below in the first two pictures. Those are available first come first serve, by request, for $77. Just send an email if you are interested, to the info(at)tarotcart email (or any one of my others including mm at this site.) I have a black and white one custom made for a room in my own house along one 12 foot wall.
See the whole progression, from Fool to Universe, all at once!
In my Crowleymas post earlier today, I include a picture of a book I made, a re binding of Liber AL vel Legis (Crowley’s Book of the Law). It started its life as a standard paperback edition that looks like this. In the fiery third chapter of Ra-Hoor-Khuit, one of the last verses (v. 73) of the book reads “Paste the sheets from right to left and from top to bottom : then behold!” So I did just that, taking the book completely apart first, then putting it back together. The paperback was perfect bound, so after removing the original cover I was left with individual pages. They had to be separated into “signatures” (groups of pages for sewing a book), then the right side of a double page spread glued to the left side. Each signature was then pierced and sewn with Coptic stitch – top to bottom. And behold!
The Coptic stitch ensures that the book will lay flat when open. The three chapters were each given a ribbon marker in an elemental color. This one was given to Lon Milo Duquette, for his participation in our Fortune’s Wheelhouse podcast meet up last month. I made it for Lon because in one of his books (maybe it was Ask Baba Lon or Low Magick but I am not sure now) he describes how he got his first Liber AL, gluing all the pages together per the instructions, then destroying it via burning per the admonition. It was one of the funniest things I’ve heard him say (out of lots of funny things he says) when he describes watching each page separately burning away (due to the glue) as a “magickal version of the opening of Bonanza“. That made be laugh so much I thought he should have this one. I hope he doesn’t feel the need to burn it! Anyway speaking of dear Lon, his latest book Son of Chicken Qabalah is just hitting the store shelves. I’m sure it will be both funny and insightful, so am looking forward to reading it.
I made a few other special hand made books as gifts for the organizers of the Fortune’s Wheelhouse meet up. They are an exact duplicate of my own personal ‘magician’s journal’ that I keep on my altar for ritual use. These books are divided into 7 signatures, one for each of the 7 traditional “planets”, each corresponding to a day of the week. Each signature is bound in the color of that planet’s sephira, per the Golden Dawn Queen Scale of color, and each has an appropriately colored ribbon binding. The chapters are in descending Chaldean order of the planets from slowest to fastest (Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sun, Venus, Mercury, Moon), and each ribbon is longer or shorter depending on the planet’s length of orbit.
Magician’s Planetary Journal showing color correspondences to the 7 planets incorporated into the 7 bindings and 7 ribbon markers. Shown on the Friday altar in the elemental colors for Venus/Empress. Venus gets an Emerald Green ribbon, the color of the sephira Netzach in the Queen Scale.
In each section I’ve put everything a practicing planetary magician needs at their fingertips, including information on all the most useful astrological correspondences in the worlds of plant, animal, mineral, and mankind, planetary sigils and seals, geomantic figures, magic squares, and a translation of the planet’s Orphic Hymn. Plus there is blank paper, graph paper, and vellum paper inside at the end of each section for recording more information one finds useful. Here is a picture of today’s altar, done up in the Golden Dawn color scale colors for Venus, since today is Friday, Venus’ day. The colors are Emerald, Sky Blue, Pale Green, and Bright Rose, rayed pale green. In addition to being Venus Day, it is currently also Venus’ season, and Libran Aleister Crowley’s birthday. The altar has all sorts of Venusian offerings: a green candle in a copper holder, mead (honey wine), rose petals, 7 rose hips, and sea water and scallop shells gathered during Venus’ day and hour. The journal is open to the Orphic Hymn for Aphrodite.
Those of you who have been reading here for a while know that I am pretty much obsessed with the Golden Dawn color scales. I’ve painted both Rosetta Tarot and Tabula Mundi Tarot by faithfully following them, and in the process lots has been revealed. My third deck in progress is also being painted with them, and taking it even further as an exploration of watercolors and light. (Coming soon!) For those of you who received Part I of my article on the color scales and have been waiting for Part II of the article, I apologize it is taking so long. It is really that I’ve discovered there is so much to say about them that it has turned into a much larger topic I really want to address properly. So it will come, but maybe will be more than two parts, or even a book of it’s own, or a chapter in my next book. Rest assured I am working on it.
Taro as Color by Ithell Colquhoun has four available binding colors for the elements, Red, Blue, Yellow, and Indigo. I got the red one for Fire.
Which is why I was delighted to recently discover the book Taro as Color, by Ithell Colquhoun 1906-1988, with an introduction by Amy Hale. As it is fully illustrated in color, it is a bit expensive. But I could not resist getting it since this is my area of fascination and expertise. Because in addition to planetary magic, I also am a practitioner of color magic. Ithell Colquhoun was a fascinating artist and occultist, who created a tarot deck consisting of pours of enamel paint in elemental colors for each card. These were exhibited only once, in a village of Cornwall, in 1977.
I discovered this book through the Occulture podcast and the episode, which aired in August, is linked here if you want to have a listen. Ryan the host, even mentions to the guest during the episode sending a link about the book to Susie, my co host on our Fortune’s Wheelhouse podcast! I wish one of them had sent it to me so I would have found it sooner, as hey this topic is in my Wheelhouse for sure! I’ve only been obsessing about the GD scales for 7 years or so. But hey I stumbled across it thankfully via Ryan’s show, and I am so glad I did. It is a gorgeous book.
And what is really interesting to me is that last year, and this spring and summer, I was playing around doing the exact same thing as Ithell, just for fun, without even knowing she had already done this making of poured paintings for each card.
Here is her poured painting for “The Spirit of Aither” (or Aether), otherwise known as the Fool, followed by one of my paint pourings made last year for the Fool card.
Ithell Colquhoun’s pour for the Fool card, from the book TARO as Color
One of several pours I did for the Fool card, using the Golden Dawn color scale colors for the Fool: Bright Pale Yellow, Sky Blue, Blue Emerald, and Emerald, flecked gold.
So you can see a similar approach. She used the same colors but with the Bright Pale Yellow of the King Scale as the center, where I used the Bright Pale Yellow to cover the entire canvas before pouring the other colors of the scale on. She dotted the Emerald with gold enamel to achieve the “flecking” of the Princess Scale. I mixed gold powder into my Emerald to achieve the flecking (which looks better in person than it shows here).I also blew air over the painting with a straw, for additional reinforcement of the Air element the Fool corresponds to.
I’ve not yet finished all the pouring, as I had to give up on them for a while to work on my other tarot, which is a more representative art deck instead of these abstract works I did for fun. That one I’m currently painting in watercolor, in the Golden Dawn color scales, and it is coming soon!
I did the paint pourings in acrylic, rather than Ithell’s enamel. I don’t think acrylic was available in 1977, and she used enamel as that is what the Golden Dawn was using then to achieve the brightest purest colors available at the time. It is a very messy process (at least when I do it) so I have to do it outside. Sometimes there is extra paint left, and I don’t want to pour it on the ground. I had to pour it on something to dry, as once it is dry it is inert and pretty harmless. So I’ve been pouring all my colors on this wooden block, rotating it so it has paint on all six sides. I guess I could call it the Cube of Space when it is done, as eventually it will have all the colors of every card, even if they get hidden under each other each time I do another pouring!
Happy Crowleymas, the feast of the Beast, the birthday or 143rd anniversary of, the birth of Edward Alexander Crowley. Also known as Aleister, Beast, Perdurabo, To Mega Therion, et al. It is for me a day to celebrate the body of work he left behind. It is, as those who dig into it well know, truly profound and so many layered. As is the man himself: a prophet, scholar, poet, magician, explorer, raconteur, yogi, astrologer, artist, meditator, channel, and also a human being with all sorts of controversy associated with his human flaws. As Yoda says, “Ahead of his time, he is.” While I don’t agree with everything he did or said (and some things make me cringe), I have profound respect for his contributions to this world. His output of magickal work is nothing short of stunning. I thank him for all the works he created in his lifetime, especially the holy books that have brought me so much joy to be alive in this time when so much is possible.
As I begin to write this, it is actually Crowleymas Eve. A good time to reflect on how to properly celebrate. I pulled out my copy of Perdurabo, the biography by Kaczynski, with the idea to chip away at reading it again, starting on Crowleymas. It is a massive brick of a tome, making the title (Perdurabo, meaning the equivalent of “I endure til the end”) something I smile at as I contemplate reading it in entirety again. I’m also re reading Lord of the Rings now, so I can alternate into fantasy when the biography gets too dense.
Speaking of holy books, here is a picture of a copy of Liber AL vel Legis, the Book of the Law, a standard paperback version I took apart, page by page, then rebound. Just like the verse instructs, I glued left and right pages together before folding them into signatures and sewing them with coptic stitch between handmade covers. I made this one as a gift for a fellow Thelemite. It has ribbon bindings in elemental colors for each of the three chapters, and each side of the stele on the inner covers. These kind of books are fun to make but they take a lot of time. I want to make another one when I have time. Which may not be for a while as my art time is going towards painting.
From what I gather the proper Crowleymas celebration includes a lighthearted or humorous component, and perhaps a libation like a special cocktail a la Crowley, and/or a recipe he enjoyed. A quick spin into the vortex of the internet, reveals a Crowley recipe for Riz (Rice) to be served with curry.
But Himself does not really give much of a recipe. Just a hint of ingredients and techniques for a pistachio nut rice dish, he calls a “Poem of Spring”, golden from turmeric and green from pistachios, a perfect foil to the ultra hot curries he enjoyed. I can see why he calls it a Poem of Spring, as it is made up of the colors of the Fool. Especially if you use golden raisins. Then it has all the colors of the Fool except Sky Blue so there you go, serve it on a blue plate.
This year I grew lots of different types of fragrant hot peppers so they will be incorporated into a main curry dish somehow. Since it is Friday, day of Venus, perhaps a Fish Vindaloo, or an an Eggplant Tindaloo or Phaal (two of the hottest curry types) served with a modern quinoa of the new aeon.
Violet cordial litmus test. Glass on the left has acid added (lemon) which makes the color change.
The Crowley cocktail recipes that Sir Internet gives up are a bit much for a week night, or even a Friday, involving such extraordinary ingredients as strychnine and ether and laudanum, as well as various boozes. In years past I have made my own “Debauch” cocktail for this day, but that too involved absinthe mixed with my own exotic home made elixir, made from hundreds (or thousands) of tiny violets, hand harvested and made into a litmus paper like color changing liquor. It would change from bright blue to violet upon the addition of acid. No kidding! Alas, last spring (or has it been two?) I neglected to get down on my hands and knees in tick and black fly season to pick hundreds of tiny flowers. So no violet liquor this year. It takes a certain fortitude to make.
So this year I will have to improvise with what is available. Something with either absinthe, good brandy, British gin, or good scotch, all of which seem like possible favorites according to his nature and biography. Maybe the oldest American cocktail, originating in New Orleans and incorporating an absinthe rinse (the Sazerac.) Perhaps garnished with a sliver of Habanero and a coca leaf, because it is Friday night after all.
So, addendum. Here is the recipe for the cocktail of the guest of honor, Mr Crowley, and one we are actually imbibing right now. Thanks to my partner, the creator. The name:
AC’s Libation
5 oz Laphroig (for Boleskine)
4 shakes orange bitters (for Resh)
1 bag Earl Grey double Bergamot tea (for Britain)
Absinthe
freshly toasted cardamon pod
twist of lemon peel
Stir scotch and bitters with ice, add tea bag and stir again,. .wash chilled cocktail glasses wirh absinthe, add cardamon pod and lemon twist.
Serve with spicy food, and try to remember existence as pure joy.
At the end of May, I posted that poll asking you all to vote on the three cards you most want to see when I first post the work on my newest tarot deck. The poll results were posted at the end of June. In case you missed it, here they are:
Two more months have passed and now it is the end of August. You may be wondering what is up with the deck and when show-and-tell begins. Me too! I thought I’d be ready to post something after the poll, but as soon as I posted the poll I got sidelined for 6-8 weeks with the duty of cleaning up my departed brother’s estate. I am glad to have stepped up for it, for him and for my family, but it sure was a lot of work and took up energy and time and emotion.
But still good progress is happening. Since then I have been working on it every day for hours, except for a recent 4 day vacation where I didn’t paint for four whole days. (I missed painting, but the beach was fun.) As of now, all of the Major Arcana rough sketches are done, and many of them have been painted to completion. I haven’t shown any of them yet, because I have a goal of getting a majority of the Majors completed as full paintings rather than drawings, and then showing them or a bunch of them all at once rather than individually. I’ll still show the process if there are people interested in the art side of it, from concept to rough sketch to painting.
I know, I did the poll and was going to post a selection based on the results of that. But I am painting them in sequence and think the deck will be better presented with the Majors as a group showing the narrative of the work, if that makes sense.
But I can tell you a little about the deck in advance of the preview. I don’t want to unveil the final paintings just yet, so please bear with me a few weeks longer. I think the unveiling will be in September or more likely the first week of October, if all goes well. September is a busy month though, with the Fortune’s Wheelhouse Academy Meet-Up Sept. 15th (with Lon Milo!) and I also have a booth at the North Quabbin Garlic and Arts Festival Sept. 29th-30th to prepare for, so it may be more like October. I’m really trying! I am having a hard time preparing stuff for those two events, and keeping up the work on the podcast, because it takes me away from painting where all my true energy is. In hindsight I should have kept myself commitment free, but since I honor my commitments, here we are.
What is different about this deck? I set out to do two things. One is to present the tarot archetypes in a new way, new in that it had to be different from what I or others have done before, and the other thing is to continue to grow artistically. How many times can one say something about each card in a novel way, that is innovative and yet true to tradition, and while challenging oneself as an artist and trying new things? It isn’t an easy task. And while I’d like to think each time around the wheel it gets better in some ways, I also just want to keep moving and working, and not get too hung up on whether it was “better” than my last two decks. So I won’t promise you will like it better, but it will be different, and I hope, good enough that you will like it.
For this new deck, I’m working large. The finished paintings are on A3 cold pressed paper (around 12×16.5″) but the painting area is around 9.5×15″. This is twice as big as the Tabula Mundi originals which are 7×9.5 – and oh maybe fifteen times as big as Rosetta, which was painted card size! Working larger felt right, as I’m also exploring a new medium: watercolors! Now before you start thinking of watercolor as being pale, pastel colors and light washes, I’ll just nip that in the bud and say nope. These are not that. I like COLOR, and the colors are vibrant. I’m working with the Golden Dawn Color Scales again of course, and learning so much more about them this time around. This deck is an exploration of LIGHT and COLOR – and water, thus watercolors, because watercolor is famous for allowing light to shine through from the white of the paper under the colors that are transparent and dispersed by the water. These aren’t the “loose” ethereal style of watercolor painting. I’m afraid my style of painting is more precise than that, though I do incorporate passages that are like that, within the painting. I guess you will see what I mean, soon!
The upside of working larger is, I can incorporate more of the watery techniques that make watercolor art so beautiful and luminous, rather than only working lightly with little water and tiny brushes on a small work. Although, there is plenty of tiny brush work, that’s for sure! I sometimes have to wear a magnifying headlamp. The downside of working larger is, duh, it takes even longer to paint something large than something small. Figures! I didn’t really think that would be the case but of course it does!
Watercolor is a medium I’ve never used much before, and it is said to be the hardest to master (of course!) so this has been a huge learning curve which may explain why it is taking me so long for each one. The only time I ever did anything in watercolor was in the Cups suit of Rosetta Tarot, which had a different media for each suit. That doesn’t really count in my mind, as though I used watercolor some of that was also water based ink which is very different and more like acrylic, and that art was tiny so it wasn’t really possible to use the watercolor in the watery way watercolor is known for. Plus, even then, I found it terribly difficult, and wasn’t very good at it! I had more difficulty with it than any other suit in Rosetta (though the Swords cards were hard too as I had to complete the etchings part of them, scratching the images onto plates in only two weeks for the entire suit, and that was a new medium too. Explains their rough look, but it fits the mood of the suit.) Though I am still learning and by no means have mastered the medium of watercolor, I get it now in ways I didn’t then.
But to give you an idea of the difficulties of a self-taught artist trying to paint in watercolor for the first time, lets just say I’ve had to throw out many paintings. I think I threw out 6-7 versions of the Fool, a Magus or two, 4-5 of the Emperor and 3 or 4 Hierophants right at the beginning, and I still seem to have to throw out one of each for fails. Maybe I won’t have to later in the sequence but it seems to be the price for trying new techniques. I keep finding out maybe they don’t quite work how/where or in the way I envisioned, or having to get them right and keep trying. It is a process of finding my way.
I really loved working on Tabula Mundi Tarot, first the fine lined detailed line art of the black and white version, and then painting them in acrylic inks. But I didn’t want to do 78 works of art in the same media and style again. I wanted to do something new and challenge myself rather than continuing the same way even if it worked out great. These are so different. No lines that show, though I do paint over a light drawing, and what is really hard is that watercolor isn’t like acrylic paint or acrylic ink which can be painted over when dry, so if you don’t like something you can paint over it to modify it. You can’t really do that in watercolor. Maybe a little, but not if you want to retain transparency or avoid colors bleeding into each other.So you pretty much have one shot at everything you put down. So a lot of expensive watercolor paper gets thrown away, sadly. It killed me at first as a Yank but I got over it and now it isn’t the paper that bothers me so much as the time. I guess the time isn’t truly thrown away though, as I learn something each time I ruin one.
The next time I post anything about this deck, there will be pictures, I promise. Sign up for the very occasional newsletter on the home page and you will be one of the first to know.
I realized I should post something here for those of you who, like me, are not on Facebook and so don’t know about this event. If you have been listening to and enjoying the weekly podcast Fortune’s Wheelhouse, where my co-host Susie Chang and I talk about esoteric tarot correspondences, this is something you may be very interested in!
(and if you are just learning about the Fortune’s Wheelhouse podcast, you can get it free on iTunes, Spotify, GooglePlay, Stitcher, Podbean, Player FM, and all of the pod places, or check out our Patreon site as every week we give away by random draw gifts to Patrons including decks, books, perfumes, prints, and all sorts of esoteric themed prizes made by us)
What you may not know is that there is a Facebook group called Fortune’s Wheelhouse Academy, where fans of the podcast and of esoteric tarot and all things occult gather to share all sorts of things. You won’t find me on there because I decided way back at the beginning of time that I should concentrate on art rather than social media and marketing. But Susie is on there, and lots of very well informed esotericists are there, and I admit to sometimes feeling left out of all the fun they get up to!
If you also are not a member of that group, you may not know that the fans who set up the Facebook group have also arranged for a meet up event, at a hotel venue in Massachusetts, for fans of the podcast. You won’t believe this – and I certainly am in awe at our good fortune – but we have a very special guest invited who has agreed to come. Drumroll please….LON MILO DUQUETTE!
Lon has been a governing officer of the OTO since 1975 and is the author of many great esoteric texts. You may know of or hopefully have many of Lon’s awesome body of works including the books Understanding Aleister Crowley’s Thoth Tarot, Chicken Qabalah, Low Magick, The Magick of Aleister Crowley, My Life With the Spirits, and many others! He is incredibly erudite AND has a wicked sense of humor. I have or have at one time had most of his books and enjoyed them all, so it is really exciting it is to have Lon joining us.
Lon is also a recording artist, and I really like his music! We are bringing a guitar to the meetup and he is going to play for us too! As well as give a talk on Qabalah! This is an intimate venue, so far a fairly small group, so it will be a very special event. Here is a link sampling some of his music on his 2015 album Sweet Baba Lon . Check out the tracks Sweet Babalon, Outside the Box, and Class Warfare for a sample of a few favorites.
So if you are a fan of Lon Milo, and of the podcast and the topics related to esoteric tarot, this is an an event to consider! It is happening the weekend of September 15th in central Massachusetts. I’m sorry I haven’t posted about it sooner and that it is short notice. It just occurred to me that those of you other FB outcasts like me might not even know about it! And the news of Lon joining us is fairly recent. I think at first I didn’t want to say anything in case it turned out too good to be true! But it looks like this is happening. If you are on FB, join the Fortune’s Wheelhouse Academy group to find out more. If you aren’t, and want to attend this event, let me know and I will put you in touch with one of the organizers.
