Divination has been a source of fascination for me since I was a child. My first exposure to it was at a Baptist Bible Camp somewhere north of Lubbock, Texas sometime in the mid to late seventies. You know how there is always that one kid in a group who has an undeniable creative spark? Passion and an explorer's heart makes the energy around them crackle. They live for leading everyone else into encounters with the deliciously forbidden, possibly even perdited world of taboos set forth by our elders. That wasn't me. I was the fat, bespectacled, and frankly terrified girl sitting in the back so I could escape if things went wrong. In spite of all that, what I saw spoke to me. I wanted to learn more.
I should have known it was in my DNA. It seems like everything that is second nature can be found further up my family tree.* When it comes to divination, my paternal cousins were all very good at it and my tia-abuela, M., made her pin money by reading cards, interpreting dreams, signs, and tea leaves, and casting charts. Her house was a source of fascination for me with its stacks of magazines devoted to UFOs and astrology and her loom. Both she and her husband were makers before being a maker was alt and therefore cool.
Not that she ever needed a reason to make fetch happen. M. had run out of wet slaps to give long before I was born. She happily took clients throughout the week and faithfully tithed every Sunday. She was a grande dame as far as two-headed ladies went. By the way, that is one of many terms people here in the Southeastern U.S. have for the wise women in their communities. Sometimes you'll hear them referred to as "Hoo Doo Women," and "Rootworkers."
I bought my first Tarot deck in 1988. It what Juliet Sharman-Burke's Mythic Tarot, a refit of the Rider Waite Deck using imagery from Classical Greek mythology. I still have it. It's a lovely deck for beginners, especially if there is an emotional or intellectual connection with that narrative tradition. As an undergraduate, I read a number of different sources about how and why we divine. As a clinician, I used the tools of divination to help patients develop a vocabulary to express what they were going through. I have continued to learn about divination through the scholarship of other and through good people who see the creation and use of divination tools as a part of the human experience. The elegance of the visual grammar and symbolic systems and the beauty of these tools as pieces of art is undeniable. I hope you'll enjoy exploring them as much as I do.
I should have known it was in my DNA. It seems like everything that is second nature can be found further up my family tree.* When it comes to divination, my paternal cousins were all very good at it and my tia-abuela, M., made her pin money by reading cards, interpreting dreams, signs, and tea leaves, and casting charts. Her house was a source of fascination for me with its stacks of magazines devoted to UFOs and astrology and her loom. Both she and her husband were makers before being a maker was alt and therefore cool.
Not that she ever needed a reason to make fetch happen. M. had run out of wet slaps to give long before I was born. She happily took clients throughout the week and faithfully tithed every Sunday. She was a grande dame as far as two-headed ladies went. By the way, that is one of many terms people here in the Southeastern U.S. have for the wise women in their communities. Sometimes you'll hear them referred to as "Hoo Doo Women," and "Rootworkers."
I bought my first Tarot deck in 1988. It what Juliet Sharman-Burke's Mythic Tarot, a refit of the Rider Waite Deck using imagery from Classical Greek mythology. I still have it. It's a lovely deck for beginners, especially if there is an emotional or intellectual connection with that narrative tradition. As an undergraduate, I read a number of different sources about how and why we divine. As a clinician, I used the tools of divination to help patients develop a vocabulary to express what they were going through. I have continued to learn about divination through the scholarship of other and through good people who see the creation and use of divination tools as a part of the human experience. The elegance of the visual grammar and symbolic systems and the beauty of these tools as pieces of art is undeniable. I hope you'll enjoy exploring them as much as I do.