Post Tarot Camp

Hey ya'll! This is my first time to write on my blog after my sojourn over to NYC for The Reader's Conference 2006. I wish I could have taken all of ya with me. We had such a good time! I got to hang out with my heros and heroines of the Tarot elite and could hardly believe my good luck. I have some pics here to share with you. The pic that's up above is one of me about to go out to the Rachael Pollack portion of the Tarot weekend. Look at me cheesin' there.

So, I got to NYC on Friday morning about 9:30 a.m., and should have been completely knackered from my trip, but I wasn't. I was so excited to just be there that I was bright eyed and somewhat bushy tailed. I registered and then went out and talked to one of the other attendees in the gazebo while the conference organizers were getting all the stuff together for us to go into the main room. The first session was about what we were all going to learn while we were there and from whom. I was star-struck!

We had a lunch break at which time I finally got to take a shower, and I was so glad! Flying overnight and having nowhere to lay my head was a different experience for me. :) I'm a "shower a day kinda gal."

Above is a pic of me with Bob Place. He spoke about doing 3 card readings in a way that I was totally unfamiliar with, and I got a lot out of his lecture. I am a big fan of the Alchemical Tarot. I'm a sad Panda that I don't actually own the deck, but had to borrow one from my Magus in order to get to better know Bob's work before the class. Anyway, it didn't take anything away from my enjoyment of the artwork (I just didn't want to give it back!). But I bought the Tarot of the Saints by Bob while I was there. Mind you, I didn't feel I could part with enough money to buy the English edition, but he had the "Tarot el Santos" which he was selling for half price that I scooped up with a high degree of zeal. Who knows? Maybe I'll take Spanish. :)



So we were all seated at big round tables in this ballroom type area at the Marriott, and one of the women at my table was the one you see me with in the picture above. Her name is Elinor, and I just LOVE her. She and I hit it off big time. I guess she's been a student of Ruth Ann's and Wald's (Tarot School - Email me if you want the link to their site) for quite some time and she knew everyone. She was my reading partner on one of the lessons and we had a nice dynamic.

Later that evening, I went out to dinner at a diner with Rachael Pollack, her agent Zoe, Robert Place, Elinor and I guess that was the group. Anyway, it felt kind of surreal to be sitting next to Rachael, who's work I had admired for quite some time. Nice, conversational style writing that works very well with me.

I DID wind up adding to my Tarot collection while I was there. I purchased an "Animal Wisdom" Tarot by Lisa Hunt. It's a nice one, but wasn't the prize of the weekend. Rather, a Tarot of a Moongarden deck was the prize that I was so happy to walk away with for the weekend. It was given to me by a gal from England named "Gaynor." Poor Gaynor....I didn't give her a moment's peace about this deck after seeing it in front of her at the table and her saying that "she didn't like it." I bugged her mercilessly to sell it to me. In the end, she wound up giving it to me for a card reading. What a great trade. The husband and I are planning to go to England for about a week in September. Maybe there will be a look-up opportunity while I'm over there. I sure hope so. Gaynor's a kick in the ass. Here we are:

There is so much more to tell about Tarot camp, and I'm not really in a mood to write too much of a play-by-play at the moment....perhaps later. Or at least I will put some stuff on my static website for you to look at. There was really a lot of good information given at this event. A couple more pics and I promise I'll be done here.

Next is a picture of me and Lon du Marquette - the author of "The Chicken Kabbala" and "The Thoth Tarot" and about a dozen other books, Lon is revered around the world as a ceremonial magician, a mystic and an all-round nice guy. He taught us to sing the name of "Ganesh" to the tune of pop goes the weasel three times through in order to reach the mystical number of repitition, 108. :) That's just how this dude rolls!

Now the pictures of me with these various folks are not the most flattering for me, and normally I wouldn't be sharing them at all, but I'm just too proud of the great learning time I had to be held back from sharing by some neurotic need to look good in pictures. I just DON'T and that's certainly not a new revelation.

Anyway, that was Lon above, and for those of you who are Mary Greer fans - eat your heart out that we had a nice round-table session with Mary on Sunday morning. I can't remember for the life of me what the heck we talked about, because the fecker was at 7:30 in the morning, and I never actually got off of west coast time while I was on the East coast, but I did my best.

Here's a picture of me and Mary Greer after I purchased and got her to sign her latest offering "21 Ways to Read a Tarot Card" - I haven't read it yet, but the premise is BRILLIANT. Very apprapo and I believe it will be a nice catalyst for me to take my own reading in some other directions that I'm not even able to think of quite yet.


And last, but not least is a picture of me with Eileen, my first reading partner. She and I did the initial reading for the conference with each other, and the last reading for the conference with each other. She's a real mensch too. I wanted to purchase Lon's Thoth Tarot book, but had tapped my funds out buying all sorts of other good stuff at the conference. Well, Eileen won the book in a raffle drawing on Sunday before we all headed out of there, and she GAVE IT TO ME! Thanks Eileen! :) She had already purchased one for herself the day before. I dashed out the door immediately to catch Lon so he could sign it for me. He wound up drawing a little charicature of himself on the inside cover, which I thought was a very nice touch. Aliester Crowley was probably rolling over, wherever he is. :)

So that's about all I have time to write at the moment. I have a lovely and very special house guest arriving on my doorstep this evening, and, as you witchy types already know, this weekend isn't the one to be staying in the house messing with the computer. It's Beltaine for Heaven's Sake! Time to get out there and really enjoy the gifts of the heavenly father and the earthly mother. Time to really get down with some gettin' down!

So, Happy Beltaine to all of you! And, you lurkers out there....you know who you are - You are welcome here any and every time.

Love, and hugs,
Asradel
The Good Witch of the West

My Sister Elizabeth

I don't usually write expose type pieces on here, but my good sister (see the pic of me and her together on previous posts) just emailed me about my wicked idiot crazy sister, and well, I just needed to blow off some steam.

I have a sister who is ten years older than me, and I have to tell you, she is nuttier than Opra's shit after a fruitcake binge. She lives in a little po-dunk town in Oklahoma with her one and only son who weights upwards of 625 pounds. I'm not sure, but I think they are on intimate terms. Yes....you heard me....I'm talkin straight out of "Deliverence." It makes me really sick to think about it, but oh well....I guess they deserve each other. He is also whacked in the head - due in no small part to his mothers ministrations.

My sister is so lazy that she doesn't want to work at all. Well, hell! Who does you stupid cooze?! I'm sure that I could find lots of other things to do besides work, but we are called upon as citizens of this country as well as this world to do our part and carry our own weight if we can. Well, not her....she has to be carried by other people. In the spirit of wanting to be handed something and feeling like she is owed something, my idiot sister (see picture inset) decided that she needed to get Social Security disability. Well, it just so happens that my niece, who is truly incapacitated from a surgery gone terribly wrong, is a bright go-getter who knows her way around the social system from her own experiences. Well, to make a long story short, my idiot sister (see picture - which is an amazing likeness, by the way) used my niece to get full disability from the government, on the premise that she is useless and stupid, and yet could not be bothered to compensate my niece in any way. An attorney who does that kind of work would have ass-raped her for over $5,000. But, I tell you as a former paralegal who worked for attorneys who did this kind of work, they wouldn't have been able to get her near that kind of money. Her's was a case where she MAY have gotten a 33% declaration with an attorney, and she STILL would have owed them a butt-load of cash for getting her that. Oh noo.....my niece got her an obscene benefit and when asked if she was going to compensate my niece in ANY way, my idiot sister (see extaordinary likeness of her in insert photo) got pissy and made my niece sign a waiver that said she got NOTHING for her efforts. That poor young woman (my niece) has been through the ringer, has not gotten an even break for about four friggin' years now, and needs all the help she can get herself - but does that cow of sister of mine care? No. In fact, she forwarded the email that my good sister (see previous posts for pictures of my cute sister), the mother of the bright niece, sent inquiring as to what the niece may be getting from it, to the niece telling her "you deal with your mother on this one." Well, I know that I'm rambling and no one on the planet except those people who know the players will be able to follow this, but I just had to vent.

I know that my crazy sister has no life to speak of. I know that she has no friends - except for the ones she pretends to be friends with so she can get a ride to the free cheese dispensary once a month - I know that the only man in her life is her twisted sex-crazed attention-starved son whom she has completely ruined and who also has no friends, but this is a prison of her own making and I find it really hard to feel sorry that she's in it. It just doesn't seem fair to my niece.

Okay....that's done. Whew! Friday's a good day for a rant.

Az

Beauty for the Sake of Beauty

Alrighty then....well, it's just 9 short days until my tarot conference in NYC. I'm getting very excited about it and have been doing a massive amount of reading for people in preparation for attending. I still feel like there's a great deal to do, but I'm trying to be more organic about it. I decided just today that I am taking my smallest suitcase and saving my back rather than taking a bunch of decks and trying to commit self-mutilation by carrying some big-ass suitcase.
So the image that I'm pulling in here has nothing to do with anything I'm writing or doing...it's just so friggin' beautiful that I could not resist. The colors are evocative of deep emotions with me. I would love to have a room painted in these colors, and then, of course, there are the forms. Anyway, it's glorious. I wish I knew who did it. All that I DO know is that it came off of WebShots.


So, my boss is playing golf this afternoon and it's a lazy time around here. I need to be writing documentation on some processes, but I find myself day-dreaming. It's 3:30 and I'm ready to go home already. :)

So anyway, Tarot conference on the brain is where I'm at. I'm making another robe for my circle life. It is going to be the prettiest yet. A nice deep amethyst color with grapes and grapeleaves for contrast. I will be stylin' next full moon circle. :)

That's about it. I just wanted to get a post in because I don't like to let my blog get too stale.

Later gator!