Hangin’ With the Empress

One of the fun questions at the recent Reader’s Studio 2010 in New York was, “Do you know your birth cards?” Somewhere in my tarot travels I had run across this, calculated it and determined myself to be Hanged Man/Empress or, as one RS10 attendee corrected me, that’s Empress/ Hanged Man, thank you! Empresses are like that. You understand.

I was actually initially uncomfortable with the idea of birth cards or even a significator card at all. It’s a kind of “don’t fence me in” thing for me. Some readers will select one of the cards from the deck to represent the sitter. I don’t. It’s a matter of personal choice. When I first started reading tarot in high school, I identified with the High Priestess. I mentioned before I like the HP because she’s the library lady/nerd of the tarot, the guardian of mysteries. When you’re in high school reading tarot, you probably think of yourself as guarding mysteries. Now that I’m older, I’m glad to find a mystery with both hands. I think I do find them more often now but I’m a lot more comfortable with them than I was when I was in high school. I think that’s the process of unfolding knowledge anyway. There are some advantages to being older. But it’s interesting to me that the next card after the High Priestess in the tarot is the Empress, my birth card. My assignment as the High Priestess apparently was a temporary position on my way to my real job.

This works for me. I’ve always been interested in the creative urge in arts, writing, needlework, landscape, even computer programming. And I always wanted to foster creativity in others rather than guarding it from the everyday world like the HP. Fostering creativity is a very “Empress” thing to do.

Not to badmouth the glorious corn and soybean fields of central Illinois, but when I lived there years ago, I craved any shift in the landscape. I stalked creativity with all the ardor of a hunter after its quarry, a cat after a spider. I found it too. There was a terrific dinner theatre in the biggest barn I’d ever been in, good food and good fun. I bought cheap season tickets to the theatre at the private college near my house. I chased the small town festivals in the summer and found my favorite local artist, Gerry Erley. With my usual lack of self-restraint, I bought many of his pastels, telling him, “Gerry, you make Illinois look like someplace someone would want to live!” This, of course, says more about me than about Illinois, since there are plenty of reasons to want to live there. But his landscapes are transformational, evocative. One of my favorites is a view of a pond and a barn that has a sort of aura about it. Gerry patiently explained to me that pastels often have this quality and this was actually a view from his friend’s backyard one morning when he had a tremendous hangover. What ended up in the picture was so much more ethereal than an aspirin or hair of the dog. Gerry used to list me as having a “major collection” of his works. I was a patroness of the arts.

When I learned my birth cards, though, I was a little surprised to find I had two. Besides the Empress, there is also the Hanged Man. I loved Rachel Pollack’s discussion of the Hanged Man at BATS 2009. She talked about the choice the Hanged Man makes. When the card is right side up, the Hanged Man has consciously chosen to follow his own path, even if it separates him from society; upside down and he’s given up his own path to conform to society.

It was during that discussion that I realized that the bird that I use as my icon is a representation of both the Empress and the Hanged Man. The bird is the female of her species and she is hanging upside down, looking at the world her way. And I recognized that that’s the difference I see in myself, something I like about me, something about the creative, intuitive and actually, in the truest sense of the word, synthetic way that I approach just about everything. The Empress/Hanged Man has grown comfortable in her own upside-down skin.

This evidences itself in so many things I do. Today, I noticed it when I was cooking.

So first off, I didn’t really mean to cook today. I thought my husband was going to do that. He likes to cook and we talked about recipes and ideas the night before. I thought I was fostering the creative process. I found out this morning that I was actually doing the creating. He had invited a friend of ours over to pick up baseball tickets and actually had something of a tea party brunch in mind. One thing that happens when two extraverts marry is that they make the often erroneous assumption that the other person has expressed themselves fully. We then are confused to find out that a detail or two might have been omitted. For instance, the detail today was that I was doing the cooking. After we got that figured out, I sent him off to the market and stood looking at the open recipe book. And the Empress/Hanged Man took over.

I like recipe books. I think of them as interesting suggestions on what to cook. They are just a little too linear for me to feel comfortable actually following the directions in a recipe, especially when I’m doing this on a Saturday morning as an unexpected activity. And just about anyone who knows me will tell you I’m a lot better at following suggestions than directions. A fine point, I admit.

The menu had solidified itself enough in my mind last night that I had slept well. We had determined that my favorite salad (mixed greens heavy on the arugula, onions, sliced red pears, walnuts and bleu cheese with a vinaigrette dressing), plus some egg frittata-cheesy-thinger, plus, the “snails” we jokingly promised our friend, which turned out to be the forbidden fruit of Pillsbury’s orange rolls would be just enough. If you put those orange rolls on a pan and turn the outside tail out, you get a roughly snail-shaped roll covered in that yummy orange frosting that cannot be good for your blood sugar. But now I was faced with that egg thingamajig.

So, in true Bippety Boppety Boo Empress/Hanged Man fashion, I made up a recipe and, if I must be forced to brag about my own cooking, it was really good! I wanted quiche but I didn’t have time to make a crust, and felt a little guilty about a crusted item when I was already planning for the all-too-sinful “snail” rolls. So I improvised. If you try it, let me know if you like it! Also, I’m pretty sure you can make this in a much more healthy version than I did with Egg Beaters, turkey bacon, lowfat Swiss cheese, and skim milk.

Marcia’s Crustless Quiche

8 eggs

8 slices of bacon

½ cup of diced green onion

¼ cup of chopped fresh parsley

6 oz. shredded Swiss cheese

3 cups of half and half

½ tsp. salt

1 tsp. black pepper

¼ tsp of nutmeg



Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Spray glass 8”x8” baking dish with release agent (e.g., Pam). Cook bacon until crispy; blot and crumble. Line bottom of baking dish with crumbled bacon so that entire bottom of dish is covered. Cover the bacon with 6 oz. shredded Swiss cheese. Using a wire whisk, beat eggs just until mixed. Add half and half and beat until well mixed. Stir in salt, pepper, nutmeg, parsley and onions. Pour egg mixture over bacon and cheese. Cook at 350 degrees for 1 hour until top is puffy and slightly browned. Remove from oven and let sit for 15 minutes.

Serve with salad and sweet rolls for and elegant easy brunch. Also serve with Brook Bond tea with cream and sugar. Add friend and her fascinating stories about her recent trip to Viet Nam. It is a recipe for delight!

**

Want to know how to find out your tarot birth cards? Here’s a site that will calculate yours for you at The Tarot School. Thanks, as always, to Ruth Ann and Wald Amberstone and their always fascinating insights to Tarot! http://www.tarotschool.com/Calculator.html

Best wishes!

Still Time to Sign Up for Tarot Basics Workshop June 6, 2010

Tarot Basics Workshops 2010: I will be teaching four workshops on tarot in 2010. To enroll, you may contact me at 707-235-4211 or Angel Heart 4 You at 707-745-2024.



Angel Heart 4 You
501 First St.
Benicia, CA 94510
707-745-2024



Tarot Card Basics Workshop



DATES:

Air - Thinking Tarot. An Introduction to the 78 Cards - Sunday, February 28, 2010

Earth - Touching Tarot. History, Myth and the Tarot - Sunday, June 6, 2010

Fire - Inspired Tarot. Collecting, Writing and Creating Tarot - Sunday, September 19, 2010

Water - Feeling Tarot. Beginning Reading - Sunday, November 14, 2010



TIME: 3:00pm - 5:00pm



INFORMATION:

Touching Tarot. History, Myth and the Tarot - Join me for a fun romp through the history and myths about Tarot.  Answer burning questions like:  Is it OK to sleep with more than one tarot deck under your pillow?  Where did tarot come from?  What do you mean, tarot is a game?  Enrich your own readings with this deeper dive (with floatation device) into the mysterious and amazing world of tarot.

Class members are encouraged to bring their own decks if they have them. If they do not already have a deck, they can borrow one during the class but they are encouraged to obtain their own deck of cards for further study. AH4Y has some decks available for purchase.


Note: This is a class on tarot, not oracle cards. While oracle cards and other types of cards will be discussed in the second class, the focus of these classes will be on tarot. We will be reviewing both the major arcana (22 cards) and minor arcana (56 cards), the complete deck of 78 cards.



Price per person per class is $35



Best wishes!

At Long Last, Love

I knew a man, but not so very well,

His secret he could to no one tell,

Until his kind and fluffy wife did expire

Then would he choose to show himself entire.



He bought the finest fitted outerwear

And traveled freely first class everywhere

In pent up rage, with once-hidden love aglow

And a well-formed paid companion in tow.



Cancer. In vanity he could not bear to endure

Disfigurement that might have meant a cure,

He learned almost too late his family’s devotion,

Fortune spent, neither nature nor choice the magic potion.



Truth will out, often with a sharp blade at its side.

Closet’s closest friend, the mirror, hangs outside.

The fragrance of the violet is forgiveness’ scent.

Oh spring up gently towards us, twig, when you are bent.



It was not the secret that swordlike ran us through,

But the fury aimed at all his own when he at last was true.

The Moon shows but one face to us from up above.

How far must we all travel until, at long last, love?

***
 
For him and for those who loved him, who are dear to me.
 
Best wishes.

The Lady in Her Garden

My friend Ruth sent me a snapshot of my old house in Illinois today. It was like seeing an old friend, catching up. I mean the house. I miss Ruth and her partner Tana, too. Ah, but the house! There are children’s toys scattered outside and the neighbors must have cut down the enormous maple tree that encroached on my backyard property line, shading the entire back yard. It brought back memories of things that almost worked out.

I had landed a job as a programmer with a major insurance company making more money that I had ever thought possible. It wasn’t a king’s ransom. It probably qualifies today for assistance. But then it was wonderful. And I was so tired of living in apartments where the noises were other people’s noises and the parking was uncertain. I wanted a place of my own. Finding one was a bit of a challenge, but I did. It had been a very rainy year with some of the worst flooding in years and I had found out the benefit of looking for houses in the worst weather possible. I could tell which basements were dry. When mold is not your friend, this becomes important. The guy I was dating at the time was a landlord with a creative eye for, well, eyesores that could be turned into something livable with a little effort. This old house was going to be my old house.

The house had been built in 1896 or 1897, a gap in recordkeeping making it uncertain. It was built by a single man who later married. By the time I came on the scene, all the cute Queen Anne gingerbread was replaced by “sensible” aluminum siding, all the leaded glass windows had been replaced by “sensible” plain glass and all the lovely hardwood floors had been covered in various hideous carpets and linoleum. And it was worse than that. The house had been divided into two apartments, an upper and a lower. In order to fit a bathroom where no bathroom had ever been intended, some handyman had sawed through a supporting beam to make way for the toilet plumbing. This resulted in the awful suspicion that each time you sat upon the throne, you were headed through the second floor all the way to that dry basement. But it had high ceilings, separate furnaces for a sort of “zone heating” option, lots of space, and a mature although neglected yard. It was very easy to convert back to a single family home by the removal of one door. It was a Victorian monstrosity in my price range. It was, in short, perfect!

Buying an old house is a lot like a second marriage. You realize your sweetie has been around the block, but you don’t always know which blocks until you really get to know them. You’re prepared to ignore or work around the past as long the present and future are headed in the right direction. But there are surprises.

For one thing, I found out rather quickly what will and will not grow under maples, mulberries and chestnuts. Violets, yes. My whole front yard was full of violets. Some poor fool came by one day and offered to take out all those violets and replace them with grass; he left quickly with the verbal equivalent of cat scratches. Spring bulbs, yes! I filled the back yard up with spring bulbs, taking advantage of the early spring sunshine when trees are bare. I had jonquils, scilla, tulips in every color, hyacinth, snow drops and grape hyacinth completely covering the back yard. What a show! By the time the mulberries and maples leafed out, the show was over and what meager grass grew in near-total darkness shared its space with several varieties of hosta for a jungle-y feel. The Breck’s catalogue was my candy store. I found out you work around maple trees, especially ones that are too big around to hug and have foliage so dense you needed a flashlight on a summer day. So that meant, tomatoes, no. But wait! There was one little patch in the back yard, my sunbeam, capable of sustaining tomato life. But it moved. I planted my tomatoes in pots and put them in a little red wagon. When the sunbeam moved, I moved the wagon. Perfect!

And I found myself in the curious and possibly never to be repeated position of actually having too much space. There were rooms I didn’t go into for a week at a time because, well, because I didn’t. Even when my father shipped me a vanload of antique shop leftovers, I still had the downstairs turret room with nothing in it but the stereo, a drop-leaf table and a couple of chairs. It was in this room I had my most startling paranormal experience. But it wasn’t the first one in that house.

I was in the downstairs kitchen (remember, two apartments, two kitchens) which I considered THE kitchen one early evening. I was happily sautéing some liver and onions, a private indulgence I can share with few others, and playing with my then-new puppy Rusty. Rusty was a bouncy Cardigan Welsh corgi and he loved playing with a tennis ball. All was quiet besides sauté and happy dog noises when I turned around to find a puddle of liquid in the middle of the kitchen floor. “Naughty Rusty!” I thought, putting him in his crate to keep from making a small problem worse.

I wiped up the puddle and could not help noticing that it actually wasn’t a “Rusty puddle.” It was just water. I looked everywhere for a leak, including going upstairs to the balancing act bathroom, turned things on and off, checked the ceiling for dampness, with no result. There was no dried trail from under the sink, no drip, no splash. It had just been a puddle. Shrugging it off and with Rusty safely snoozing in his crate, I resumed my work at the counter to fix dinner. Only a few minutes had passed when I turned around and, you guessed it, there was the puddle again. I checked everything again, my L&O growing cool and unappetizing by the minute. Finally, after wiping up the puddle again with no apparent origin, I said loudly in a verbal To Whom It May Concern, “OK, you guys, stop scaring people!” It never happened again.

Later that year, my father, with all good intentions of clearing out his own house, made me take home my golf clubs and bag. I say “made” because in truth I don’t golf. Good walk spoiled, the whole shebang. After the 6 hour drive home from Dad’s house, I dragged the bag and clubs into the house and leaned them against the wall next to the front door, dashed upstairs to see what havoc the cats had wreaked in my absence and settled in front of the TV. All of a sudden, I heard a crash, like glass breaking, like someone driving into the house, something bad. I dashed downstairs to find my bag and clubs lying on the floor against the far wall of the living room, some 20 feet away from where I had left them, doors still locked, windows still closed, but strewn at the end of the living room.

To Whom It May Concern, “OK, I’m putting the golf clubs away now!” And I put them in the closet. No further flinging of objects occurred after that. Crud, I thought. Just my luck to get some neat-freak ghost.

My last experience, as I mentioned, was the most startling and was in the downstairs turret room. It was winter, one of the bright white days after a snowfall. The afternoon sun streamed into the tall turret windows and warmed the room. I was standing in the closet doorway realizing that some well-intentioned person had first filled the archway in the wall at the back of the closet once connecting the turret room to the dining room with a simple painted bookcase. I was happy with the bookcase since I always have too many books. But later someone had built a very flimsy wall out of chipwood paneling, installed two sets of sliding doors and a rod across the length of it to make a closet. I hated that closet and that awful paneling. I stood there in mental renovation and determined that the result of taking out that paneling had a cascade effect that would result in…tearing out the ceiling in the living room. Ack!

It was at this moment of deep contemplation standing in the bright afternoon sunlight staring into the problem closet that I realized that there was, in fact, someone standing next to me. He too stared into the closet with consternation. He was about 5’6”, very slim build, with very thin light brown hair, a round head, steel-rimmed glasses, a long-sleeved white cotton shirt with sleeve garters to hold them up accountant-style, rust-brown coarse-woven wool pants and I never got to his shoes because I was so flabbergasted. He never looked at me. He just rubbed his chin and looked irritated at the closet. And then, he was not there. No Star Trek sparkles, no wispy dematerialization, no Cheshire cat smile. Just gone. And me with no camera. Alone, except for misbehaving animals, all of whom were a-snooze elsewhere in the house. The “holy grail” of paranormal experiences and I can’t prove a thing!

I lived there almost four years before moving to California to a new life and new adventures. It took a long time to sell the Money Pit and finally went for the price of a pretty good, not very good car. Yet I missed my house. It was a house of compromises, of dreams almost fulfilled, of space shared with the unseen. It was my “fixer-upper” life. While I lived there, I was pretty sure I was well on my way to becoming the Cat Lady in the neighborhood. My friends at work could not understand why a single woman would want to live in such a big, old, crazy house in the first place.

“Because I can stretch out my arms and not touch anything,” I told them. “Because I can make ‘rug angels’ in the awful shag carpet downstairs and no one will care but me.” But mostly, like the 9 of Pentacles, the Lady in Her Garden, having built my funny little world around me, it was mine.

Thanks, Ruth!

Best wishes.

The Incompleat Workes of Beth the Jester

Oh, wow, I’m breathless! I just received my latest Beth Seilonen decks, among them, the Tarot of the Red Jester. And I also just received the originals of a deck not otherwise published, Owls in the Night. Beth lives and breathes art and tarot in Maine. I would like to say I’m one of her oldest fans, but I think there are people older than I am who love her work too. At least I hope so.

I first saw mention of her work on Aeclectic Tarot where some of her other fans were oooh-ing and ahhh-ing over her decks. I had to see what the fuss was about. And what a delight! Now, I know that there’s a time and place for those bite-you-in-the-neck-scream-and-swoon decks; I have those too, trust me. Even the relentlessly optimistic have a dark side. But Beth’s work fills a gap in the whimsy department like no other tarot artist. So I’ve become one of her frequent patrons of the arts.

Besides those two new arrivals, my collection of Beth’s work is, to my mind, small: Another Way, Arcana Cats, Fishy Tarot (true, I’m a fish-nut but I love these fish), Foxy Arcana, Funky Lighthouse, the incomparable Isabel Snail, the Pink Arcana, Purple Penguin, Home Sweet Home, Split View, Tree Women, Watchers, Whimsy Tarot, Witches II and Jester’s Tarot (not to be confused with Tarot of the Red Jester). It is by no means a complete collection! Yet to be snagged are The Maine, Sun Conure, Symbolically Simplistic, Hues, Sails, Baby of Thine, well, good grief, you guys, just go look at all this lovely stuff! http://www.catseyeart.com/index.html

Beth’s decks aren’t just whimsy and color. Her trees bear messages of the harm we do to the environment, the preciousness of our earth, the delight of life and the enormity of circumstance as viewed by the individual. Take a close look at her Watchers and you’ll start looking over your shoulder. Her Tree Women have deep roots. Even bouncy little Nestor the Jester in the Pink Arcana shows the emotion and ambiguity of the tarot much deeper than his pink rolly-polliness may at first glance convey. The Jester makes us laugh, but stay a moment because he (or is that she?) makes us think too. The Jester plucks the conscience of the king as Shakespeare might suggest. Even slow-moving, unsuspecting, gentle and delicate Isabel Snail can ooze up to rest on the wrong golf ball of life with dire consequences. As in that funny-but-true song, “Sometimes you’re the windshield. Sometimes you’re the bug.”

Beth’s limited edition decks are easy to read with but personally, I don’t usually want to take the risk of ruining them with shuffling and use. I do like to get them out to admire and meditate. Isabel Snail’s Tower feels just like October 2002 for me. I can still feel that *whoosh* of the wind I caught just before life hit me right square in the snail shell. The Foxy Arcana “Yearn” shows we all have dreams, the fox and the chickens: If you have sweet little dreams, you sleep; if you have obsessive dreams, you’re up all night.

Just this past weekend, though, I broke my own rule about reading with Beth’s cards. Owls in the Night is so tiny (most of Beth’s decks are “normal” playing card size, but the Owls deck is a bit smaller) that it easily slips into my purse along with what seems to be several hundred pounds of other stuff in there (the Hubs swears this is where the missing Mr Hoffa may be…gotta love those vintage Dooney & Burkes for durability). I read for a private party, some delightful ladies, one of whom had been the successful bidder on my silent auction offering at the Benicia Vallejo Humane Society’s Barkitecture fundraiser. Our hostess plied me with the always-welcome endless glass of water and a glazed donut, plus treated me to a break between readings with a walk in her backyard full of roses and a glorious view of the Carquinez Straits. As a special treat, each sitter got to pick an owl’s card as their closing message for the day. It ended what might have been a “heavy” session on a light note.

Each of Beth’s decks has come with its own hand-decorated box and usually a little drawstring pouch. They are generally laminated, numbered, signed and easy to hold. Beth’s note cards are nearly as much fun as her decks. And, with Beth’s permission, I wanted to share some examples here with you.

The best news of all is that Beth appears to be nowhere near the end of her creativity with tarot. Her Red Jester comes in two alternatives, true to her tailored to the customer’s wish, in its limited edition. For those who want only to be guided by the image, there is the choice of having the card interpretations printed on additional cards supplied with the deck. For those collectors who want to preserve both her images and words together on each card, there is the choice to have the Red Jester “with interpretation.” In addition, there’s a silk cloth, 11” x 11” in choice of 4 colors. I picked “with” and red, being subtle in my collecting.

I’m quite pleased to note that we have available to us here the (happily) Incompleat Workes of Beth the Jester, a whimsical Maine artist and mom, with wonderful new visions of the funny, scary, angry, sad, joyful and loving world of tarot. Encore! Encore! May your inks and watercolors never run dry!

You can find Beth’s decks through this website: http://www.catseyeart.com/index.html, on Etsy, on eBay and if you’re really nice, she’ll accept your friend invitation on Facebook. Please write to her to encourage her to come to this year’s BATS (Bay Area Tarot Symposium) too!

**

Psst! Registration for BATS just opened and they accept PayPal. The dates are August 28-29, 2010 in San Francisco. It’s loads of fun for tarot enthusiasts and always features fabulously informed experts and a luscious marketplace. For more information and registration, go to http://www.dodivination.com/sf_bats



Best wishes!

Pet Cards

I recently acquired a tarot deck for my collection called Tarot Cards for Cats illustrated by Kipling West. West’s cats look like pleasant, approachable and intelligent creatures. This got me thinking about my own cats and tarot. My cats are not always the storybook kind but there is a card for each of them.

Alice, a dramatically marked Maine Coon of the “fat crayon” variety and the biggest, toughest creature in the house, is extraverted and mild mannered despite her nickname "Alice Malice". Alice came to us one Christmas season when she wandered into a friend’s house during a party; the friend was highly allergic to cats, so her humans rescued everyone involved and brought her home. Alice's favorite toys are full boxes of tissues, Tinkertoys and her siblings who aren't as happy about being prey animals as Alice thinks. She is paws-down the Alpha Cat in the house and her reign is a relatively mild and optimistic one since her purpose in life is to luxuriate at all costs. She is fond of her spa time when her humans are in the shower and can be found spread out upon the bathmat. At nearly 25 lbs, she is an enthusiastic eater. Alice loves the cocker spaniel, giving him spontaneous hugs, baths and other nervously unrequited attentions. Alice is a catnip lover, a connoisseur of blends from exotic places. She is also a bird-lover, attracted to all things musical. In her own contribution to the musical world, she is the loudest snorer in the family, even snoring while awake at times. Often others will remark on the little flute-like noises she makes. She prefers to sleep at the top of the cat tower or, basically, anywhere she likes. She adores men, especially her male human, often alighting with delight (hers) in his lap. Alice is very best friends with the only male member of the cat cast, Tony, who approaches but cannot match her weight. Alice's dream is to be a spa resort spokesmodel and to lounge by the water; she would also enjoy learning to bowl. An 8-lb ball should be about right. Alice's card is the Queen of Pentacles.

Peepers, a pale Siamese-ish 9 lb “alley point" with striking blue eyes, is a shy girl prone to snooze in linen closets. She came to her home as a beach bunny from the Seal Beach Animal Shelter after her previous owner was unable to care for her. A cat of discriminating tastes, she bit the first interested prospective caretaker before surrendering herself into purrs in her current owner’s hands during the interview. She has become quite a lap-kitty in her maturity, a pleasant change from her originally self-imposed isolationist stance, but likely one of a practical nature as most laps in the house are warm. Peeps, as she is known within the family, seeks balance in life including retribution for wrongs done to others. A few years ago, when Binket was a kitten, the kitten squalled when she got stuck at the door. Peepers flew out of hiding and promptly beat the dickens out of the dog, an innocent bystander unjustly accused of abuse. To avoid further fallout from this traumatic incident, we have never told Peeps that it was in fact her male human who had made the baby cry. Peepers’ favorite toys are those which are sparkly and crackly, lightweight and easily lost. In her heart of hearts, Peepers would rather be an only cat of a quiet, elderly, dogless couple in a home with light-blocking window treatments and plenty of linen closets. One of her principal forms of communication is through her tail, which can assume the pose of a question mark when curious, can lash like a whip at the guilty and can point at right angles to an empty food dish to alert authorities to an imbalance in the distribution of resources. Peepers' card is Justice.

Eleanor a/k/a Ellie and Elly-Belly is a sensitive 5 lb touch-me-not with a very feminine long black and white tuxedo coat with no undercoat. She hails from the Benicia-Vallejo Humane Society. She is the most vocal of the five cats. There are several deep-seated reasons for this. One, her previous owners had her declawed and so, being defenseless, she screams at just about anything. If you are familiar with the Warner Bros cartoon character Pepe LePew and his very, very reluctant girlfriend, Ellie is that girlfriend. In spite of her declawed state, Ellie is voted most likely to slip out the door to explore the back yard although she is easily captured or convinced to return to the safety of the house. Two, whether it is her own kitty-psychology or some pheromone phenomenon, Ellie is the Omega Cat. All the other cats recognize her less-than-zero status and will either chase her until she screams or in rarer event drag her around like a well-loved teddy bear. Ellie loves the cocker spaniel also. However this love is spurned by the usually generous and patient dog who will at most greet her purring and rolling with a soft low rumble of warning to stop doing that before everyone is embarrassed. Ellie also adores her male human, usually standing solidly on his torso, kneading his tummy in ecstasy with her tail closest to his face. Last, and certainly not least, Ellie has the oft-remarked-upon habit of leaving a strong-scented “perfume” reminder on objects made of soft cloth or comfortable pillows in the night. For her consistent role of self-imposed victimization, Ellie’s card is the Eight of Swords.

Binket is a hardy 7 lb short-haired calico with an in-your-face temperament and no respect for authority. Dubbed “No No Bad Cat” by her ever-patient humans, she spent much of her youth trying to catch paper going into or coming out of personal printers and running up the antique quilt (now in shreds) which used to hang on the wall just to prove her cleverness. Binket came to us from a cat rescue group in southern California complete with a roaring case of ringworm which she shared with the entire family before all were cured. Despite her physical beauty and diminutive size, she is a ferocious gladiator in her plan for world dominance. Voted least likely to become a lap cat, Binket does have a soft side, one she views with obvious discomfort. Ellie is her favorite friend, due in large part to their immediate acknowledgement of dominance and submission. Binket relies on Ellie’s superior fashion sense and grooming while Ellie fawns over Binket’s talent for cruelty and torture. Binket and Ellie can often be found companionably snoozing in a large basket in a sunny window when Binket isn’t mopping up the floor with the ever-willing Ellie. Binket has a soft spot for any small puffy thing resembling a cotton ball usually called Puff Baby in various incarnations. She fancies herself a romance-thriller writer and will play out scenes where Puff Baby is in terrible danger, lost under a door perhaps, and in need of rescue. She is perhaps working out some of the trauma of her kittenhood having been rescued from the Boeing plant in her youth. And a romantic she is, for she adores without reservation the cocker spaniel, often cooing to him, rubbing herself on him and otherwise seducing the equally smitten yet polite dog with her charms. She and the dog are the inter-species scandal of the neighborhood. Binket’s dark side is most clearly demonstrated by harboring an intense hatred of the much larger, much slower and good-natured Tony. She expends much energy attempting to kill him. Formerly the Alpha Cat, she was forced to give way to the sheer weight and superior strength of Mighty Alice, but hatches plots daily to recoup her throne. For reasons that should be obvious, Binket’s card is The Devil.

Tony is an unsuspecting dark mackerel tabby of 15 lbs. Tony came to us from the Benicia-Vallejo Humane Society when his owner made a fateful side-trip on her way to a rugby game. Tony’s big heart and affectionate manner would melt even the heart of a rugby team owner. A lookalike for B. Kliban’s Cat, Tony has a smallish head with a smallish brain to match, green eyes (one of which has a stripe), a large pendulous butter-colored abdomen, small feet and a heart of gold. Curious about his unusual shape, more turtle-like than cat-like in some ways, his humans consulted specialists to make sure of his health. The vet pronounced him normal, if “funny looking,” and speculated that his parents were probably peculiarly shaped cats also. Tony is a lover, not a fighter. He is best pals with the cocker spaniel who recognizes his sincerity and gentleness and enjoys the company of Alice when she deigns to visit the northern borders of her realm. Because of Binket’s clear intent to murder Tony, he tends to stick to the safety of the north side of the house making his home in the bedroom, bathroom and office. He is fond of sleeping in soft round places like the muffin shaped pet beds or his person’s arms. He is always first to greet his person as she steps out of the shower, eager to reminisce to the scent of freshly washed hair. Tony’s favorite toys are his Stuart Little mouse and Mike Fink the Flat Mink, late of the fashion section of the Church Mouse Thrift Shop on the Plaza in Sonoma. He started out being an infielder, playing a great game of fetch with a soft ball (as opposed to a softball) but soon tired of the annoyance of having to bring the ball back. He is very much the companion cat, often jumping into laps and onto shoulders, assisting with paperback novels as they are being read, attending in the bathroom, coming when called and even placing items of jewelry in shoes so that they will not be lost for long. He is quiet, peace loving and down to earth by nature, his midsection preventing much climbing and exploring in the aerie reaches. Tony’s ambition is to sleep, eat and snuggle with his female human as much as possible. Some less charitable within the household might call him a “Mama’s Cat.” Tony’s card is the Page of Pentacles.

The cocker spaniel asked not to be named to protect his privacy. A rescue himself from the Furry Friends Rescue, we have only recently begun to deduce that he has been placed with us as part of the Federal Witness Protection Program since he refuses to have his picture taken or published. He is a gentleman of refined manner and obvious breeding who has taken great pains to be gracious to his ill-bred but well-meaning family. Negotiations with him for an exclusive interview are pending. Once those have been completed and approved, a profile and card will be published. Until then, eager readers, we must give him his cherished anonymity.

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Please donate to the pet rescue group of your choice and, if you can, provide a forever home for a little someone special.

Best wishes.

Ghost Hunting with the Page of Swords

One of my guilty pleasures is ghost hunting. I’m definitely in the casual hobbyist category, so if you’re looking for a treatise on technical expertise in ghost hunting, you will definitely need to seek other sources. But I’ve stalked a spook or two in my time.

First, it helps to have some of the tools to hunt ghosts. This is where the “geek” part of the mystique comes in and, in fact, a make-it-or-break-it point for people who aren’t scared by the whole topic at the outset. The arsenal of cool tools for ghost hunters starts to look like the clubhouse for the Lone Gunmen from the X-Files television show: racks of gadgets with meters and wires, surplus batteries, hats with lights, cameras of all kinds to pick up regular light, infrared, heat signatures, full-spectrum cameras, and recording devices of all kinds.

This is the haven of the Page of Swords, who seeks the truth through observation and listening and uses passive energy. He may ignore truth initially, especially if it is handed to him, but he holds onto it just the same. He may have truth in his hands, but still look for more.

The Page of Swords often gets a bad rap as a guy you can’t trust, maybe even a spy. He may or may not be on your side. He’s not ready to say yet. He hasn’t made up his mind because he’s still in observation mode. Who is the Page of Swords? What does he want? What does he know? What will he do with what he knows? Can you trust him? Even if you’ve known him all your life, do you know him at all? Sometimes I think of him as being the Skate Board Kid who is a little angry, a little withdrawn, a little rebellious (not to characterize all skateboarders as the same, oh, please) who isn’t going to settle for what he’s been told. He has to find out for himself. He grows his hair his own length to see what that’s like. He doubts authority and therefore appears to be anti-social. He’s looking for the truth, but his own way. He may not even be very skilled at looking for the truth, but that doesn’t really matter because all the evidence he gathers is helpful to him somehow. It may point out flaws in his method, prove a new tool to be useful, debunk a myth or provide that something that drives him to seek further. He’s a work in progress.

In maturing, he finds that the more he learns, the less he is sure of what he knows. At some point, this may make the Page become bitter and abandon his search, or it can be the fuel that keeps him seeking, despite advice to the contrary. And so often our society thinks of those who continue pursuit of this knowledge as being rebellious and immature people who have not yet concluded their search is fruitless. Ah, but is it fruitless? And in that gap, in that possibility, there is room to continue the search for truth.

The amateur ghost hunter need not pump thousands of dollars/pounds/Euro into a thermal imaging camera to get some rewarding results. A tape or digital voice recorder can capture EVP’s or electronic voice phenomena, to my mind one of the eeriest pieces of evidence possible. An inexpensive digital camera can capture still photos. For a little more money, web cams can be set up. Some hunters like to use a Tri-Field Meter or EMF meter to measure electromagnetic fluctuations. And, for the even smaller budget, some people even employ dowsing rods. Of course, if you are the Page of Swords and your Dad is, say, the King of Coins with a soft spot for you, Dude, get that thermal imager!

All these methods have flaws of course. And yet that’s the romance of the hunt, in a way. Trying to hear, see or touch something that might be there, just out of reach is the fascination. It’s something of a hunt but the distinction is important. The hunters aren’t actually trying to catch a ghost, like a trophy to hang on the wall. In fact, there’s a strong argument from experienced paranormal researchers that you probably don’t want to bring Casper home with you. The hunters are actually much more aligned with the X-Files theme. For them, The Truth is Out There, or in a place reputed to be haunted. Their quarry is The Truth. Because we don’t know, not like we know lions and tigers and bears oh my! exist. If we have had our own experience with the paranormal, we know. But where’s the proof?

For nearly every piece of paranormal evidence presented, there is someone who can find a reasonable scientific explanation. Nearly. And then there are those tantalizing exceptions. Worse yet is when you’ve had an experience of your own. Well, worse or better, it’s hard to say. It’s worse because you know something happened to you but you don’t know exactly what. You can tell people and they might think you’re crazy. You can keep it to yourself and it will gnaw at you. But if you didn’t have a large group of people experience exactly the same thing, it’s just a personal experience. And if you did have a large group of people experience the same thing, well, there’s that delusion of crowds thing. So unless you actually caught it on untampered film, corroborated by other recording devices and have some physical evidence left that proves…well, what? Tough, isn’t it? What you’ve got is a great story that some people will believe and some people won’t, no matter what. But it can be better too because it happened to you.

So, OK, yes, I have had my own paranormal experiences. I think they were ghosts or hauntings or some kind of paranormal thingamabob. No, I can’t say for sure, Nobel Prize winning scientifically sure, that I bagged the Big One. I was startled, not scared, each time. And like many moments in life, I didn’t have my camera or any other recording equipment with me. But each time was pretty interesting. So I like to learn about other people’s experiences. And I would like to capture some evidence, in that casual hobbyist sort of way.

It’s a passive “sport.” It takes patience or more accurately persistence. You wait. You listen. You watch. You review hours of recordings. You do what you can to eliminate “pollution” during the hunt. You do what you can to eliminate anything that could be explained by any other means in the review of evidence. The hunt isn’t about you; you’re just there to get evidence.

Absolutely the most difficult part of it is just getting approved access to a place where purported paranormal activity is happening. Think about it. Are you going to let just any Page of Swords into your house when you’re having a weird problem? Oh, and “purported” is a very important part of the whole deal, too. Filtering out the crazy kid stuff stories from the reports from people who honestly think something is going on they can’t explain is hard too. Access is easier when the hunters band together under some organization for legitimacy so they don’t just look like scruffy kids with techno-fever. Since the Page of Swords is not particularly a joiner, these organizations tend to come and go.

People aren’t cards or archetypes though, so those dedicated paranormal researchers who have maturity, a sense of spirituality, and a need to assist people with their problems, whether their haunted location is overburdened with stray electrical emissions, noisy plumbing, curious rodents, anxiety-ridden occupants or something much more interesting, have a much longer lasting calling to find The Truth at last. And to you I say, “Good hunting!”

Best wishes.