Month: December 2022

My Responses to #13TarotTubeQuestions

On By benebellIn cartomancy, opinion, personal, tarot, tarot community4 Comments

I’m a big fan of Atypical Tarot‘s channel and have recently become familiar with Astral Lady Tarot, so this was a lot of fun to watch.

Here are my responses to the #13TarotTubeQuestions.

1. What are your favorite videos to watch?

Group discussions, when several TarotTubers get together and chat about a topic. For example, Three Fat Readers with Lisa Papez of Supportive Tarot, Dani Mystic, and Dustin from Modern Metaphysicae, or the Three Girls, One Deck series with Juli from Peekaboorose, Sarah of Sunset Bough Tarot, and Heather Carter.

I also enjoy watching candid chats when people get real and honest about their experiences with the tarot community.

Remember the grainy, poorly-lit midnight rants and unfiltered ramblings people filmed and posted on YouTube back in the early 2000s? Yeah. I miss those. Those were my favorite.

Continue reading “My Responses to #13TarotTubeQuestions” →

Pastoral Tarot by Lynn Araujo and Lisa Hunt

On By benebellIn deck review, tarot9 Comments

Lisa Hunt’s art style is one of my favorites, with its intricate detailing, expressive features, and delicate grace. What she does with watercolor is nothing short of spectacular.

Hunt had mainly done high fantasy and mythology-inspired art in the past, so to see her take on the traditional American landscape painting is a treat. Look at how she rendered the quilt patterns in the Eight of Pentacles, the softness yet precision of Hunt’s lines.

The Pastoral Tarot celebrates the idyllic life of small towns of New England and the Mid-Atlantic, through the countryside of the Mid-West, and the coastal regions. Each landscape piece is a scene out of Americana, a call back to 20th-century North American life.

Continue reading “Pastoral Tarot by Lynn Araujo and Lisa Hunt” →

Wisdom from the Epics of Hind by Pankhuri Agarwal and Rahul Das

On By benebellIn oracle deck1 Comment

Wisdom from the Epics of Hind is easily one of my favorite oracle decks, and the production value is perfection. The artwork is beautiful, I love Rahul Das’s style, and you’ll learn so much about how to approach professional divinatory readings from Pankhuri Agarwal’s guidebook.

This deck brings in influences from the Ramayana, the Mahabharata, the Vedas, Puranas, and the Upanishads, just to name a few. Practical advice is offered for every card, such as guidance on forest bathing (walking, breathing, and meditating through the woods to restore your health) and including foods that contain vitamin E and omega fatty acids in your diet, to the spiritual practice of kindness, how you can be both kind and shrewd at the same time and taking note of the moon phase whenever you’re feeling moody to see if there is a pattern emerging. And learn the moon mantra: Om Chandraya Namaha.

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The Cantigee Oracle: An Ecological Spiritual Guide to Spark Your Creativity

On By benebellIn deck review, oracle deckLeave a comment

The Cantigee Oracle by Rae Diamond and illustrated with watercolor art by Laura Zuspan is a deck that inspires mindfulness, compassion, and creativity. It seeks to motivate evolutionary change in both the individual and the collective. You’ll find homages to Buddhism, Taoism, Yoga, animism, and science.

This is a 52-card circular deck with standard cardstock and a slight laminate finish. Some of the oracle messages are omens, such as “A Swarm of Bees,” “The Coiled Snake,” or “The Exploding Star.” You’ll get messages like “Your Ears Become a Butterfly” and “Clouds Pass but the Mountain Remains,” evocative of the pithy figurative language often found in Taoist texts.

Continue reading “The Cantigee Oracle: An Ecological Spiritual Guide to Spark Your Creativity” →

Oracle of Initiation: Rainbows in the Dark by Mellissae Lucia

On By benebellIn book review, cartomancy, deck review, oracle deck5 Comments

Mellissae Lucia’s Oracle of Initiation was first released a decade ago in 2012, but it’s new to me, and I am utterly in awe of the breadth and scope of this divination system. This is a review of the deck, but also its 400-page companion book by the same name.

The Oracle of Initiation is the narrative story of one woman’s descent into the underworld and return. It is a mesmerizing photographic memoir of loss, initial resistance with numbness, realizing you need to surrender, and reawakening your inner magic.

At the age of 33, Lucia lost her husband to cancer. She entered limbo. But then she chose to live, to thrive, and supported by spirit guides along the way, went on a 7-year vision quest. These images chronicle her Artemis Return, a concept coined by Lucia.

Artemis

Artemis is the Greek goddess of the hunt, the wild instinctive wisdom of the feminine within nature. She is a guardian of the untamed within all of us, the primal aspects of our original essence.

Working with Hecate

Like a Saturn Return, an Artemis Return is a cyclical return after a pivotal event in your life, in which you cross a threshold of catharsis, maturation, and awakening, and re-align with that wild instinctive wisdom within.

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Reflecting on My 2022, A World (Key 21) Year

On By benebellIn personal7 Comments
Key 21 from the Rosenwald Tarot Uncut Sheets (1501), Key 21 from the Soprafino Tarot (1835)

I shared my 2021 reflections last December, when Judgement was my year card. In 2022, my year card was Key 21: The World. And what a climactic, intense, fruitful, and life-changing year it’s been. I’m not quite sure yet whether “life-changing” is an exaggeration, but I mean, what’s transpired in 2022 has and will have a significant impact on the course of my life from here on out.

Bolognese Tarocchi (1442), Jean-Baptiste Madenie Tarot (1739), Arcanes du Tarot Kabbalistique (1889), & Grand Tarot Belline (1863)

It’s kind of crazy how my 2021 really reflected a Judgement year (Apocalypse, in the SKT, which was quite an apt descriptive for my 2021…) and 2022 a World year.

Dante Tarot by Guido Zibordi Marchesi (Lo Scarabeo)

Last year it was like the tectonic plates beneath my feet were tremoring. And this year, many of the pieces that fragmented in 2021 fell into place. Re-reading my 2021 year in review with the Judgement card, I sure vague-booked how crazy that year actually was. “Major life shifts happened to me in 2021,” I had written. Ha. What an understatement.

And in 2022, the tremors stopped, whatever pieces were quaking fell into position, and it just so happened that my luck shot up. All the pieces landed in all the right spots.

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How a Parent Makes or Breaks a Child’s Dream

On By benebellIn holistic food, opinion, personal10 Comments

We have an abundance of persimmons this year and I remarked to the father-in-law about how I wanted to make hoshigaki, using the traditional method.

Crystallized sugars coming to the surface of the dried persimmons

Hoshigaki are peeled persimmons that you hang up to sun-dry for four to seven weeks (depending on climate/weather), and then you have to massage every persimmon weekly so it ferments evenly and the natural sugars get coaxed up to the surface of the fruit, forming this light dusting of finely crystallized sugar dust.

Sliced hoshigaki, final result

Is it magic or chemistry? I’m not quite sure. =) Meanwhile the fruit becomes deliciously gummy, like chewy candy. It is one of the sweetest and most delectable desserts you can have.

Final stage of hoshigaki — when it gets that natural crystallized sugar coating on the surface!

Immediately, before I could even complete my explanation of the process, the father-in-law shot the idea down, listing out all the ways this could go wrong, all the reasons this is not worth the trouble, just one negative statement after another.

This is his personality, his habit. He’s been doing this to James since hubby was a boy. If you’re sparked by an idea that’s just slightly more labor-intensive or slightly more aspirational than ordinary, the father-in-law’s immediate response is to shoot down the idea and be really negative about all the ways this is stupid.

Oh and if you haven’t guessed already, this is a personal blog post. Not in any way tarot, esoterica, or “in line with my branding” related. Just me sharing what’s actually been on my mind as of late, and ranting. Continue reading “How a Parent Makes or Breaks a Child’s Dream” →