My contribution to Diabolical which is published on the 29th October in London, is about the Testament of Solomon, a treatise nearly two thousand years old, the inspiration for the Solomonic grimoires. Scarlet Imprint launches are always good fun, and they seem to excelled themselves this time with their hyperbolae. Personally, I am not sure the addition of the ‘service’ is going to be for all tastes, but you never know.
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There is a good video of Peter Mandelson’s speech at the Labour Conference in Brighton. My interest is not in what he says, but the way he holds his thumb. At the start the thumb can be seen pointing away from the hand, a symbol of independence of will, but towards the end, the thumb retreats to a position inside the hand, pointing in the same direction as the fingers. Normally when the thumb is held inside the palm, it is a sign of submission and a lack of confidence. But having seen a photo of the main lines on his right hand, which are very clearly delineated, and his nails are not bitten in contrast to Gordon Brown, something else is going on.
Mandelson’s knowledge of the dark arts of spin and strategy is not really delivering the goods at the moment – even he said Labour is likely to lose the next general election – I would say that he is endeavouring to conceal his true intentions to his own party.
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Sometime ago I wrote on Gordon Brown’s bitten fingernails as a sign of weak intellectual skills. It is time for an update as Brighton will be welcoming Gordon and the ruling Labour Party to Brighton this weekend. The weather forecast suggests rising high pressure – it will be sunny and pleasant – and as a result Brighton will normally be full of people enjoying all that Brighton has to offer. If they do come they will be confronted with 3 miles of steel barriers, security services on high alert and very nervous riot police expecting trouble from a bunch of anarchists. As usual, apart from the bars, and the prostitutes well prepared with receipts that will pass muster at the expenses office in Parliament, and police bussed in from all quarters of the UK totting up their overtime payments (since there will be nothing to do otherwise), the good citizens of Brighton will, if they have any sense, leave. Unfortunately, I will be staying. Continue reading
What makes a good tarot blog? What kinds of tarot blog exist in the wild? These are some of the questions I asked myself the other day. What surprised me is how difficult it is to find good blogs, particularly when using the search engines for ‘tarot blog’. Mary Greer’s blog invariably tops the pile, but then the quality rapidly diminishes. Blogs are a vital indicator of the health of a website – the viewer can see how much activity is going on. Many of the blogs are moribund, or just plain awful, so I had to resort to the blog rolls. Continue reading
After a very long wait of six years Occulture has at last come back. The Solar Event was originally going to run till around 6pm, but an evening Lunar event was added later. I was asked to reprise my talk on the Tarot which I had done in 2003. Immediately I decided to name the talk Tarot Cabaret, which sound great unless you knew that my experience of cabaret is insignificant. Continue reading
I have just come across King Solomon Reading cards, a set of 36 divination cards representing the 72 Names of God, or shemhamphorash. The website is in Hebrew, but there is a an English version (look along the top navigation bar). These 72 Names are the basis for the 72 Goetic spirits as described in the Lemegeton of Solomon. Quite what kind of spread you use for divination, I do not know, but it will be interesting to see how it works.
I have been saying for some years to anyone who will listen to me that things will go bust. To be honest with you, I am a little surprised it has taken so long. The financial institutions and banks who spent billions telling us how we can trust them are all now busted flushes. They owe each other billions that are very unlikely to be repaid – the banks are bankrupt, penniless, kaput. Politicians were telling us how they trust the financial institutions, which we now know to be not true. Continue reading
At last there is more light every day, and life is waking up again. I have been working hard in London getting Butterfly Tarot in its new home.
It has taken far, far longer than I could have ever imagined, but the unit at Camden Market opened on the first two days of March. Continue reading
New EU legislation came into force on Monday requiring Fortune Tellers to display a disclaimer: “For entertainment purposes only”. Continue reading
More than ever politics is obsessed about spin and presentation. A lot of time and thought goes into the style of clothes, haircut, voice – the list is endless. Gordon Brown took over from Tony Blair, who clearly used make-up and anything else to improve how he looked. Gordon is the antithesis of Tony, a man who likes to be seen as solid, heavyweight, no gimmicks. Continue reading