Echoes in a Hollow Space

My early teens were a tumultuous time, with loads of interpersonal drama. But it was also a time of "spiritual" awakening—or maybe an occult one?—when many lifetime practices began. From about the age of twelve I began to read every paranormal book in the Santa Monica County Library. I nearly succeeded, but that wasn't as impressive as it might sound. Paranormal books were looked down upon back then (still are in many circles). The entire collection at Santa Monica consisted of one bookcase: perhaps seven tall, five feet wide, crammed full of the classic titles of the time. There was Charles Berlitz's The Bermuda Triangle, Donald Keyhoe's Flying Saucers Are Real, The Philadelphia Experiment, The Search for Bridey Murphy, The Interrupted Journey, books by Hans Holzer and Brad Steiger, and scads of others. Everything topic was covered, some of it profound and some sensationalist junk: ghosts, UFOs, bizarre theories, metaphysics, and reincarnation. As long as it was strange, I was into it. I also scanned the book sections of the local drug stores for "weird books" and SFF to squander my allowance on. I didn't completely give up on critical thinking. Even back then some of this stuff seemed like junk. But I loved the mental adrenaline rush reading it gave me, the boundless what ifs.

This was also the time I began playing with the Ouija board—at first with my enthusiastic mom who bought it for us to play with and my friends. We'd have mostly hilarious, nonsense sessions. It was a lot of fun. Some "guy" kept coming through to flirt with my mom. He told her that her second husband would have the initials QZK and we spent many sessions trying to get the scoop on him. Answers on QZK never really showed up, of course. Mostly we got evasion and nonsense. Mom was still married at the time to my biological father, but they'd been estranged for years. She really wanted to believe in an afterlife of love. (She did eventually get it but not with QZK.)



I also tried working the Ouija by myself. At first the planchette was sluggish, then it moved more rapidly. I was not conscious of pushing it but I'm mostly convinced I unconsciously made it move and was mostly talking to my own right brain. I suffered no ill effects or demon possessions. The hysteria over Ouija boards conjuring demons really began in the 1970s after The Exorcist came out. Before that, it was considered a parlor game for people to fool around with. The The abominable Ed and Lorraine Warren also popularized the whole satanic panic/demon possession thing and still haunt the paranormal zeitgeist through The Conjuring movie franchise.

It didn’t take long for me to get bored with solo Ouija board sessions (no friends to play with) and I moved on to Tarot. I've done Tarot on and off ever since. I also tried my hand at automatic writing. Like the Ouija sessions, it began slowly and painfully, then became more fluid, then fast. The "spirits" would move the pen in big looping scrolls, taking up a whole notebook page with ten to fifteen words. The handwriting gradually got smaller, but never conformed to neat and staying within the lines. (Spirits don’t conform to the rules.) Again, I didn't feel as if I was pushing the pen, but I believe it was an exercise in unconscious talking to conscious. Later it developed into something more profound—a way of having meaningful dialogue with my Self. When I was in therapy, trying to dive deep down and clear out the programmed junk in my psyche, my Jungian therapist encouraged me to continue with the automatic writing. I still practice it. It remains a beneficial way of talking to my Self, divining how I truly feel about things, working through the decision-making process, et al.

Except sometimes. Sometimes, even in the early days, the tone would shift into something that felt outside myself, much deeper than talking to the wayward winds inside my brain. Something channeled from Elsewhere? I dunno. I get this now and again with Tarot, too, that feeling when a reading really clicks into place and seems more than wish fulfillment or facile projection. A few years back I asked "Them" if I was talking to my ancestors. They answered along the lines of "took you long enough to figure that out." "They" sometimes have a good sense of humor.

I continue to talk to myself and the ancestors. It's a great comfort when I need it, a way of calming myself when I'm stressed, or working through what worries me. The messages that come through are overwhelmingly positive. If negative things come through (almost always self-critical crap, as distinctly different in tone as the profound messages are) I say a little clarification/protection prayer and ask them if the negative things are true. They usually respond with something like, "No. That's interference from your Shadow or old negative programming."

But it all began back there in my early teens. I really needed to believe in "cosmic friends" or better angels or a realm outside the tough times I was going through. I'm glad I found those better angels—even if they were merely the better angels of my own mind and soul finding their way to the surface. They have sustained me throughout my life.

All Weird Things Index

I got a weird “spam” call the other day. I don’t usually answer numbers I don’t recognize, but I did this one. An older-sounding man said, “Hello. My name is Joe. We have so much bad news these days that I wanted to give my neighbors some good news.” “Okay,” I said in my skeptical I-don’t-know-who-tf-you-are tone. He continued, “It says in the Book of Isaiah—” At which point I hung up.

It reminded me of the summer when I was seventeen and fell in with a bad crowd. This all came about because of a super huge crush I had on one of my classmates in high school, and because I was graduating and not entirely sure of my direction, and because I was an introvert who wanted to feel part of something, and because of music. Lots of fun music and riotously fun Tuesday night rival-like meetings at a local church where they had gigantic, rollicking singalongs and talked in tongues and laid on hands and all that jazz. So I spent the late spring and summer of my seventeenth year on a journey of attempted indoctrination into the cult-like world of the Evangelical Christians. This was also the summer my BFF and I volunteered at the La Brea Tar Pits working in the labs there. A weird science/religion combo if ever there was one, but I was confused and exploring my options.

I won’t mention the particular sect I got involved with because I don’t want to paint an entire group of people with a broad brush. It all began with my crush, a newly minted born-again Christian, talking to me at lunchtime about Jesus. I had not been raised in any religion. My mother had always encouraged me to listen and make up my own mind about things. But I had “sampled” many of the Christian churches of my friends, both Protestant and Catholic, and I had been enchanted by the occult from my early teens. So I listened politely to my crush, mainly (if I’m honest) because he was cute and I liked the attention. Sometimes my BFF would join us in these lunch discussions. She was always more skeptical, asked more questions, had more objections to blanket declarations than I had. I suspect my crush had a crush on her. At any rate, he invited us to a Christian coffeehouse with him one Saturday where they played Christian-themed folk-rock and it was something to do for two introverted girls, so we went along. It was actually a lot of fun. The music was good, everyone was friendly, and there was a dynamic young long-haired preacher from New Zealand who made the rounds talking to the kids. (And he was really cute—with a dishy accent.) Things at the coffeehouse usually broke up about 11 and afterwards we’d pile into my crush’s car and drive all over L.A. and into the canyons to look down on the lights of L.A. and go to the all-nite eateries—all innocent, good clean fun. It was a blast, so it got to be a regular thing. Me, my crush, my crush’s BFF, and my BFF. Kind of like dating, except not.

The young preacherman at the coffeehouse would come around and chat with groups of kids. He was quite charismatic and emphasized over and over again how we needed to stop random people on the street and start quoting scripture to them because even if they resisted the message and scoffed, you could be planting a seed that would allow God into their hearts and save them. I won’t even get into how dangerous that would be for young girls to do on the streets of L.A., but regardless, I wasn’t about to do it. First of all, I was far too introverted to even contemplate such a thing, and second, I couldn’t help thinking that if God was such a mighty being why did he need my pissant help to open somebody’s heart? Seemed like he could do that on his own if he was into forced conversions. No, what the preacherman was talking about was a human need to spew scripture, a way of proving something to the same human doing the spewing. Like, I don’t know . . . that they were holier than thou? Or maybe, as I suspect was the case with my telephoning Bible spammer, something that made them feel like they were taking positive action in a world that was confusing and often terrifying and often felt like it was spinning out of their control.

But I won’t say that I was unfazed by all this, especially by the really cute preacherman and the sincerity of my crush (even though it became clear as summer waned that he wasn’t interested in me in that way). I was enchanted, to a certain extent, and briefly felt part of something larger and there was. . . fellowship. I can’t emphasize enough how powerful the draw of fellowship was to a questing, confused little introvert like I was then. (That’s how cults get you.) That enchantment even went so far that I allowed the preacherman to convince me that I needed to burn my tarot cards. Yeah, I know. (And for anyone who might be justifiably horrified by this, please know I would not do anything remotely like this now, but it was a weird time in my headspace.) I’ve regretted that so many times I can’t even tell you, but I was caught up in the moment.

Preacherman wanted to burn them with me present so I could be “released from Satan’s bond,” but I declined. I was already feeling uncomfortable about the whole thing and they’d been a gift from my two best friends who had pooled their resources to buy the deck for me, so I was feeling like a foul betrayer of their friendship and thinking I should just call the whole thing off, but, I mean, like, I’d already brought them there and everyone was staring at me expectantly . . . In retrospect, I realize the preacherman wanted that audience of kids to watch me watching those cards burn, hoping my reaction to being “liberated” would play into their acceptance of his message, but I didn’t get that at the time. I just knew I didn’t want to be part of it. Those cards did liberate me, but not in the way the preacherman anticipated.

He took them out to the parking lot with a group of followers (they didn’t want the fire marshal to come down on them for burning something inside the club) while I stayed inside. He was out there for quite a while and when he came back he was flushed with victory. He started preaching about how those cards of Satan had really resisted the flames. He kept lighting them and Satan kept putting out the flames but he prayed and prayed and finally they caught fire and burned with a great, bright fire. And all the while I’m thinking, “They had a protective coating on them. That’s why they resisted the flames. And that’s probably why they burned so bright afterwards.” The preacherman’s house of tarot cards collapsed in my mind at that point. It wasn’t the final final straw, but just about. I couldn’t help thinking that if he was full of shit on that count, what else was bullshit? I eventually came to realize it all was.

So a deck of Smith-Waite reproduction tarot cards—and science—saved me from an Evangelical cult. Something inevitably would have, I think, because I was never a true convert and my BFF had already called bullshit and I was much more accustomed to listening to her than preachermen (even really cute ones). But those cards were the catalyst. I still regret the loss of them, and I kind of wonder if maybe that’s why I can never get decent readings from Smith-Waite decks. They are almost always overwhelmingly negative. I can’t say I blame them for holding a grudge.

A recent conversation withgreen_knight prompted me to pick up this book by Corrine Kenner again and at least do the first exercise in Part II.

Part I is titled, “Tarot 101,” and it really is that. If you’re not familiar with tarot and want to learn, you could definitely use this section as a primer. I got bogged down, though, because it was repetitive for me, so I skipped it. I’m not saying I couldn’t learn more about tarot—I most certainly can—but I didn’t think this would help me that much. Corinne Kenner states in her introduction that she’s fine with people skipping around. Ms. Kenner uses the classic Rider Waite Smith deck (RWS),* but it’s one of the few decks I’ve tried that doesn’t really work for me, so I used my favorite Crow Tarot instead.

Anyway, the first chapter in Part II, “The Writer’s Tarot,” is “Character Creation,” and the first exercise is on using the cards to pick and flesh out a cast of characters. This would probably work best for a new idea, a new story, but I’m almost 20k into the current novel. Still, there are some unknown variables in my story. I’m a pantser, you see: I write from the seat of my pants rather than from an outline, so I don’t really know all that will happen in my stories before I write them. However, I thought it might be interesting to do this exercise and see what I got.

I have to confess that character stuff is generally the thing I need least help on. They seem to arrive fully formed in my psyche with their motivations already in play. My job is to build the story around them. Usually, I spend a certain amount of time filling in backstory (sometimes an excessive amount of time) to explain to myself how they got to be the way they are and to clean up any historical stuff. In the current WIP, I’ve got two characters acting like protagonists, a third who swings back and forth between protagging and antagging, and a fourth who is a significant supporting player (a foil). Three of these characters appeared in an earlier work so I know them well and it’s easy to write for them. But again, I thought this would be worth a shot—if for no other reason than straightening out the protagging and the antagging. I still don’t know who the real antagonist is. So far it has been a Thing, but I’ve always known that would resolve itself into a person/being who is driving the Thing.

How this works

In the first exercise, you deal yourself a starting spread, one card each for protagonist(s); antagonist(s); protagonist’s foil (Dr. Watson, Sancho Panza, et al.); antagonist’s foil (Capt. Hook’s Mr. Smee, Mini Me, et al.); and supporting character (characters who pop up and have important but not continuing roles like a foil). Then you read the card for each and make notes about what the card suggests for that character(s). At first, I used the booklet that came with the Crow Tarot but duh, this process works much better with the card meanings Ms. Kenner has included in the book. The largest section of the book (pgs. 122-323) are tarot meanings based on RWS and slanted towards the writing process. Once I used that, things seemed to fall into place and I did get some insights into the complex character dynamic I’ve got going here. Each exercise also includes a Writing Practice and/or writing prompts.

Other exercises in the character section:

•  “Personality Plus” - rounding out characters, including a group of questions to ask. You can draw cards to answer these questions (and the ones following), as many as you like.
• “Character Building” – filling in the background
•  “Casting Call” – for a larger work like a novel or screenplay
• “Typecasting” – playing with archetypes
•  “Minor Characters”
•  “The Private Lives of Public Personalities” – psychological underpinnings
• “Hopes and Fears”
• “A Note About Names”
• “Dialogues and Interviews”
• “Fill in the Blanks”
• “Compare Notes”

There are also sections on Storylines and Plot, Setting and Description, Breaking Writer’s Block, and something called “The Tarot Card Writing Coach,” as well as other things. I haven’t explored any of these or anything beyond that first character exercise yet. I’m not sure how much I will use this book for the current WIP which is kicking along rather well now, but if I get stuck, I can see this might be helpful for getting unstuck again. And inevitably in my pantser process of novel writing I hit a wall about midpoint where I have to stop and consider what has been and where I might possibly be going. Perhaps this book will help with that as well. It remains to be seen.

I’d be willing to share the results of my exercise in another post if anyone is interested.


*And yes, I know many of the decks I use are based on RWS, but the actual classic deck doesn't work for me.

Got Fluffy Bunnies of Doom? No? May I recommend the tarot as seen through the eyes of F-Bod Studios:



This is a funny wall calendar representation of 12 scenes from the Major Arcana—but it also reproduces many of the key elements of the Rider-Waite deck. As filtered through the fluffy bunnies of doom, that is. A few of my favorites (sorry for the blurry copied-from-a-thumbnail-on-the-website quality of the images):







Here’s the URL for this calendar: https://www.cafepress.com/fbod.156871009

But there are other funny and arty calendars to be found here: https://www.cafepress.com/fbod/3622034 I buy one of these each year.

And the main shop with many irreverent t-shirts and “weird crap,” as F-Bod puts it, can be found here: https://www.cafepress.com/fbod

I’ve been working with the Marseille tarot lately and I quite like it. I’ve been finding a lot of clarity with it. When I “interviewed” the deck it said that its strength was in helping me reconcile conflicts [Temperance] and that has proved to be the case. I used it to find clarity with what the Knight of Swords has been trying to tell me and that seems to have worked. I basically told the Knight if I hadn’t gotten the message correct, he should show up again and so far he hasn’t. Fingers crossed.

This Marseille deck came to me in a strange way. Many years ago Llewellyn publishing offered a subscription service called, “Enhancing Your Mind Body Spirit.” The basic deal was that for a low monthly fee they would send you how-to cards and spiritual chatchkes on a variety of New Age stuff. (This was back before New Age became a subject of much mockery.) What can I say? It sounded like a good idea at the time.

It wasn’t long before I realized it was a diletante’s dream: one month I’d get an essence oil and/or incense and/or a couple of rune stones (building towards a full set) and/or small crystals, et al., and some cards I could file in my special notebook on such subjects as Reiki, aroma therapy, astrology, or whatall. Some months I would get a few Llewellyn reproduction cards from the Marseille tarot.



Although I almost never used the how-to cards (they were superficial treatments at best and designed mostly, I think, to get you to buy Llewellyn books on subjects that caught your fancy), the subscription was relatively cheap and I liked the chatchkes. I also had a lot more disposable income back then, so I let the thing ride much longer than I would have otherwise. But I did reach a point where I thought it was ridiculous and was just about to cancel the membership when Llewellyn sent a notice that they weren’t making enough money on this scheme and would discontinue the service. They phrased it nicer than that, but that’s the essence. They also said members shouldn’t worry about the partial rune and tarot decks or the incomplete cards sets because they’d send out one final large chatchke shipment. When I got mine, it had a complete set of runes, a complete Marseille deck (leaving me with about one and a third sets each), a final set of how-to cards and crystals and oils and incense. I put everything away and didn’t think about it again.

Until I pulled this Marseille deck out of my tarot box recently. There was no accompanying interpretation booklet. I suspect there were cards for that but in the chaos following my mother’s stroke in 2012 and the caregiving that followed, I put them somewhere “safe.” I’ve never found them again, of course. So I downloaded this, the late Yoav Ben Dov’s “CBD Tarot de Marseille” interpretation guide.

I quite like using this guide. So maybe that’s why I find this deck so soothing. That’s at least one good thing that came out of Llewellyn. I know many people are skeptical of them these days, but back in the olden, pre-internet days, they were one of the only places—besides musty old esoteric libraries or specialist/used bookstores—that you could find stuff on mysticism and the occult. The internet has brought a fundamental sea change in these studies, but I am still grateful for those life rafts Llewellyn set adrift. They let me know that I may have been seriously weird, but at least I wasn’t alone.

I think this guy is having a good laugh at my expense.

If any of you read my last Musings post, you may remember this:

I used this deck quite a lot at one point in my life. Can you tell?



Fortunately, the cards don't look as disreputable as the box. And after literally decades of using this deck, I just discovered that I had two Knights of Swords. I'm not sure what that means. I would probably have never known if they both hadn't come up in the same reading. Reversed. And yes, I guess the day of that reading had been about being, "indiscreet, extravagant, and foolish." I've been through the entire deck now and there are no other duplications and no missing cards. But I guess I'd better pay attention to that Knight, hadn't I?

Well, I dropped the deck and because the box is in such poor shape (and I hadn’t gotten around yet to tying a ribbon around it), the cards went kablooie, most of them sliding under a heavy table with a low shelf that I can’t readily see under. Given the arthritic state of my knees, getting down on the floor to fish under there wasn’t an option. I got a stick to fish most of them out, apologizing the whole time that I meant no disrespect, and managed to push the table enough to fetch the rest of them. Then I set about the business of reordering them (again) and taking inventory. Of course, the only card still missing was the Knight of Swords.

So I poked around with the stick some more, managed to push the table some more, but wherever he’s decided to hide, he’s well hidden. I retrieved the spare Knight of Swords from the mantelpiece where I’d given it a place of honor, and apologized again, hoping neither one of them minded the current situation. Next, I shuffled the cards and asked, “What the heck is the Knight of Swords trying to tell me?”

I drew the Four of Swords: “retreat, recuperation, exile.”

Dude, I didn’t mean to exile you. I’m very sorry. Or if you just need downtime, that’s okay.

I’m sure he’ll turn up again when he’s in the mood. Or when it holds some significance or messes with my mind the most. Or maybe he won’t. I’ll just have to wait and see.

In April 2008, around the anniversary of the death of my Aunt Maxine, I started seeing 11:11 every day when I looked up at the clock. Not every time I looked at the clock because 11:11 only comes twice a day for those of us on a 12-hour clock, but often I’d feel compelled to look at the clock at this precise time. It went on for over two weeks and became rather unsettling.

What was the Universe trying to tell me? Something significant, or just that random chance sometimes gets stuck, throwing “heads” 85 times in a row?

Then I remembered my Aunt Maxine’s birthday was November 11 and wondered if it was her saying, “Hey, I’m still around. Don’t worry so much.” This was a comforting thought and the creepiness factor went away, although the 11:11’s didn’t. I kept seeing them for weeks after.

So I did what any semi-rational human being would do in such circumstances. I googled it.

Golly. There are a universe of beliefs around the coincidence of seeing 11:11. Yeah, I still (mostly) call it a coincidence, even though my personal anecdote seems to convey meaning, because post hoc theorizing and confirmation bias and because of all the fuzzy and convoluted theorizing I read online.

For instance, there’s this guy:

Um. I did scurry to my tarot to see what card was 11. It’s Justice. I thought, “If it’s the Hanged Man I’m going to mess myself.” Because for me that relates to 9/11 and I just didn’t know if I could stand that. The Hanged Man was 12.

Mr. Fuller is right about it being more important for me to find my own answers, but I looked online for more data points.

Uri Geller has a lot to say on 11:11 but I can’t tell you all of it. I fell asleep about halfway through his article. In all fairness to Mr. Geller, this strange phenomenon happened to me on more than one article on 11:11, which doesn’t always coincide with clear and concise theorizing.

Of course, no consideration of 11:11 would be complete without this:

However, some of the folklore surrounding 11:11 is charming, like the idea that if you look up to see it your wish will come true. Or when you see it repeatedly it means that you are beginning to “awaken” spiritually, and 11:11 is the indicator that you’re on the right path. Some believe it’s a sign that your angels are listening and you should ask for their guidance.

Other beliefs are darker, like the theory that 11:11 is a portend of great earth changes or history on the brink of something momentous…Actually, I don’t want to think on that one too hard, given recent seismic events in politics. I much prefer the belief that when you see 11:11, you should stop and consider the significance and importance of the moment in which you live. Of the moment, in the moment.

But Maxie, if that was you, I love ya, babe.

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

18 Dec
So I just downloaded the few pix I had on Instagram and deleted my account. Don’t need no Facebook storm troopers in my life.

19 Dec
Mom’s back in the hospital. She needed a transfusion because she’d gotten so anemic. Things were going too well, I guess. She’s getting taken care of and has good doctors. Hopefully it’s just overnight. We’ll know more by morning. Sometimes I wonder if we’re the beneficiaries or the victims of our medical establishments. Caregiving is a rollercoaster in which you’re always braced for impact.

20 Dec
Mom had her transfusion and is doing better. Later, dialysis and another transfusion. Then hopefully back to rehab. I haven’t talked to her yet this morning, but I’ve talked to the doctor and the nurse.

Some day, if I’m really lucky, I’ll write about all this.

20 Dec
Mom has pneumonia now. Still in the hospital. She had it when she was in the ICU and they gave her antibiotics but apparently no one x-rayed her lungs again. Just dealing with the wonderful world of modern medicine and very old people. Shit happens.

21 Dec
It’s so easy to blame the devil because it’s so hard to blame ourselves.

21 Dec
Predictions of Apocalypse always have the stink of the trickster gods all over them. The trickster gods are there to keep us humble.

21 Dec
Is the day over yet?

22 Dec
Life breaks you open when you least expect it, both good and ill.

26 Dec
I’m celebrating Boxing Day by working where I managed, before 9:30 a.m., to get a plastic knife stuck in the toaster.

27 Dec
Mom out of the hospital and back at rehab on Christmas Eve where her spirits and physical well being are much improved.

27 Dec
Just bought two more tarot decks with my last gift card. Blame it on @FBodStudios whose Bunnies of the Tarot Calendar http://bit.ly/VkgT6G  inspired me. I think I have about ten decks at this point, which is ironic since I don’t have time to do readings anymore. But each deck speaks to me in a different voice and I buy them as art objects as much as anything. I also buy in anticipation of another time, a time I’m in no hurry to get to, but one I know will inevitably have its season.

27 Dec
The Santa Monica mountains were a dark, dark purple and black against the sky this morning. They wore a shawl of rose and white clouds as a backdrop. Just above a slash of brilliant blue sky and above that a bubble roof of altocumulus clouds in dark rose, white, and lavender.

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

Well, that’s true enough, I suppose.

You are The Tower

Ambition, fighting, war, courage. Destruction, danger, fall, ruin.

The Tower represents war, destruction, but also spiritual renewal. Plans are disrupted. Your views and ideas will change as a result.

The Tower is a card about war, a war between the structures of lies and the lightning flash of truth. The Tower stands for "false concepts and institutions that we take for real." You have been shaken up; blinded by a shocking revelation. It sometimes takes that to see a truth that one refuses to see. Or to bring down beliefs that are so well constructed. What’s most important to remember is that the tearing down of this structure, however painful, makes room for something new to be built.

What Tarot Card are You?
Take the Test to Find Out.

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

Both work equally well for me. Although last time was based on the Waite deck, so I think it was a different meme.



You are the Moon card. Entering the Moon we enter
the intuitive and psychic realms. This is the
stuff dreams are made on. And like dreams the
imagery we find here may inspire us or torment
us. Understanding the moon requires looking
within. Our own bodily rhythms are echoed in
this luminary that circles the earth every
month and reflects the sun in its progress.
Listening to those rhythms may produce visions
and lead you towards insight. The Moon is a
force that has legends attached to it. It
carries with it both romance and insanity.
Moonlight reveals itself as an illusion and it
is only those willing to work with the force of
dreams that are able to withstand this
reflective light. Image from: Stevee Postman.
http://www.stevee.com/


Which Tarot Card Are You?
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