We all love our tarot decks. And no one more than me loves a brand new deck done in the recognizable Rider-Waite-Smith tradition. I adore the feeling of familiarity with just enough freshness to invigorate my intuition. But I confess to falling into a bit of rut sometimes. There are other kinds of decks, after all. If you want to explore something new without leaving legacy, structure, and a sense of authenticity behind, allow me to suggest the following: 1. Minchiate Tarot This deck, although often called a tarot, is not. It is a 97 card deck with many of the same major arcana and all of the minors. In addition there are cardinal virtues, astrological signs, and the four elements. We

Readers, please enjoy this guest blog post by Mambo Chita Tann, author of Haitian Vodou. One of the things indigenous religions have in common, no matter where they arise, is a strong continuity between living people and their ancestors. Whether or not a culture thinks of its dead as benevolent or dangerous—and sometimes, both at the same time—the culture will have an origin myth and honor its ancestors in some way, as part of religious and cultural practices. Most indigenous groups fully embrace the idea that the dead are not actually dead, but removed from the world of the living and in another place, where they can interact with living descendants. When Christianity spread

Some people think it is mean to tease, but I do love sharing sneak peeks at projects that are in works. This one is tentatively titled Tarot of the Faerie Realm. You may already be familiar with Julia Jeffrey’s work either through her Etsy shop or her recently released Dream Fairies oracle deck (click HERE to see it). She is working on a tarot deck! And I’m telling you, it is so beautiful and magical. I’ll post a few teasers images for you below. I’m working with her on this and so excited. The characters she is creating are so powerful. I wanted something special, something different than I’ve ever done before for a deck. Over the past year or so, I’ve been studying

It's been an amazing two-and-a-half days at Pantheacon! I spent Saturday rehearsing for my workshops later in the day. Then I went to the exclusive Llewellyn party. Thanks to Elysia for setting it up. I had a great chance to meet and greet long-time friends and meet some new Llewellyn authors. Unfortunately, the room was rather dark and since my camera didn't have a flash, the pics didn't come out. Sorry. Then I gave my first workshop: why the LBRP (Lesser Banishing ritual of the Pentagram) matters. I presented the idea that magick requires three things: The ability to raise or generate magickal energy (both from interior and exterior sources)* The ability to manipulate the