Tarot and Me

Three Hares

Three Hares

My time with tarot started in the early 80s in a Goth-phase when someone bought me the Thoth deck for my 18th birthday, I liked it but it never really seemed to fit.

Three years later I was reading tarot on The Mound during the Edinburgh Festival using the Thoth deck when a friend came with a new deck and told me that she felt this was much more me. This was the Sacred Rose Tarot and I’ve used this deck on and off since 1985 now and I feel a really good, deep connection with it.

During that period I was also reading palms, runes, astrology charts, and I-Ching, though over the years I’ve only really kept on the tarot as it seemed the most popular with family, friends, and the occasional client.

I’ve been using The Sacred Rose Tarot deck for over 38 years now and feel I really know it but I wanted to experiment with a few other decks and we all know how that goes… let’s start a new collection!

I’ll be writing about returning to my old witchy ways and exploring this pathway, there will be bits about everything that comes across my mind but it will mainly be tarot. There will be readings, explorations of different decks, book and deck reviews, and more.

First thing I’ll be doing is collecting old posts from other blogs and getting these all set up here.

You can also commission me for a reading on Ko-Fi, and watch here and my Bluesky for when I do a single card draw for myself.

Roll of £20 Notes

Card Storage

Card Storage

I’m going to tell a story about something that happened when I gave up MTG for the last time, but I’m going to catch up with the gaming week first.

I’m still finding it a challenge returning to any sort of gaming rhythm after so long away from it all and a lot of disappointments I’ve felt with Games Workshop over the last few years and have decided to move on from all Warhammer games and concentrate on micro-RPGs, board games, and some card games.

I’ve done a bit of sorting out in the shed though and have got the gaming bits separated into two large categories. One pile are the games I’m keeping, the other (much bigger) pile are the sprues that are going to be stripped to populate the shop on Ebay.

But on with the story.

This case is about 42x48cm, though the ones I had were slightly longer and could hold many more cards than these.

The first time I played Magic the Gathering was at the end of Ice Age and started really casually but it really ticked all my collecting boxes.

I then started playing quite competitively at around Invasion, going to regular tournaments and all the qualifiers, winning loads of cards and always having to have the latest tech and best decks and this meant I had thousands of cards.

A lot of them at high value, very high value as I played all formats. I had twenty of these large boxes, plus many folders, deck boxes, and other bits of storage.

Then I suddenly lost interest in the game all together and could really do with a bit of cash, so I started listing everything I had then listed it on eBay and after a few false starts it sold for a LOT of money to a gentleman from Norway.

We discussed sending it across and he realised that it would be easier and cheaper for him to bring his son with him and get the ferry to Newcastle, it would also be quicker.

We arranged to meet at the petrol station at the Durham services, so I packed up the car and with my partner we set off.

We got to the services and met the buyer, we then started to transfer the boxes across to the boot of his car. Once we had finished this I was handed rolls of £20 notes, loads of rolls, a satisfying amount of rolls.

As we were driving back with a back seat covered in these rolls of £20 notes my partner noted that all our activity would have been recorded on CCTV and that it would probably have looked extremely dodgy.

Thankfully we never had a visit from the Durham Constabulary wondering why I was selling loads of guns/rifles to a Norwegian.

A Gaming Life

Ice Age

Ice Age

I’ve been gaming since the late 70s in one form or other, starting with really basic RPGs and moving on to D&D when it was established properly in the Red Box.

Over the years I’ve played many different games, RPGs, board games, miniature games, but always came back to card games as they are so portable and had tons of great art.

The games I’ve spent most time with were Magic: The Gathering and the original Legend of the Five Rings before Fantasy Flight took it over, though I have played and collected several more.

Right now though my main games are RPGs and miniature games but whenever I get a chance to play in an MTG draft I jump at it but getting to one has been so difficult recently.

This part of the blog is mainly about a few directories, trying to list all card games, rpgs, miniature games, and board games that I can find any information about. It will also be following my take up of various solo gaming systems as it continues to be hard to find groups to play with.

It will also be about my return to gaming over the next year or so starting with RPGs, solo board gaming, and some card games (even some console gaming things). There will be some old stories and such and read throughs of old gaming magazines.

Basically anything that takes my fancy.

I’ll also be linking to my Ebay shop where I’ll be selling some gaming bitz, mainly for Warhammer but there could also be some card games stuff there.

Watch out for this part of the blog as it develops.

Junesploitation! 2025

Fire and Ice, Darkwolf

Fire and Ice, Darkwolf

This is the first time I’ve heard of #Junesploitation, but this is one of the really good things about Bluesky, I’ve seen so many different things since not being beholden to the almighty algorithm.

This has been running for twelve years now, hosted by F This Movie! who give a daily prompt list of film genres to choose from and you watch a movie that is suggested to you by that prompt.

The #Junespolitation Primer is here (and I’ve added it below) with a long list of prompts, I’ll be adding my list of films below and linking to any little reviews I end up doing.

I’ve got a film in mind for tonight and will fill out the list as I can over the next couple of days.

June 1 – Italian Crime!
June 2 – Zombies!
June 3 – David Carradine!
June 4 – Blaxploitation!
June 5 – Magic!
June 6 – Giallo!
June 7 – Kung Fu!
June 8 – Heists!
June 9 – Free Space!
June 10 – Jess Franco!
June 11 – ‘90s Action!
June 12 – Cartoons!
June 13 – Friday the 13th!
June 14 – Free Space!
June 15 – Revenge!
June 16 – ‘80s Comedy!
June 17 – Fulci!
June 18 – Rock and Roll!
June 19 – Free Space!
June 21 – Westerns!
June 22 – Teenagers!
June 23 – New World Pictures!
June 24 – Hong Kong Action!
June 26 – Eurosploitation! (Any European exploitation/sleaze)
June 27 – Free Space!
June 28 – Cannon!
June 29 – ‘80s Action!
June 30 – Italian Horror!

Nurse of Pain

Nurse of Pain

Nurse of Pain

This was taken at one of my last visits to the Whitby Goth Weekend as a photographer.

At the top of the steps to the church there is a nice place to sit and you can catch people in quite natural poses as they get to the top of the climb rather than all the staged poses that are available throughout the town.

This woman seemed to breeze up the steps and pause for a moment waiting for her struggling companions, and I was really pleased with the photograph.

but what I wasn’t really pleased with was the pack of male photographers hounding young women to get the perfect shot, I felt tainted by what I saw that year and haven’t returned as a photographer, just as someone who enjoys the spectacle.

This is available to buy on my Redbubble account.

Failed Summer Vacation

Heuijung Hur, Paige Aniyah Morris. Scratch Books, (183p) ISBN: 9781068355509. Contemporary Fiction, read 11/04/25, Paperback ★★★★☆

Failed Summer Vacation

Failed Summer Vacation

I was initially unsure of getting this one as I was feeling a bit burnt out with contemporary fiction at the time I was offered it, but I thought a collection of short stories should be OK.

So happy I took the chance as this is such a compelling debut collection from Heuijung Hur.

Each story stood strong within itself but they all added to a greater whole within the collection, all had a deep feeling of isolation with lots of nuance about that isolation throughout. Going from weird to disturbing, each had such a strong hook that kept you going to find which path the pain was coming from and where it would go in the end.

The only frustration I found was a purposeful one in that some of the stories felt fragmented and unfinished, but this is a reflection of the pain and uncertainty we all feel through life, especially in our relationships where sometimes we are so unsure of our place within our own life.

Enjoyed is not the word that I could really use for this collection, though there was a sense of enjoyment in following the stories and deciphering what was happening and feeling the mirroring of these emotions from your own experiences, working its way into your psyche through great turns of phrase and observation of the feelings of people detached from ‘normal’ emotional responses.

If you want an emotionally challenging read, and one that turns the mirror onto your own emotions this is a treat, being well written and full of recognisable behavioural observations.

I received this from Scratch Books in exchange for an honest review.

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