Death is not the end of the story

I’ve a lot on my plate, with several projects in various stages of completion, but my father’s illness and subsequent passing put a lot of things on hold. I’ve also had a lot on my mind, so turning to the cards is a great way to see where my head is really at and what multiversal forces are helping or hindering my path.

I decided to use my own Occult Detective Tarot.

Let’s have a look —

The first card drawn is The Hanged Man, a spectre from my recent past. The card typically represents sacrifice and I see no need to argue that point. We all make sacrifices. Some large, some small. The key is to make sure they matter, that the blood on the altar is delivering sustenance to the appropriate godform.

Drawing the second card, I reveal my present mood or situation. Here we find the Ace of Earth (also called Diamonds or Pentacles). Denoting intuitiveness and success, this card can also signify groundedness and improving ones physical well-being.

As to what the future holds, Death seems to make a not unexpected appearance. Change. Transition. Transformation. Read as a whole, these three cards tell a story, from sacrifice to self-improvement to successful transformation.

The cards are a window, but they don’t tell the whole story, nor is the story they tell writ in stone. This was a much needed, encouraging reading. Death is not the end of the story. It is the beginning. Everything before it is just prologue.

Lùnastal

I’ve had a song running through my head the past couple of days. To be honest, it’s usually a soft parade of Led Zeppelin up there, but the earworm that’s caught me is a variant on that theme, more feminized, but no less majestic in its grandeur. The song in question?

I’ve had a lot on my mind the past month or more, especially in the last two weeks. My father’s long illness, that culminated in his passing from this world to the next in the last minutes of Friday, July 20th, has introduced a new thread of introspection.

I am no stranger to loss. I’ve said farewell to family and too many friends. But this was a bit different than those that came before, because when I stared down at my father, when I held his hand, it was me that I saw there, or rather a future shadow of me.

There were moments when I saw myself mirrored there and it made me pause in each instance. I am reminded of that famous Irish epitaph —

Remember Man as you go by
As you are now so once was I
As I am now so shall you be,
Prepare yourself to follow me

So here we are then, with Lùnastal upon us. That which has been sown, it is now time to reap. We’ll be saying our public farewell to my father tomorrow and with it my disquiet will be lifted. It will be time to return to the business at hand.

I’ve been tinkering with a number of things, but it feels time to see some things finished, to be taken to their end and cast like runes upon the wind.

Magic, like the soul, is eternal, but life is a fleeting thing. On Yeats grave, it reads —

Cast a cold eye
On life, on death
Horseman Pass by!

There is magic adrift, enveloping the living and the dead alike. Entwined, it is, this mystic rapture, with all that was, is, and will be. Something wondrous is on the horizon, beyond space and time itself. Magic abounds. While there is still breath to be drawn, live. Embrace your True Will and be that what you were meant to be, free and unfettered. Love and be loved. Live, and let live.

Someday… #RobertEHoward

Unless I happen to win the lottery in the next couple of weeks this will be yet another year I won’t be attending Howard Days in Cross Plains.

I keep telling myself that I’ll make it “someday”, but we all know that someday never comes. So I’m making myself this promise, if not before, then I will attend Solomon Kane’s 100th Birthday Event. That will be 2028. I’ll be 62. Absolutely. But I’m hoping for before…

May the 4th Be With You…Always

Star Wars is not what it once was, at least for me. There was a time when it was everything to me. Like most pre-teen kids in the late 70s, I was well and truly obsessed.

Turn back the clock forty years  and Star Wars was almost a year old. Marvel was knee deep into the comics and really hitting their stride. That run of issues throughout 1978 was a real highlight for me and now, in the order of my ranking all-things Star Wars, it is those comics that come in second only to the first film.

1978 also was the beginning salvo of Kenner toys.While I really waish MEGO would have gotten the license, my love and affection for those toys was boundless. Unfortunately they came just I was nearing the age when I would be too cool to play with them, but there was a brief window there when they were the subject of countless hours of fun for me and my kid brother.

And then, there was the Holiday Special.

The Star Wars Holiday Special aired on November 17, 1978 and, somewhat blissfully for me, tv reception on CBS that night was abysmal. We lived in the country and received our television via a thirty foot tv antennae with a rotor attached. Often times tv reception was pretty bad and this night, at least as far as CBS was concerned, was about as bad as it got. But my little brother and I still watched. Even through the crackle and snow and rolling picture, I could tell this show was a disaster. Its one saving grace was the introduction of Boba Fett.

The animated segment, during which was the clearest the tv got that night, thankfully, was pretty solid. While I didn’t love the animation style (it’s grown on me through subsequent viewings) it did feel like a continuation of the movie universe and was akin to the comics I was reading.

The rest of the program was ridiculous. I don’t know what CBS was thinking. I can only hope that Lucas was paid well for allowing his characters to be so soundly abused.

Star Wars turns 41 this year. It’s been a bumpy ride. Like I said at the beginning, Star Wars as a whole doesn’t mean the same to me as it once did, but I have never lost the sense of wonder and excitement that I felt when the opening scrawl debuted back in 1977.

No matter where the franchise goes, the Star Wars of my childhood remains firmly entrenched in my mind, untouched and unsullied…

 

My Favorite Authors

In his most recent newsletter, Brian Keene offered up a list of his 20 favorite authors. That’s a challenge I just could not pass up. So here are my favorites, the caveat being that this is a list of writers of fiction and as close to their proper order as I can muster. Also, because of the third author on my list, I have decided there should be 23 names instead of 20. Fnord.

 

1. Robert E. Howard
2. J.R.R. Tolkien
3. Robert Anton Wilson
4. Neil Gaiman
5. Katherine Kurtz
6. Alan Moore
7. Umberto Eco
8. Fritz Leiber
9. Mary Stewart
10. Roy Thomas
11. Manly Wade Wellman
12. Stephen King
13. George R.R. Martin
14. Edgar Rice Burroughs
15. Algernon Blackwood
16. H.P. Lovecraft
17. Raymond Chandler
18. Anne Rice
19. Rex Stout
20. Shirley Jackson
21. Arthur Machen
22. Aleister Crowley
23. Margaret Weis

If I had a hammer…

That’s a beauty, no? Word on the street is they’re giving those away in bookstores with a purchase of the book. I was lucky enough to have received the hardcover for my birthday last year. Makes me almost want to go out and grab another just to have that piece of work hanging on my wall.

Speaking of birthdays, I survived another. Turned 52 on Thursday with a full moon to light my way. After a doctor visit in the morning (I am the picture of health), I came home to cupcakes and presents with Kim and Conn.

They nailed it this year, gifting me Little Wars by HG Wells, Robert E. Howard’s Sword Woman (with the Leigh Brackett introduction), the Conan: Blood-Stained Crown graphic novel, a hardcover of Fritz Leiber’s Knight & Knave of Swords, and Swords by Ben Boos.

After, Conn and I played some Kingdom Come: Deliverance, then we were off to Kokomo where we ran a quick errand, then sauntered over to Books-A-Million for a little “window shopping”, aka drooling all over new books. We ended our City of Firsts jaunt with a sit-down at Outback Steakhouse.

How did we lay my birthday to rest? By binge watching a couple of episodes of Fringe.

A perfect day? About as close as you can get.

Today I’m prepping this evenings D&D session, getting everything aligned for a brilliant Last Writes with Madame Pamita I’ll be posting on Monday, and writing a chapter in my collaboration with Greg Mitchell. And maybe, if the gods are kind, I’ll get to delve once more into Kingdom Come. We’ll call it research as Conn and I are shooting a video on Sunday.

Well, that’s all for now. Time to swing that hammer and make some magic.

Sanctum Sanctorum

Fancy a look at what an occult detective’s sanctum sanctorum looks like? Here’s a peek at mine, a place I call “The Aerie“, tucked away in the upstairs of our rural Indiana home. In it, I wrote the novels Keepers of the Dead, Descendant, dozens of short stories, and the lion’s share of First Born.

Yes, it’s a cluttered mess. I like clutter. It’s my clutter and I revel in the overwhelming sensory overload that occurs every time I ascend to my sacred space overlooking Little Pipe Creek.