Magic from the Shadows

 It has been a long time since I've made a post! Admittedly I only thought to make one because I found myself wanting to make an update post on Ao3 ;) I've been hard at work on a lot of writing, really enjoying my work and letting myself branch out.

I wanted to post an Ao3 update because I want to post the fifth chapter of my Final Fantasy XIV fanfic, Soul of the Thirteenth Star, before I take a break again to get back to other work. 

My day job has been incredibly busy, although it is finally starting to slow down again, but I have really been working hard on pursuing my writing more professionally. I had my first flash fiction piece in a non-professional online zine, Bewildering Stories. You can read "Imperfect Mechanisms" in Issue 970, totally free! It's a strange little near-future scifi piece about eye surgery and loving what you have. 

I've also been hard at work improving my craft. I took a wonderful workshop through the Shipman Agency with Maria Dahvana Headley, author of The Mere Wife, on the taxidermist's school of editing. I'm also VERY EXCITED to have been accepted to the upcoming Futurescapes workshop in May (not yet listed). 

And in the meantime, I've been writing up a storm. In addition to my fanfic (haha), I've sent out a number of shorter pieces and been hard at work on novel edits. I received a very generous personal rejection letter from Podcastle on a piece that I'm hoping to whip into shape, perhaps for the next Deadlands open submissions period. I'm hoping (dreading?) hearing back any day now from a magazine on "Why Do You Wear Wooden Teeth, Miss Sybil?" a weird, dark fantasy piece about curses and toxic exes, and the novella of my heart, The Mist Bride, which I am desperately worried will not make it but I am very proud of. And then I'm also waiting to hear about a strange flash piece about horny monks and the angel who services them, "The Abbey of Archangel Raziel the Messenger," and, eventually, a submission to Neon Hemlock Press's next anthology The Crawling Moon: "The House of Coiled Earth."

IT'S BEEN BUSY, and I love it, and I'm so excited to do more of it. I'm trying to resist the pull of a new novel(la?) that I am tentatively titling The Road of Sand and Salt. If my *actual* current novel project, the one I am hoping to send out to agents this year, is going to be reviewed during Futurescapes, I need to finish this round of edits!

Hopefully, more to come very soon. If nothing else, I'll always post new publication and writing updates on my website: https://sites.google.com/view/jesmalitoris/home?pli=1.

Thanks for reading!
~Jes

Today my mom told me her spiritualism group (which I had no idea she belonged to) was going to be working with Oracle Cards this week.

I don't know much about Oracle Cards, which feels strange to say. I've been using Tarot for almost 20 years, but as I was checking today what the precise differences between them are, I realized how little I understand Oracle Cards, at least as they compare to Tarot. They seem so amorphous.

As my mom was telling me she had looked up the "56 laws of spiritual universe" to try and understand it, I found myself caught on the fence of "that sounds like Some Bullshit" and "I mean if you need 56 laws then knock yourself out" and found myself thinking about how I might actually teach someone about The Cards.

Ultimately, any form of magic craft - divination, protection, herbalism, cooking, WHATEVER - depends upon intention and the ways in which you act upon the universe. I know a lot of people love astrology. I don't use astrology *at all*. I don't much enjoy it, I don't much trust it, it feels like someone being determined to crowbar maths into my magic, and I feel like I don't need it. In my experience, if something to do with the celestial bodies is important enough to impact my craft, I feel it - it shapes my intention and the ways I enact energy in my work. I don't need to track the celestial bodies for them to have that impact for me. 

But that doesn't mean no one should use astrology. For some people that is their favorite and primary way of engaging with the universe. Rad. I dig it. We might not really have a lot to say to each other, but we are both doing what we need to do for our own craft. 

Tarot for me is profound because it is not just describing abstract universal forces. Tarot is a way to touch the universe, but it's really having a conversation with yourself and tracking your own personal changes and where you fall in your own cycles. In my last post, I talked about the importance of divination of the now, although I suppose I didn't call it that. Tarot is a means of holding a mirror up to your life situation and decisions and taking action because of it. I refuse to answer questions (if it is even possible to answer such questions with Tarot) about where you'll meet your soulmate or whether you will get the job you applied for. I can give you *energy* for those things, but I will not even venture an answer to those questions. 

This is how I do my work, and when I sit down to think about how I might start to teach someone Tarot, this is all what I think of.

Here are my suggestions for learning Tarot:
1) Ask yourself what you think magic is. To me, magic is the metaphysical ways that we interact with the universe, and this is a two-way street. But it's important to be clear about how you think magic works in order for it to be impactful for you.
2) Ask yourself what you want from magic (whichever form you are pursuing). Intention makes a huge difference, and while strong intention can make some amazing things happen, I always find it important to start from the assumption that the only thing you can *actually do* is choose your own actions. This is a good moment to start to think about ethics - Is it ethical to try to use magic to make a person love you? I don't think so. Have this conversation with yourself.
3) Pick out a Tarot Deck. This was a much nicer process pre-covid, when you could stand in front of a bookshelf and run your hands over all the decks on offer, learn their personalities, but even now, it is perfectly fine to choose your deck by appearance. An artist has put their time and energy into creating it, and that will resonate as much as anything else. I HIGHLY recommend this deck for beginners: The Star-Spinner Tarot. It's a beautiful deck by a queer Vietnamese-American artist, with cards that are a great size and feel good to use, with a tiny little booklet that is very readable and is deeply queer and anti-imperial. And it's gentle, and pretty. And it brings me to the next stage:
4) Read the instruction manual. This might sound kind of silly, but this is the best way to get truly ground-level basics on what the cards mean and how to organize a reading. Skim what the cards mean. Lay the cards out in order and look them over. And then:
5) Practice. Decide what kind of reading feels practical to you - a simple three-card draw is a great place to start - and do one every week for two months. Keep a journal. Read the meanings of the cards to yourself as many times as you need to. You're learning - its okay not to know things. You might find, at the end of those two months, that patterns of cards have emerged and you've seen an arc develop. Maybe there's been a card that has moved across the entire reading in that time. There's probably a lot of cards that haven't come up at all; it's a 72-card deck, that's a lot of cards to get through. But what's important about this step is that you are getting to know the cards and vice versa. You are learning how they feel and they are learning how you ask questions. This is where the magic happens and starts to build: magic is a two-way street, and you and your new deck are awaking to each other.
6) Evaluate. When those two months are up, go back to step 1 and 2 and ask yourself those questions again. Have your answers changed? Have your intentions? If they haven't, cool. If they have, also cool, and note that this isn't an indication that your answers were *wrong* the first time. Just that you look at things differently two months along. And, importantly, now you're at a crossroads: where do you want your magic journey to go next? What do you want to DO with it?

Your next steps are for you to decide. I'm here if you want help enacting your answers.

~The Spider

Greetings!

I'm a practicing queer and enby spækona (seer) and volva (witch) in the Norse tradition. I'm also a fantasy writer and love the hell out of fanfic.

You may know me on twitter as @ JesWrites. I'd been thinking about whether to create a blog or work on an existing blog for Thoughts, but that comes with pressures to post regularly and post Big Thoughts (rather than weird sidebar kinda shit). I guarantee nothing, but hello.

I remain undecided on what I'll post, but I'm excited to see what this is all about. And hot damn, these post options feel like a blast from the past.