The Wicked Witch of the West
25/06/2020 09:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
izmeinaBut first the Fight Club
Some witches out there must have trump voodoo dolls because everything seems to have fallen apart all at the same time
I did not spend the solstice brewing up potions of rats, snails and trump toe nails. Instead I did rather more mundane stuff like coffee crawls and watching the sunset by the beach armed with a new novel thanks to Catness. It is always nice to save magical books for magical places. Much better than on the bus or in a queue or on the loo etc etc
It's called the School of Good and Evil and could be described as when Hogwarts meets the Hunger Games. Except there is not one magical school but two and the village children are reaped every 4 years and there are only 2 of them not 24. Actually, that is not quite correct because there are a lot of kids snatched from a whole bunch of different places
On Tuesday I was on the way to a quirky permaculture garden with an old church when I walked past a Dymocks book store. There are a few of them still around. There was a bargain bin at the front of the store and the beady serpent eye was drawn to a title "Seduced by logic" the story of 2 female maths geeks in the 1800s
It's not like I NEED any new books when the Lair is just bursting at the seams with the things but for the princely sum of $5, I figured that having one more book in my collection is less painful than resisting temptation and then regretting it.
It was while waiting in the queue that I noticed the stash of tarot decks lurking on an end shelf. There were 2 rows devoted to them which is unusual for a mainstream book store in a very conservative middle class suburb. There were the usual totally flaky oracle and angel cards, the regular Ride Waite and old Mythic Tarot and even the very witchy Mary El Tarot, but the one that caught my eye was the black and red Occult Tarot with a picture of a medieval beast on the box and a very tempting price tag of $35. Wants wants wants the Precioussss squealed the inner serpent - but the more rational muggle refused. You have already got a few boxes of devils that you have been neglecting lately. Apocalypse and the old Dark Grimoire have been getting all the attention lately.
And anyway, it's probably some novelty knock off aimed at the emo and goth market. Buffy and Charmed sorts of things. So yessss. I did not let those demons lure me into temptation and eternal damnation. But they did lure me to the Oracle of Google and it did not take long to realize that it was a proper tarot deck with a bit of thought put into it.
After seeing that it was $45 on Book Depository and a ridiculous $50 on Amazon Oz, I figured that a bit of temptation would be perfectly OK. And buying this deck just around the corner from the old church with the wild and witchy garden was just the excuse I was looking for. No reason to wait several days to find a suitable spot to open the box and unleash the beasties within
So I have looked through the deck. Sitting under a tree at sunset in the witchy garden. It is beautifully produced and rather reminiscent of the rather stark Vampire Tarot by Robert Place
It's got all the old medieval scripts and sigils many of which look remarkably like Voodoo Veves
I suspect that is because the artist has based the cards on medieval magical manuscripts. All that old King Solomon stuff.
Meanwhile I have discovered a soul mate in Agatha of Beyond the Woods. It is like a surreal episode of "This is your life" Teachers were always commenting on my very twisted black sense of humour because of course I could never write one of those 'Day at the Beach' primary school assignments without a few piranhas, sharks or other maritime monsters
I have gotten up to Agatha's increasingly desperate attempts to escape the hell of pink fluffiness and wall to wall mirrors that is the Happy Ever After wing of the magic school
Now that is a happy never after fairy tale. So far....
Some witches out there must have trump voodoo dolls because everything seems to have fallen apart all at the same time
I did not spend the solstice brewing up potions of rats, snails and trump toe nails. Instead I did rather more mundane stuff like coffee crawls and watching the sunset by the beach armed with a new novel thanks to Catness. It is always nice to save magical books for magical places. Much better than on the bus or in a queue or on the loo etc etc
It's called the School of Good and Evil and could be described as when Hogwarts meets the Hunger Games. Except there is not one magical school but two and the village children are reaped every 4 years and there are only 2 of them not 24. Actually, that is not quite correct because there are a lot of kids snatched from a whole bunch of different places
On Tuesday I was on the way to a quirky permaculture garden with an old church when I walked past a Dymocks book store. There are a few of them still around. There was a bargain bin at the front of the store and the beady serpent eye was drawn to a title "Seduced by logic" the story of 2 female maths geeks in the 1800s
It's not like I NEED any new books when the Lair is just bursting at the seams with the things but for the princely sum of $5, I figured that having one more book in my collection is less painful than resisting temptation and then regretting it.
It was while waiting in the queue that I noticed the stash of tarot decks lurking on an end shelf. There were 2 rows devoted to them which is unusual for a mainstream book store in a very conservative middle class suburb. There were the usual totally flaky oracle and angel cards, the regular Ride Waite and old Mythic Tarot and even the very witchy Mary El Tarot, but the one that caught my eye was the black and red Occult Tarot with a picture of a medieval beast on the box and a very tempting price tag of $35. Wants wants wants the Precioussss squealed the inner serpent - but the more rational muggle refused. You have already got a few boxes of devils that you have been neglecting lately. Apocalypse and the old Dark Grimoire have been getting all the attention lately.
And anyway, it's probably some novelty knock off aimed at the emo and goth market. Buffy and Charmed sorts of things. So yessss. I did not let those demons lure me into temptation and eternal damnation. But they did lure me to the Oracle of Google and it did not take long to realize that it was a proper tarot deck with a bit of thought put into it.
After seeing that it was $45 on Book Depository and a ridiculous $50 on Amazon Oz, I figured that a bit of temptation would be perfectly OK. And buying this deck just around the corner from the old church with the wild and witchy garden was just the excuse I was looking for. No reason to wait several days to find a suitable spot to open the box and unleash the beasties within
So I have looked through the deck. Sitting under a tree at sunset in the witchy garden. It is beautifully produced and rather reminiscent of the rather stark Vampire Tarot by Robert Place
It's got all the old medieval scripts and sigils many of which look remarkably like Voodoo Veves
I suspect that is because the artist has based the cards on medieval magical manuscripts. All that old King Solomon stuff.
Meanwhile I have discovered a soul mate in Agatha of Beyond the Woods. It is like a surreal episode of "This is your life" Teachers were always commenting on my very twisted black sense of humour because of course I could never write one of those 'Day at the Beach' primary school assignments without a few piranhas, sharks or other maritime monsters
I have gotten up to Agatha's increasingly desperate attempts to escape the hell of pink fluffiness and wall to wall mirrors that is the Happy Ever After wing of the magic school
Now that is a happy never after fairy tale. So far....
no subject
Date: 2020-06-27 06:52 am (UTC)LOL, these evil Tarot decks are skillful in temptation, aren't they ;) Your new acquisition looks pretty intriguing!
The Wicked Witch of the West
Date: 2020-06-27 03:11 pm (UTC)But now it's getting seriously suspicious. While she loves all the gloom, doom and darkness and being surrounded by freaks, she notices that most of them are bitter, twisted, cruel and full of rage etc and has no desire to be that way herself.
I have the sneaking suspicion that reading too much increases empathy and curiosity. That is where I went wrong. Because I don't feel myself possessed and driven by revenge or rage. Well I do have some for a couple of critters (2 old bosses and the Donald) but not as a general world view.
It's funny. I misread one of the classes - I thought beautification was Beatification!
Reading this book really does remind me of how much time you can save for more important things when you don't feel the need to spend half the day in front of the mirror, in groom rooms or trying to attract a prince
I have only got as far as the doomed Golden Goose. I did not see that coming.
Seeing Sophie squirm and be such a nasty queen bee FIRST CLASS BITCH getting her come uppance is so much fun. I almost said - a thing of beauty!!!
She really is a nasty narcissistic piece of work
Yes. I hated primary school for the most part. I definitely felt like Agatha surrounded by all the sparkly unicorns and pretty pink fluffiness and the other kids made it quite clear too that I was the ugly duckling
It is sort of strange that yesterday I was reading this book in the same place where I read lots of Vita Nostra - especially the strange city, black beasts and dreams of flying above the city where I learned that some of the teachers were secretly angels in disguise.
One thing to be said about so called children's books - at least there is very little romance. The best test of a book is how many times you can read it again and still find something new each time.
I think I can safely add 'magical school' to my list of favourite genres. I know that it definitely is one of yours. Which is good because you read so many of them and always find the gold nuggets buried amongst the piles of turds.
I suppose with a bit of a stretch - the first 2 Hunger Games books and the new prequel are also a sort of Magical School genre. I guess it could be generalized to the individual up against some giant sometimes malevolent machine and needing to learn the rules to survive.
The reason I had never heard of this particular Occult deck before is that it only came out in April.
I was also peeking at that new deck yesterday. I guess I could fill half the class rooms of Nevermore with the critters in the box. I need to get out the box of beasts that you sent to see the similarities. I think one big difference is that this deck has a whole bunch of seals, sigils and other arcane information. There also seems to be a suspiciously large number of demons whose day jobs are devoted to attracting the love of a woman (there were only a couple of equal opportunity evil cupids)
I was recently glancing through the fascinating Andrieh Vitimus Chaos magic book which is probably the best book I have ever read on magic. Practical and logical and no pink fluffy unicorn nonsense.
I really must make an effort to attend to this stuff seriously. If only he offered a Duolingo course in chaos ;)
PS Hässlichkeit macht frei!