October No-surprise

It's no surprise that October tends to get a little busy for a Tarot Reader, with Halloween and all. Plus I'm trying to work on a non-Tarot book for on Kindle

If posts slow down a little this month, please hang in there with me. The sooner I get those writing projects done, the sooner I can start working on my Tarot books!

Thanks for reading :)

Quotes and Aspirations

I love this...I aspire to write that way too.


"All great speeches have soundbites...FDR...Kennedy...The Sermon on the Mount - soundbites...There is something to be said for a pithy way of talking." - John Meecham, on "Morning Joe" September 26, 2012.

www.ModernOracleTarot.com

Cornerstones

Holey smokin' guacamole!

I feel like a kid who just got Superman's autograph. Or, if you are our neighbor Jane, a six year old that just met Batgirl.

Remember the other day when we were talking about soda regulations in "Since When Did Dracula Have a Nanny?" from "The Vampire Diet" blog? Less than 4 hours after writing that, I read a post from Richard Bach's Blog about his new book "Thank Your Wicked Parents". Even though the topic is different, the post had a quote from the book that suited our topic perfectly - except it was said with far greater kindness and eloquence.
I didn't want to just slap the quote into our conversation all willy-nilly. I wanted to be as courteous, respectful and well, legal, about it as possible. So not knowing what to expect or quite what to do, I wrote for permission to use it. Blow me down. Mr. Bach himself answered!

And there you have why I have fallen in love with blogging and the Internet. Through the 'net and his kindness, I was able to have a short conversation with one of my all-time favorite authors! Online information can be fast and loose and unedited and of questionable quality, but at other times it is an unique opportunity to meet lovely brilliant minds we never could have met in person. I've always wanted to thank Mr. Bach directly, personally, for the gift his books brought to me at a time when I needed them the most. What a privilege to be able to do just that...and get permission to quote him too! Talk about frosting on the proverbial cake!

Here, Mr. Bach gives us an example of one cornerstone to real change. What does it take to make a real change - to take steps along a newer, truer, more genuine path for ourselves? One thing is, simply, ideas. How can you go in a different direction unless you get the notion that other possibilities really exist? Words and pictures are the bones and lifeblood of ideas. Without language and/or images, ideas can be ghostly, boneless things. Making a change based on ideas without language is like trying to capture morning fog in a butterfly net.

That is how Mr. Bach's books helped me. That is how I hope my books might someday help someone else. I had vague ideas, but I didn't quite have the language to really understand them much less live them. It felt like trying to grab a handful of an icy mist. Then I read "Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah", and several others like "The Dancing Wu Li Masters" by Gary Zukov, "The Tao of Physics" by Fritjof Capra, the "Tao Te Ching" and more. "Illusions" was certainly a favorite among them, which led to reading his other books, like "Nothing by Chance", "Stranger to the Ground" and of course "Jonathan Livingston Seagull". When they were published, "The Bridge Across Forever" and "One" were on my bookshelf before they were in paperback.

Now I had a conceptual vocabulary, a skeleton, for those not-quite-formed ideas from before. Books like these wrapped that icy mist in language, transforming it into solid crystals- strong, unshakable things pointing the way to a better path that had been there all along.

Ideas like these are a cornerstone for change. The solidified ones are the best ideas to build upon. Meeting like minds, and exchanging ideas turns fog into foundations and imagination into feathers.

This is the role that modern vampire lore plays in "The Vampire Diet" blog. It helps to crystallize our ideas about healthier eating. The modern vampire imagery makes that new path more visible and, hopefully, more fun. For the "Modern Oracle Tarot" blog, the tarot cards themselves serve the same purpose. The words and images associated with the cards show alternatives we might have otherwise missed, and makes the ideas we already have clearer and stronger.

If you get a chance, I wholeheartedly recommend reading "Illusions" or any of Richard Bach's books, and please do take a moment to check out his new website and new book at www.RichardBach.com.

I have a busy weekend being dropped in my lap, so we'll get back to the quote part of building cornerstones on Monday.

Before I forget to mention it - the blogs might be a little erratic during the summer, but I'll try to keep to a Monday through Friday posting schedule as best as I can. Have a great weekend! More on Monday.

www.RondaSnow.com

You Are Awesome!

You. Yes, you - the one looking at the screen reading this. You are awesome!


Have you ever had an idea or belief that sort of just hovered at the edge of your consciousness like an icy fog early in the morning? Have you ever had belief or idea that is real, but not quite a palpable, integrated part of your daily life? 


New ideas or seldom used beliefs are like that for me. And really good books are the cold front, the gust of wind that changes the icy fog into piles of real snow. The best books that come through my life are the ones that crystallize those delicate, foggy ideas that dance on the edge of your mind, and hide just past the corner of your eye.


No matter where they may fall on the grand landscape of  literature, a really great book is one that gives important ideas something to grip.  A really great book takes ideas, gives them a voice and a vocabulary, and turns foggy notions into a tangible, knowable,  speak-able ideas.  As Christopher Fleming ("Dead Famous", www.unknownmagazine.com) puts it "believing is one thing, knowing is another".  A good read can take a foggy notion or a poorly defined belief and turn it into knowing. 


There have been a number of authors that have given me that sort of experience. Most are well-known names: Richard Bach, Ted Andrews, Michael Newton's "Journey of Souls", the Tao Te Ching and many more. I just finished a book that can go into this special section of my Geek Girl's Bookshelf...."Witchlight: Witches on Parole" by Debora Geary (www.deborageary.com).


If you need it to be just fun, lighthearted brain-candy, this book can do that. This book has everything I like from the "Modern Witch" series and adds a secret surprise inside. 


I'm not surprised that the author is a knitter (www.ravelry.com). She takes themes like self-discovery, self-acceptance, personal responsibility balanced with fun and knits them together in a burst of color and wraps the story around a core group of realistic, wonderful, relate-able characters. This books adds yet another thread to the pattern - the role of a mentor and the way they learn from the students as much as the students learn from the mentor. Substitute "master" for "mentor" (not really different in this case) and this book very much resonates with my long-past experience teach martial arts. She reflects something very true, which would be plenty for any book to accomplish.


But there, wrapped in the heart of the book, is an epiphany.


In one scene, a group of friends are talking about how an old  mentor had profoundly impacted Jenny, who. in her turn, has just become a mentor for the first time. Then a nine year old healer-in-training in the room hits us with this:


"He helped you be awesome"


Which in turn made Jenny realize they could indeed help her new protoges "find their awesome too".


"Sure," the young healer agreed. "It's what witches do."


Witches, bakers, knitters, healers, mentors...writers: That really is what they do. It doesn't matter if they teach martial arts, do tarot readings, help healing, or create a fun bit of fiction...the what isn't nearly as important as the awesome. The point of writing, teaching, healing, being a friend or just walking around on planet Earth  is to help people "find their awesome". What more loving, compassionate thing is there to do?


And there is some kind of awesome in all of us. We just have to find it. It can be anything...writing a good book, knitting a soft sweater, baking yummy cookies, doing a tarot reading - anything. The true test of finding your awesome is if it helps others find theirs too.


You. Yes, you. You there looking at a screen reading this - you are awesome!


*******
Addendum: I don't know who created the happy clipart in this and other posts. I found it in a "public domain"  + play search on Google. Whoever you are...thanks!


www.ModernOracleTarot.com