Do not go gentle into that good night,
Dylan Thomas
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
I thought to close last week’s article with this snippet of poetry as it reflected my personal response toward the relatively crappy year that was 2022. Following the Plague Years, we none of us expected too much, and yet, we all of us hoped for a final dawning of the day.
Well, the world more or less went back to business as usual, which is a sad thing in itself.
But I hope as Byron Ballard said on a recent episode the Your Average Witch Podcast, we have passed through the Tower Time, and are now just cleaning up the mess. Star Time awaits us, with all the potential of celestial level rebirth.
I have become acquainted with the wit and wisdom of this wonderful witch who hails from the North Carolina mountains on the other side of the Appalachians from where I grew up. Naturally being both native Appalachainians (a word made up by my sixth grade math teacher, as something of a joke, and yet it fits) we have many things in common.
I look forward to a time Mrs. Ballard’s path crosses my own and I get to speak with her face to face. In meantime, I recommend you locate her on your favorite podcast and her own. She is a delightful, funny, and brilliant woman who I hope will continue to lead in the larger community toward Star Time.
For my own part, I have plans for 2023 to expand my horizons just a bit, to see if I can support the additional load of some new ventures while honoring the responsibilities of my day job and giving right and proper focus to my family.
This blog was actually supposed to be something of a sideline to my primary intention of opening a webstore to sell my art, craft, and jewelry work. My artwork has never been mainstream, and those who will appreciate are also not likely mainstream, so the blog was supposed to be about my methods, meanings, and merchandise. As you can doubtless tell it evolved. I am pleased with that, and I don’t intend on making any great changes. T
hat said, I am committed to returning to my art as the year progresses, and so there may also be articles, short posts, and announcements popping up here from time to time that are not “on subject” in the usual manner. My art is, and always has been, informed by and imbued with, my occult sensibilities, so maybe it won’t be too far off the beam. Just don’t get upset if I do a bit more “active selling”. At some point this has to generate a profit.
I also have a plan to add perhaps a biweekly article where I go deep on a particular Tarot card. Tarot is my core discipline, having been drawn (pun intended) to it early in life because of my visual nature. I have begun several times to write a book on Tarot. Every time I do, I get to a point where I realize I need to go deeper or go back to the cards or just don’t think what I started with is anything not already out there in the world. So to some extent this is an experiment in Tarot analysis designed to clarify my own understanding, as much as expand that of the reader. Don’t expect this too soon, though. I have The Fool on the calendar for around April 1, as appropriate, and since we’ll start there, well, it gives me some time to really figure out how I want to do this, and how I can sustain it with previously mentioned responsibilities and obligations.
I am preparing for another Tarot related activity as well. For several years, my good lady wife and I have owned the domain bookmark-this.com. In previous lifetimes we used it for book review and author interviews adjacent to other media ventures, but it’s been dormant for quite some time. We plan to reinvigorate that this year, and I aim to expand it to include review of Tarot and Oracle decks. I am beginning with my own sizable collection, but if anyone out there is a publisher or has an in with one, I am happy to accept review copies, and feature pre-release news articles. I have been a journalist (in one of my lifetimes) and Bookmark This will grow as we can grow it.
My focus with the Sacred Life has been to share my personal perspectives. It is not and will not become a Magic 101 or similar site. There are so many sites, books, podcasts, and other resources that are available and better equipped to provide that kind of information. My objective has always been to spark that most fundamental of questions – Why?
Understanding the how of something is powerful. It’s necessary. But as we are all experiencing magic from the human perspective, I think it’s important to explore how that human experience has evolved, and is evolving. I am frequently a cynic and an iconoclast. I am clearly sarcastic and irreverent. I think such qualities are a good way to approach life in general. Question everything, my friends. Including me. Including you. We are none of us so enlightened or elevated that we cannot look further up the path and still wonder.
I thank you all for your patronage since I began earlier this year. Had I any idea of the things that would change in my life, I don’t know that I would have committed to this. But that can be said of any and all changes that come. If we don’t choose to act, we will be acted upon.
I hope this last season of the calendar year is a good one for you and yours, and if it isn’t, I hope you find the energy to get through to brighter days. Change is a constant.
See you next week.