Deck Review- Ask The Queens Advice Card Deck

I'm reviewing a really fun deck today, the Ask the Queens advice card deck. This card deck gives you sage advice "for getting ahead, without losing your head." These cards were adapted from "Doomed Queens" by Kris Waldherr and I must say, it is a charming deck to work with.

The cards are a bit over sized at 5.75" x 4.25" and have a wonderful matte finish. The way in which one uses the cards is quite simple, shuffle them well whilst formulating a question, the more specific you can be the better. Then choose your card by holding your hand over the cards until one just begs your attention, choosing that card will deliver to you your very special message from one of the Queens. The deck advises, mind you, that the answers may be a tad on the gloomy side because of their life experiences so keep that in mind if you happen upon a message that may or may not be a little negative.

I absolutely love this deck because not only is each card full of wisdom and experience it also tells you a bit of information on that particular queen and a little of the history too. I like it when I can learn a little something on the way too, don't you? For instance, the advice from Queen Alexandra Romanov is " Don't trust a holy man who acts like the devil." Of course she gives this gloomy advice because as we all know, she and her family were executed by firing squad in 1918 but what you may not have been aware of is that hemophilia  ran in her side and her fifth and only son, Alexei... heir to the throne, was born with this condition.

Some of the regal advice comes from Queens such as Marie Luisa; Marie Antoinette; Catherine Howard; Catherine of Aragon and Diana Spencer. All and all, Ask the Queens Advice Card Deck is a fabulous way to get a little insight from a few ladies who have seen it all and it gives you a history lesson to boot! This would be a wonderful deck to place upon one's coffee table for a brilliant conversation piece. 

Tarot In History

How did tarot come about you may ask, well that is an interesting question...let’s take a look. Researchers have tried for years to pinpoint the true origin of the Tarot and many are still in disagreement as to who

"What Is...?" Wednesday

Stela
A stela is a tall, narrow slab made of stone or wood, usually inscribed or carved in relief with names, laws, pictures, designs, or dedications for the dead. They were used throughout Ancient Egypt, the Near East, Greece, and even

April Fool!

 I was wondering about the origin of this goofy day and dug up some interesting facts...There are may ideas out there about just how April Fool's Day began, so I picked one of  those  explanations...


In 1582,Pope Gregory XIII ordered a new calendar the "Gregorian Calendar" to replace the old Julian Calendar. The new calendar called for New Year's Day to be celebrated Jan. 1. That year, France adopted the reformed calendar and shifted New Year's day to Jan. 1.


According to a popular explanation, many people either refused to accept the new date, or did not learn about it, and continued to celebrate New Year's Day on April 1. Other people began to make fun of these traditionalists, sending them on "fool's errands" or trying to trick them into believing something false. Eventually, the practice spread throughout Europe.


There are at least two difficulties with this explanation. The first is that it doesn't fully account for the spread of April Fools' Day to other European countries. The Gregorian calendar was not adopted by England until 1752, for example, but April Fools' Day was already well established there by that point. The second is that we have no direct historical evidence for this explanation, only conjecture.


April Fools' Day is observed throughout the world. Practices include sending someone on a "fool's errand," looking for things that don't exist; playing pranks; and trying to get people to believe ridiculous things.


The French call April 1 Poisson d'Avril, or "April Fish." French children sometimes tape a picture of a fish on the back of their schoolmates, crying "Poisson d'Avril" when the prank is discovered.


In Scotland, for example, April Fool's Day is actually celebrated for two days. The second day is devoted to pranks involving the posterior region of the body. It is called Taily Day. The origin of the "kick me" sign can be traced to this observance.


Mexico's counterpart of April Fool's Day is actually observed on December 28. Originally, the day was a sad remembrance of the slaughter of the innocent children by King Herod. It eventually evolved into a lighter commemoration involving pranks and trickery.


But keep in mind please, April Fools' practical jokes should be done in good fun and not meant to harm anyone. The best jokes are the clever ones where everyone laughs, especially the person who had the joke played on them.

Out, Out... Damn Ye Snakes!

I'm sure nearly everyone has heard the story that Ireland has no snakes because St. Patrick got rid of them and  how he climbed the Hill of Tara, raised his staff and commanded all the snakes to leave the island. Legend has it that there was one snake in particular that was just too stubborn to leave.

So  St. Patrick made a box into which he invited the slithery little fellow to crawl, but the snake resisted, insisting the box was too small for his svelte but still impressively bulky form. This disagreement led to an argument that could only be solved when the snake agreed to crawl into the box to prove to St. Patrick that it was, indeed, too small for him to fit into. Of course, once he crawled in, wily old Patrick shut the door on the box and tossed the snake into the sea. And that's why there are no snakes in Ireland....but is this story really true?

So, why are there no snakes in Ireland...really? To put it plainly, they can't swim and don't like the cold. Nope, nothing to do with St. Patrick. I know this may come as quite a shock to many of you and the true reason may not be as fanciful and romantic as the legend but it is indeed quite interesting from a scientific standpoint. So, before you all start sending me nasty letters...let me explain.

Ireland isn't the only island without native snakes. New Zealand doesn't have any either (although it had a snaky reptile 20 million years ago). The only snakes near Hawaii are elusive sea snakes, and the island is pretty serious about keeping out the land varieties. We hear that Greenland and Antarctica are snake-free as well. According to NationalZoo, , there never were any snakes in Ireland and probably has more to do with the vagaries of geography than any neat tricks performed by St. Patty.

Ancient snake fossils are found only on southern continents, suggesting that snakes first radiated from Gondwanaland—a former supercontinent comprised of modern-day Antarctica, South America, Africa, India, and Australia. Migrating to Ireland wasn't an option at this time, as the area was completely underwater. The chalky sediments that would eventually become the 700-foot Cliffs of Moher on Ireland's west coast were being laid down at the bottom of the sea.

So where did the myth of St. Patrick and the snakes come from? Most scholars agree that snakes symbolize paganism, which St. Patrick is also credited for banishing from Ireland. Snakes as symbols of evil are prevalent throughout Judeo-Christian mythology, most notoriously in the Garden of Eden as a tempter of Eve. While not the first to bring christianity to Ireland, it is St. Patrick who is said to have encountered the Druids at Tara and abolished their pagan rites.

Serenity Sunday

While the history of Valentine's Day is sometimes debated, it most often is said to have links back to a Catholic saint named St. Valentine. The problem is there are actually three St. Valentine's-- one a priest, one a bishop, and little is known about the third. All were martyrs.In 469 A.D., Pope Gelasius declared Feb. 14th a day to honor St. Valentine, one of these three men.


One legend says that a Roman emperor banned soldiers from marrying in the third century, but St. Valentine took issue with this. He became an advocate for soldiers and was executed as a result of his outspokenness. Another legend says St. Valentine was executed for his beliefs in Christianity and just before he died, he left a farewell note for a loved one and signed it "From Your Valentine."


A conventional and widely accepted belief about the holiday itself is that Valentine's Day grew out of a Middle Ages tradition of celebrating Feb. 14th as the day "the birds began to pair." History.com notes that February has long been associated with being a month of love, and Feb. 15th was celebrated in ancient times as a fertility festival.


My List:


1.) My kids


2.) Great friends


3.) Chocolate


4.) Silly ringtones


5.) Bare root roses


6.) Insight


7.) Constructive criticism 


8.) Electric pencil sharpeners


9.) Rainbows


10.) Pina Colada scented lip balm

"Who were...?" Wednesday

The Picts

(possibly meaning "painted" or "tattooed")

I have always been fascinated by history and for sometime, this group has held my interest. A cousin of mine has been researching our family tree for several years and has traced one branch all the way back to the 1590's in the Scottish region Aberdeenshire.  Now, I'm by no means making the leap that somehow my family tree may stretch back to the time of the Pict's but in a random flight of fancy I thought I would research this group a little further, just because.  Please feel free to comment if you can add to the sketchy information that I've been able to dig up...

The first ever written record of the people known as the Picts came from Roman sources. In 297 A.D. the orator Eumenius referred to the Britons as "...already being accustomed to the Picti and Hiberni as enemies."... meaning that they had probably been present in society for some time and some linguistic evidence suggests they spoke a type of Celtic language. All accounts that I have read indicate the Pict's as a warrior people and historians do know that they were mighty sailors as there are some texts mentioning that the Romans feared the Pictish Navy.

It is unknown what the Picts called themselves and all historians haveis a name which may have been derived from the Latin picti, which means ‘painted’. Other pieces of evidence, like the Irish name for the Picts, ‘Cruithne’, which also means ‘painted’ leads us to believe that the Picts practiced body painting, if not actual tattooing. The Picts had a distinct artistic style that remains in carvings and metalwork. 

Strangely, Pictish symbols usually occur in pairs and around fifty pairs are known. Of these are animals such as the salmon, deer and bull... birds like the eagle and goose... “monsters” such as the infamous Pictish Beast and more enigmatic designs such as the crescent and V rod, comb and mirror and double disk. The Pictish symbol stones are generally found in the north-east of Scotland, with clusters found along the eastern coasts and into the Highlands.


Sadly,there is little else left of the Picts besides their carvings, save a text left  called the  king-list, which gives the names and the lengths of the reigns of 60 or more Pictish kings. The list ends with Causantin mac Cinaeda, who died in 876.

The True End Of An Era

Millvina Dean, the last survivor of the legendary ocean liner Titanic, which sank on its maiden voyage in April 1912 after colliding with an iceberg in the North Atlantic, has passed away. She was 97.

She died at a nursing home near Southampton, England, the port where she and her family boarded the ship on its only voyage, according to Charles Haas, the president of the Titanic International Society. Her death came on the 98th anniversary of the launching of the Titanic on May 31, 1911.

"She was a remarkable, sparkling lady," Haas told the Times Sunday. "She knew her place in history and was always willing to share her story with others, especially children. She was the last living link to the story."

Dean was about 8 weeks old when she and her family set sail, third class, on the luxury ocean liner on April 10, 1912. Five days later, she was among some 700 passengers and crew rescued off the coast of Newfoundland. She and her mother, Georgetta, 32, and her brother Bertram, 23 months old, were put into lifeboats. Her father, Bertram, 27, stayed on board the ship and was among more than 1,500 passengers and crew members who went down with the Titanic.

She had no memory of the disaster, but at age 8 her mother told her what happened. "It was so awful for her that she never wanted to speak about it," Dean said of her mother in a 2002 interview with the Irish News. Georgetta Dean suffered severe headaches every day for years after the ship's sinking.

In 1998, Dean finally completed the sea voyage from Southampton to New York City that she had set out to make 86 years earlier. She traveled on the Queen Elizabeth II, compliments of Michael Rudd, a Titanic enthusiast and travel agent in Missouri. He and Dean gave a presentation together during the QE II sail. "She hadn't been on a ship since 1912," Rudd said in a 2007 interview with The Times. "People crowded around her, they just wanted to touch her."

As part of that same trip, Dean went to Missouri to see the house where her parents planned to begin their new life, an experience she described as eerie.

Celtic Tree Calendar

Because my roots are Celtic in origin, I thought it would be fun to do some research on the Celtic Tree Calendar, which fascinates me to no end. I've always loved history and it's so cool when learning about the past leads you to realize that the past and present are not so removed from each other. Family's hand down stories and traditions from generation to generation and I just love seeing where a particular belief or custom originates from. I can still remember my grandfather teaching me all about the trees, he was a fire marshal for the local forest service in the town I grew up in and passed his love of nature to me.

The Celtic Tree Calendar calendar has thirteen lunar divisions. Most modern pagans use fixed dates for each month, rather than following the waxing and waning lunar cycle. Otherwise, eventually the calendar would fall out of sync with the Gregorian year that we all use today because some calendar years have 12 full moons and others have 13. The modern tree calendar is based on an idea that each letter in the ancient Celtic alphabet corresponded to a tree. Today marks the end of the tree month Rowan and tomorrow begins Ash.

The tree month of Ash (Feb. 18th -Mar 17) was a sacred chieftain tree and said to "court the flash" as it was prone to lightning strikes. Its wood was thought to be enchanted and was used for Druid wands and spears. Ash people are quick witted, spontaneous and gregarious. They have a lively curiosity and are intelligent, persuasive speakers, enthusiastic, curious and communicative. In Celtic mythology the ash is known as the tree of enchantment and it is said the Welsh magician Gwydion fashioned his wands from ash wood.

The Ogham (oh-wahm) or sacred Druidic alphabet contained hidden secrets for magic and divination and only the initiated could understand these meanings. The ancient Celts had a close bond with trees and we can see in their magical alphabet and in the tree calendar.They had a deep respect for their trees and it is reflected in the old Celtic word for oak (Duir), the word Derwydd or Duirwydd (oak-seer) was probably the origin of the word Druid.

Why Yes, My Number Really Is 666.

I bet that number got your attention...it happens all the time... audible gasps, people visibly twitch... some even find that suddenly they have somewhere else to be and quickly shuffle off murmuring to themselves. Even the very thought of that number brings controversy so allow me to fuel the fire. Being in the craft can sometimes be interesting, I get a lot of blank stares after being asked what my religious affiliation is and I answer witchcraft... no one is really sure if I'm actually confessing that I am a witch or just yanking their chain and when I'm asked for my phone number it just goes downhill from there. 666 is a number with such a vivid and powerful stigma attached to it that sometimes you just gotta laugh because otherwise all the Prozac in the world could not solve the issues that this number has been known to cause. Just the other day, my friend Peggy wrote her 666th blog posting on Laila and Minchie (there is a link to her blog on the right side of my page) and everyone held their breath....she emailed me just a bit ago so I was able to draw the conclusion that she did not explode and there was no appearance of the anti-christ materializing in a cloud of fire and brimstone. A few comments on her post mentioned the humor in it, ( most did not) but I'm guessing the younger crowd is not as knowledgable about this topic as we older folks are and that's ok with me. For argument's sake allow me to slip in a bit of history on the origin of "The number of the beast"... While reading the information in Wikipedia, I was suprised to see that historians and theologians are now starting to come to the conclusion that more than likely the translation was erroneously understood to be 666 but in fact is probably 616 instead and had more to do with numerology and Nero or Caligula than a christian concept associated with the devil . (In my spiritual beliefs, the devil does not exist and did not in any way, shape or form appear in any activities practiced by the early pagan cultures.) Hmm, interesting.... I suppose you can start sending that email now... I have even given it thought as to maybe including my phone number ...(my actual telephone number is area code (360) and the prefix is 666-**** ) but I won't put the last four digits in because my nerves could not handle it's constant ringing from unsettled readers calling to chew me out but here in Battle Ground, Washington the telephone prefix really is 666!

To read the Wikipedia article:

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_of_the_Beast)