Tarot and I

   My partner, Cat Dancing has her own excellent Tarot Blog, check it out. There is a button for it on this page. However, I have my own card story to tell here.
   First, a bit of history. From the time I was a teen I have been fascinated by the Tarot. I got my first deck, the ubiquitous Rider-Waite-Smith deck, when I was eighteen. At the time I had dated a young witch named Leslie. The cards were incredibly detailed and interesting. The art just got to me. I also got Waite's paperback on the cards, but I just couldn't get my head around the meanings. It was simply the art and the fact there was meaning there that interested me. For several years I would pull the cards out and look at them, wondering what I was missing.
   Over time I began to pick up other decks of the Tarot. I would find them at garage sales, used book stores, thrift stores and friends would gift me with them. Again, I loved the various artistic takes on the themes.
   My step-daughter, Sara, became interested and I let her use my original deck. Later, I tried to trade her out of them, but she refused. I found another Rider-Waite-Smith deck soon, and it felt like coming home again.
   Cat and I met in 2007. She was already a professional Tarot reader and teacher of several years. We met online originally. We had never really met in person, although we were in similar orbits. As a reader and teacher, Cat had her own collection of Tarot decks. When she discovered that I also had several decks, she thought we should meet. The result, as they say, is history. We've been fairly inseparable ever since.
   Together we still attract new decks now and then. We now have over fifty decks of Tarot and oracle cards.
   Before meeting Cat, I was only interested in the art of the cards. I began attending all of Cat's various classes in the Tarot and began to learn something of the history and meanings associated with them. In my own small way, I have learned to read the cards. 
   One of the truisms of using the Tarot is that the cards have a sense of humor. They usually tell you what you NEED to know, but not always what you WANT to hear. And often, parts of the readings will prick your bubble in not so subtle ways if you pay attention.
   One story about that involves the cards you see above. No, they're not tarot cards. However, there are relationships between the Tarot and ordinary playing cards. I know several readers who use playing cards for their divination. Here is what happened.
   I had begun a practice of drawing three Tarot cards as a daily reading. I had a set way of doing it, shuffle the deck a few times till it felt right, cut the deck. The card just below the cut indicates past, the card at the cut is present, and the card above the cut is future. As I said, I was doing this daily. It was a very interesting process, and often illuminating.
   One day I hadn't done my daily three cards. I was feeling a bit down from certain things happening in my life, and as I often do at those times I went for a walk. We live on a twisty dirt road in the country near McDade, Texas. I was walking along, and it came to me that I had not drawn my three cards that day. Moments later, I saw something sticking out of a wheel rut in the road. I stopped. It was the corner of a playing card. I picked it up. 
   A playing card, Jack of Clubs, in very nice condition. I thought, hmmm. It's a card! ( I had a firm grasp on the obvious!) I kept walking. 
   Within a few yards I found another card. This one was the four of spades. Again, it was half buried in the dirt but in good shape. As I walked on I found one more card, the Queen of diamonds. 
   My walk covered about a mile of the dirt road. (Half a mile north to the pavement, turn around and walk back.) I didn't find any more cards. 
   It dawned on me. I hadn't drawn my usual three Tarot cards, but I had been given three cards. As I looked at them and compared them with their equivalent Tarot counterparts, I got two messages. One was private and definitely relevant to my situation, the other was "you're gonna get your three cards no matter what!" 
   An ironic message from the universe, how refreshing!
   I finished my walk.
   A few weeks later, I found myself walking again. Half in jest I thought, "okay, where's my cards today!" A few steps further I literally stumbled across another card, this one the eight of spades. Again, relevant to my situation. I felt a bit chastened.
   Another few weeks after that, I was walking at lunch near where I worked. This was near the town of Kyle, Texas, a good 60 miles from home. My thoughts went back to my earlier walks, and I almost immediately found another card beside the road. This one was from a similar deck, but it was the Jack of hearts. 
   Apparently the cards were following me around.
   I got the message. I often get readings of the cards that give me a tweak, and I've come to take them in stride, somewhat. It's always interesting, though.
   A caveat. In my own interpretation of the cards, I used their Tarot equivalents. In fact, if you look into divination with playing cards, those cards have a fairly complex and somewhat different set of meanings of their own. I'm just letting you know.
   Thanks for reading.
  

Collecting Tarot

   A friend asked me to talk a little about the decks we've collected and my favorites. As I mentioned before, I'd strongly suggest either following the links I have to Amazon on this page to look over the decks that may interest you, or else go to Aeclectic Tarot for a really diverse library of decks. Of course, since I might possibly earn a few pennies, I always appreciate someone using my Amazon links!
     A further disclaimer, as such. My lady love Cat Dancing has a much more in depth Tarot blog. She is the pro, after all. I'm learning from her, but I am only the grasshopper!
    When Cat and I first met, I had already collected twenty seven tarot decks, I love the art, and I could get them rather cheaply, some at Half Price Books, some at garage sales and Goodwill. When we started talking, this is one of the things that intrigued Cat about me. I loved the cards, but really knew nothing about them metaphysically, whereas she had been a student and reader of Tarot for some time already.
    As of today, combined, we have fifty decks of tarot and divination cards. This only includes two duplicate sets that Cat and I both already had. The list follows, in no particular order.
    The list:
Tarot of the Cat People
Robin Wood Tarot
Halloween Tarot
Thoth Tarot (2 sets)
Shapeshifter Tarot
Llewellyn Tarot
Pearls of Wisdom Tarot
Shadowscapes Tarot
Gilded Tarot
Arthurian Legend Tarot
Sensual Wicca Tarot
Witchy Tarot  (miniature deck)
White Cats Tarot (miniature deck)
Ancient Tarots of Bologna
Rock Art Tarot
Barbara Walker Tarot
Gendron Tarot
Native American Tarot
Witches Tarot
Rider - Waite - Smith Tarot
Don Clemente Tradicional  (Spanish deck, minors only)
Tarot of Dreams
Legacy of the Tarot
Tarot of the Imagination
Tapestry Tarot
Medieval Scapini Tarot
Silicon Valley Tarot
Medieval Enchantment Tarot
Da Vinci Enigma Tarot
Cosmic Tribe Tarot
Merlin Tarot
Quest Tarot
Lord of the Rings Tarot
Cosmic Tarot
Flash Card Tarot
Robert M. Place Vampire Tarot
Druid Craft Tarot
Gypsy Witch Fortune Telling Playing Cards
Sacred Path (Oracle type deck)
Brian Froud: Faerie Oracle
Goddess Oracle  (2 sets)
Animal Medicine  (oracle)
Mermaids and Dolphins Oracle
Caroline Myss Archetype Cards (oracle, somewhat)
Love Cards (oracle)
Buckland Domino Divination Deck (not tarot)
Russian Gypsy Fortune Telling Cards (kind of tarot, kind of not)
Box of Dreams  (dream symbol cards)

   There they are! That doesn't include several sets of standard playing cards, also sometimes used for divination.
   Now for the favorites. Cat Dancing really likes the Gilded Tarot for most of her professional reading. So much so, that she has recently ordered a replacement deck of the Gilded. She has literally worn out her previous deck. Ciro Marchetti is the artist of the Gilded Tarot, as well as the Legacy, and Dream Tarots listed above. His artwork is incredible! For some of her personal work, Cat uses the Pearls of Wisdom Tarot, and has started working some with her new Shadowscapes deck. She often pulls out the Robin Wood deck and others to use in her classes. 
    For myself, my longest running favorite has been the Sensual Wicca Tarot. I like the images, and there is an "inner" story happening in the cards that is always intriguing. 
    I find myself often referring back to the basic Rider - Waite - Smith deck. This deck has been the basis for most other decks out there since it first came out in 1909. I love the art in all the other decks, but the illustrations in the RWS deck are literally in the "one picture equals a thousand words" category. If I am puzzled on a card in another deck, I will go to the RWS deck and it straightens me out!
Another "study help" deck that both of us often find ourselves looking at is the Flash Card Tarot, by Linda Nadeau. It has simple, but evocative illustrations, and the back of each card also has a concise description of what the card represents, a mnemonic, and questions often related to the card. Most tarot decks come with some sort of book, the Flash Card Tarot is its own book! One more deck I work with occasionally is the Cosmic Tarot. The art is visually interesting, but sometimes it gets in the way of study. As interesting as it is, some of the illustrations don't, to me, really work with the more traditional meanings of the cards. If, however, I'm working with a "storytelling" spread, it works very well sometimes. See my previous posts about using the Tarot in writing!
    As I've stated in other posts, my two newest decks have occupied much of my attention lately. The Vampire Tarot by Robert M. Place, and the Druid Craft Tarot by Philip and Stephanie Carr-Gomm. It's too early to tell if I will use them actively in classes or elsewhere, or simply enjoy the art. 
    Oftentimes in various Tarot Classes or Workshops we will take several different decks. We'll work with one principally, and lay out the corresponding cards from other decks just to compare the various artist visions. Different scenes evoke different responses from people. As it is, a class of eight students will often have eight different types of decks. It is always interesting to compare. 
   The other "basic" tarot deck is the Thoth deck. Aleister Crowley conceived the deck, the pictures were painted by Lady Frieda Harris between 1938 and 1943.  The deck is similar, but a bit different from the RWS deck. There are the same number of cards, 78, but many have different names and a slightly different order. Many readers use the Thoth deck, I've had trouble getting used to it. The art work is wonderful, but a bit on the abstract side.
     The "non tarot" decks we have are mostly some sort of "oracle" deck. Oracle cards have the same concept of tarot, but don't usually have the same number of cards, nor are they usually divided up into suits.
    One of the more interesting of the "sort of not-tarot" decks is the Russian Gypsy Fortune Telling Cards. I haven't spent as much time as I'd like to with this intriguing deck. The 25 cards are quartered diagonally with different colorful patterns, not unlike quilt blocks. As they are laid out, they match, or don't, the cards next to them, and that shapes the reading. If you want to do your divining differently, it might be worth a try.
   I can't say enough about taking Tarot Classes. We are blessed to have several really good teachers here in Austin, Texas. Being Teacher's Pet, I go to all of Cat Dancing's classes, of course. She has a regular one on the fourth Monday of each month. Suzanne McAnna is another teacher here both Cat and I learn from. She and Cat also teach classes and workshops together quite often.
    Books are also great. As I've mentioned in the past, some of the best books on Tarot to go to are written by Rachel Pollack, Corinne Kenner, and most especially Mary K. Greer. A.E. Waite's book "Pictorial Key to the Tarot" also has a permanent place in my library. I even have a PDF version available constantly. I admit the original copy seemed a bit hard to understand when I first attempted it as a teen, but now I find it very handy. (Of course, back then I wasn't as interested in the "reading" aspects of the cards.)
    See you in class!

Druid Craft Tarot

     Just grooving on my new tarot deck. (Not an uncommon event around here, see below, but this one is special.)
     A few weeks back I had a birthday party to celebrate my 60th. It's been a really long time since I had one. Thank you, all my lovely friends who showed up, I love you all! Anyway, from my buds Amanda and Mark I received a gift certificate to Ancient Mysteries, a wonderful metaphysical store in South Austin where my love, Cat Dancing, reads tarot. ( 4315 S. 1st Street, Suite B, Austin, Texas 78745)  I finally got around to using the certificate yesterday, Cat was reading and I was hanging out. It was tough. It's always hard to spend a gift certificate. I feel like it needs to be used for something very special. If I have twenty dollars I'll spend it in ten minutes, give me a twenty dollar gift certificate and it may take me an hour.
     For some time I've been drawn to a tarot deck named "The Druid Craft Tarot Deck" by Philip and Stephanie Carr-Gomm. The images are, of course, very Celtic, very human, with lots of nature included. You can see some of the images at  http://www.aeclectic.net/tarot/cards/druidcraft/index.shtml (Aeclectic Tarot is one of the best sites I've found to browse decks.) Amazon is always good as well, see the link below.
     So, I bought the deck and a few candles with my certificate. I couldn't wait to get it open and look at it. I've been collecting Tarot decks for quite a while. I really enjoy the art work. I was aware of divinatory uses of the cards, of course, but, until I met Cat, I really didn't pursue that avenue. It was all about the art. I had over twenty decks when we met. Now, together, we have over forty, and we add more. 
     The cards are really cool. Nice large size, lovely art. The pictures are somewhat based on the standard Waite-Smith cards. One card in particular, the Temperance card, was named "The Fferyllt", a term I wasn't familiar with, although the image is very alchemical. Today I looked it up on the computer.


feryllt
[Welsh, alchemist, magician; cf. W, fferyll, Virgil]
A name often translated as fairy, although it derives from the Welsh name for the Roman poet Virgil (70–19 BC), often perceived as a magical figure in medieval Europe. Ceridwen consulted the books of the fferyllt in preparing her cauldron of inspiration from which Gwion drank.

     Always good to learn something new! 

Writing Tools: Redux. And Vampires, Oh My!

  A while back I wrote here about my writing tools, including some software I use. I just found another free software program that seems promising. I haven't tried it yet, since I don't want to divert myself too much from ongoing projects. Perhaps I will start a new one on it soon and give it a try. However, if you want to check it out for yourself, it is called Storybook. As I said, it is free, open source, software, but it has a lot of great points to recommend it. Here's a quote from the site: "Storybook is a free (open source) novel-writing tool for creative writers, novelists and authors which will help you to keep an overview of multiple plot-lines while writing books, novels or other written works." Your computer needs to have a recent version of Java on it as well, but you can get it from the same site as well if you don't have it. If you try it out before I do, let me know how it works. 
   My current tools are still working pretty well. My mystery novel, code named "Bluebottle", is going pretty good, I had a slight breakthrough on the plotting today. I've done a little recently on my dotty vampire play as well. 
   Speaking of vampires. My friend Silas just gave me an early birthday present. He brought in a deck of tarot cards called "The Vampire Tarot", by Robert M. Place. The deck draws heavily from the basic Bram Stoker "Dracula" novel, but there is a touch of other things in there as well. Nosferatu makes an appearance, as does Edgar Allen Poe. It's really pretty nice. I'll keep it handy as I work on the play. (Working title: "Quiche of the Vampire".) 

Outlining by Tarot

So, here I am. I have three bonafide writing projects going, and a couple more in stasis. All have found new life partly because of  some very nice usable writing software I've reported on before. All three main projects are also now nominally outlined, at least as much if not more than I have ever done in the past, using my tarot tool.


Here's how it works. Some knowledge of the tarot in general is helpful, but not critical. I have been taking classes from my tarot-teacher partner, Cat Dancing, and it has been a great help. The information is available in a lot of places, however. I'll give some basics below. For the most part this is directed only at using the tarot as a writing tool. Reading the tarot is a whole different subject!


If you know nothing yet about the tarot, think of a deck of regular playing cards. Usually, the court cards have pictures of the king, queen, jack. The numbered cards only have groupings of the suit, 5 clubs, 3 hearts, etc. A "standard" tarot deck has those same cards with two big differences. The suits are swords, cups, pentacles, and wands. Also, the court cards have one more character with king, queen, knight, page. This group of cards in a tarot deck are called the minor trumps. In addition, the tarot deck includes major trumps, a group of twenty two other cards including: The Fool, The Lovers, The Sun, and so on.


I have a lot of tarot decks. Most came from garage sales, personal gifts, and the local Half Price Books store. I used to collect the decks just for the art. Only a few do I actually read with, and not all would be much help for writing purposes. One of the best basic decks for this would be the standard Rider - Waite - Smith deck. (Let's call it the RWS for short) This one can be found almost anywhere. The selling point for this deck is that every card is illustrated with a scene. Some of the decks available only show the groups of each suit, much like those playing cards. The RWS deck, as I said, has a scene for each card. It is this that can give a new tarot reader, as well as a writer,  some clues on meanings of cards. I would consider the RWS deck the basic deck for this, although there are several newer decks derived from that one that may speak to different writers even more clearly. One that I currently like is the Cosmic Tarot, by Norbert Losche. (U.S. Games). The characters appearing in this deck seem vaguely familiar, as if they were based on various classic film stars. This goes a long way for me in suggesting characters. Another interesting one is the "Flash Card Tarot" by Linda Nadeau. This deck has some rather unusual but often useful illustrations on one side, and the meanings and description on the back. It can be a useful imagination spark.


Now that you have your deck. You need some way to interpret the cards. First, try just studying each card, see what it suggests to you. Your first and best guide is your own intuition! Most decks come with their own little book, sometimes a big book, that explains the meanings. Let that be your second resource. Not everything listed in the card descriptions will be useful in your writing, but some will suggest ideas to you. There are many other books online and in print that give card information. The ultimate would be "Tarot for Writers" by Corinne Kenner. (See my link below). Ms. Kenner describes each card and what is useful for the writer, as well as giving many useful "spreads" or layouts to use. Corinne Kenner also has a useful companion book, "Tarot Journaling" that is just that, using the tarot to journal more effectively.


Now that we have those basics out of the way. Here is how I use the cards:


1. Outlining a book - Give some thought to what you intend to do. Let's say you want to pick a card for each division of the planned work. This might be chapters for a book, scenes for a play, perhaps steps in the journey. Come up with a usable number. I like to think it chapters, if I am working on a book. Forty-four is a sort of average number of chapters for many novels.
Shuffle the cards a number of times. Seven times is supposed to guarantee randomness. I personally shuffle three times, cut, then shuffle one more time. People draw cards in various ways. I like to just deal off the top of the deck in the order they are in. If we are outlining forty-four chapters, deal the cards out face up one by one in four rows of eleven.
Some of the cards will be upright, some may be reversed. If we want added complexity, we can take the reverses into account, or we can simply see them all as upright. Make a list of the cards. I use the novel software I'm using (yWriter5 in this case) and note the card into each chapter notes. As you note each card, notice anything that catches your attention about the card that may indicate character, or plot, or setting, anything, and write that down as well. You might then look up each card in one of those books or resources and make additional notes.
It may be that some of the chapters thus laid out may need to be re-arranged for better flow. It's okay to do that. You can even discard cards that don't seem to work, and draw new ones. The tarot police won't care. This is your tool, you use it however works best for you. In my initial layout for my mystery novel, the first card drawn didn't really work for me as first chapter, however, I put is aside as an indicator of overall story, and used the second card as first chapter, and the rest fell into place pretty well. Don't be afraid to deviate. This is just a starting place, idea material. Once you have the larger divisions, the chapters, laid out in this manner, you may want to re-shuffle and draw cards for minor divisions, like scenes. It's all up to you. As for meanings, you can be literal, or imaginative. The Death card may mean a literal death, in your story, or it may be a major transition of some sort. The Fool can mean an innocent stumbling into the scene, or it might be time to look at things from a fresh point of view, to use "beginner mind" as the Zen teachers put it.


2. Character - You can draw cards to help define your characters, maybe even suggest names (with some imagination.) The court cards are most helpful for this, although any of the other cards can also suggest characters, or the character's traits. As you make a bio for your characters, use the tarot to suggest entries for those areas that aren't clear to you yet, background, habits, goals, that sort of thing. Simplest would be one card for one item, see what it suggests. Many times I use a 3 card spread. I do the usual shuffle, cut the deck somewhere near the center. The top card in the exposed half is the middle card. The card just below it is the third card, and the card that was just above it is the first card in the three card row. These three can mean many things, but I usually rank them in some sort of past, present, future context about whatever I'm getting a reading on. I just pulled three cards in this fashion. The Hermit, Justice, and the Chariot. I'm using the Cosmic Tarot deck. The Hermit shows a mystical guru type, almost a stereotypical hippy, sitting in the night near a lantern. A seeker. Also someone to seek out for knowledge, perhaps. Justice shows a woman with a crown between night and day. Scales of balance are in front of her, she sees truth. The Chariot shows a chariot, pulled by two wild horses, one black, one white, being driven by a kingly figure away from a castle. What might this mean to you? Perhaps it is a character, loner type, with a non-traditional education, seeks justice as society dictates, but is trampled by the established justice system.


3. Series - I projected my mystery novel into a series of novels with the same protagonist and settings. I spent a lot of enjoyable time inventing his hometown, and peopling it with interesting characters, why not make further use of it all? Besides, as I did all that background, I came up with a few ideas of other stories to tell. So, I thought, how about twelve books ? I did a twelve card layout similar to the "chapter" spread above. I let each card represent a book. Interestingly, the stories I had already thought of fit rather well into one of the twelve topics. In some cases titles were even suggested by the cards and the imagined situation. So, now I have a rough outline of where the whole series is going. That's good to have for any kind of series character.
For instance, The Hanged Man card came up. One of my ideas was a mystery involving genealogy. Bingo! Another card was the Wheel of Fortune. Ready made spot for something about the lottery!


These three techniques can give you a starting place. Enjoy!

Writing Tools

 As a writer I often find it easy to come up with a scene I want to write, but no clear idea of where to go with it either before or after the scene. What is the overall story the scene fits within? I also tried working with various software programs, although I only considered a few affordable.
I really like "Power Structure", it's a well thought out writing program, of an outlining sort, with a lot of options. I also like "Story Weaver", somewhat similar to Power Structure in my mind, but more storytelling oriented. I could never get off the ground, though, with either of them. Both good programs, but neither really fit with what I wanted. Another person may try either one and find it a perfect fit. So it goes. You can look at both programs at http://storymind.com/.
Once upon a time I owned a Tandy Color Computer, cool machine. It actually had a very fast processor for the time. Most of my early plays were written on that Coco and the Telewriter-64 word processor. One other thing about the Coco that I liked was a little card-file program that was part of an office-suite that ran on the OS9 platform (sort of like Windows). It was a very simple card-file, had visual tabbed cards, you could enter info on individual cards on screen, sort them and search them in any way whatsoever. After I switched to the PC clones and Windows, I searched in vain for similar file program that was free, or cheap, and as easy to use. No luck.
Recently I've found a few free tools that address these issues very well. The first is yWriter5, a free program that really fits the way my mind works for writing a story/novel/play whatever. (Okay, it's not really formatted for plays, but it's not really a problem.) I really like the way it works. Check it out. http://www.spacejock.com/yWriter5.html  The programmer is also an author, his website is full of very good, simple information and advice for writing, including the next item on this list.
Second, I found another free brainstorming tool. Many of us have seen the method called clustering, or bubbles, much like the flow charts we used to use in programming. Freemind is another easy and free program to do the bubble diagrams, and use them for outlining. Check out the link, and also download the custom file adapting the Freemind program for outlining a book. You can find Freemind at the same website above for yWriter5.
Third. I found my card file, of sorts. TiddlyWikiWrite is a very simple, customized, program that gives you an offline website on your computer that makes a page for each thing you want to work on, whether it be a full story, an idea, a list of names, a journal, anything. Each page is unique, totally search-able, and you can assign keywords to streamline finding it again. It is very easy to set up however you want it. Lisa Janice Cohen is an author who took the basic TiddlyWiki program and customized it. Find it at her website. http://www.ljcohen.net/Tiddlywiki.htm
Lastly, maybe the best tool I've found could be the Tarot.  Now, I've collected Tarot cards for many years. I love the art work, I knew next to nothing about actually reading the cards. My association with Cat Dancing has changed that. I've become much more selective on the collecting, but I'm learning to read them now. The cards lend themselves quite well in many ways in jump starting stories, building characters, generating back story, and just about every other facet of storytelling. I had already started using the cards in plotting a couple of stories, and a book I am reading just now, "Tarot for Writers" by Corinne Kenner, augments that process. What's even better, adding the Tarot works very well with the yWriter5 and other programs I mentioned above. There is no such thing as "writer's block" when you can grab the deck of Tarot cards for instant inspiration.
I'll talk more about my own method of using Tarot cards another time. In the meantime, give the tools above a try!

Just Who IS this RainCrow?

Somewhere in here I feel the need to introduce myself so anyone who feels the need can find out a bit about me, or not, as you wish.
I've always loved the opening lines of Steve Martin's "The Jerk", but I won't use it here. I grew up outside a very small town in central Texas, raised by my grandparents. We lived over a gas station/garage and I was pumping gas, doing mechanic and general fix-it work, and entertaining myself from an early age. I read a LOT! We also had some livestock, made and sold handcrafts in the store, and gardened. Hunting and fishing was something I enjoyed often. I graduated from Liberty Hill High School after going through eleven of the twelve grades in the same building.
Electronics was my major when I went to Central Texas College in Killeen, but I changed over to Drafting and Design. For forty years I've been a steel detailer for most of the steel fabricators in central Texas. Along the way I've managed to marry, raise three great kids of my own, and three more who became mine. I have also followed my interests into many areas. In no particular order:
For many years I shot muzzle-loading rifles and pistols competitively. I won a few ribbons, nothing major. I hunted with them as well. I no longer hunt, but I still have the guns. I was a licensed gunsmith for a few years as well.
For 22 or so years I played a Texas Ranger in the annual Sam Bass Shootout in Round Rock, Texas. That got me into:
Theater. Starting in 1981 along with the shootouts, I became involved with Sam Bass Theater in Round Rock. I became an actor with that group, as well as playwright and director. After I moved from Round Rock in the mid-90's, I worked with other local groups including San Gabriel Productions in Georgetown, Way Off Broadway in Leander, and founded Liberty Hill Community Theater in Liberty Hill, where I was playwright in residence.
Writing. I have several successful plays to my credit, most co-written with Barbara Stopp Vance. Several others I did on my own. All are published online on www.scribd.com. I have other plays and two novels in the works currently. (And this blog, of course.) After moving back to Liberty Hill in the mid '90s, I became one of the founders, and eventually one of the first elected trustees of the Liberty Hill Public Library.
Five years ago I began making and playing Native American style flutes. I enjoy playing them and I sell one occasionally. I also got into African and Middle Eastern hand drumming. I've always loved musical instruments, and collect them. I never learned to read or took music lessons, but I enjoy fooling around with them. My most recent acquisition was a set of bagpipes I picked up on Ebay for a very good price. They were damaged, the damage has already been repaired, I can't wait to start practicing with them! (Thank goodness we live in the country!)
Last year I took a Permaculture Design Course in Austin. For much of my life I have been into organic gardening, a long time reader of Mother Earth News, and very much in favor of a do-it-yourself lifestyle. The PDC course went a long way toward putting all those pieces together. I am now a Permaculture Designer. I'll say more about that in another post.
Three years or so ago, I found my partner, Cat Dancing, and moved near McDade, Texas. We are soul mates. She is an artist in Intarsia, a type of wood mosaic art, as well as stained glass, jewelry, and other things. (Another eclectic soul.) We put together our own workshop this year. We share many of the same tools, as well as woods. I with my flutes and other projects, and Cat with hers.
Along with my interest in the Native American flutes, and this RainCrow name I have chosen for myself, I am asked often if I am Native American. I do have some Choctaw blood (I believe). Another of my interests has been genealogy. I was a long time member of the Williamson County Genealogical Society as well as the County Historical Commission. My grandmother's grandmother was Native American and Choctaw seems the most likely tribe. We haven't been able to trace that any further. At any rate, I am proud of the connection, but it certainly isn't enough to legally claim!
The Native American and shamanistic view of the universe has always been a part of my life. I was raised in one of the more fundamental Christian sects. I was very active in that church until I was in my 40's, but at heart many of the subsidiary teachings never really sat well with me. There always seemed to be a lot that just didn't add up. Inside myself I had my own views. I always did read a lot, I learned early on that my views were pagan. For the past several years I have been connected with Tejas Web in Austin. It is a very loosely knit group of eclectic pagans of many varieties who do public rituals and classes together. I rank many of these members among my closest friends and even chosen family now. Along with this has come a renewed interest in the Tarot. Cat Dancing, my partner, is a very accomplished Tarot reader and teacher locally, and my studies with her are ongoing.
I have found many good applications of the Tarot to writing, which I am exploring currently.
We just finished a very good season with the new Sherwood Forest Faire near here in Paige, Texas. This was the first year of a brand new renaissance festival here. Cat and I took the plunge and began building our permanent booth there. It was a very successful opening. Next year look us up. Booth 309, Cat Dancing Creations!
That's my tip of the iceberg for this round. All of it will re-appear no doubt in future posts, as well as the million and one things I didn't mention. I plan to share a lot of what I have learned about most of these subjects and whatever else interests me at the time. Stay tuned!