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Lydia Coins for Sunday

EDIT: It is Tuesday and I’m looking at all the merch I have planned for this and all the reserve-a-deck requests, remind me list, and other things. This might be a tad bigger of a re-launch than I was planning. So I’m working on my best options here. More to come.

Tuesday will be the start of pre-ordering for my Lydia deck. I’ll also be adding some giveaways to my instagram accounts. That means I’m a little on the hectic busy side here but I think I’m keeping it all reasonably ordered. That might be a very different story in a few days. In the meantime, a few samples of the coins.

Madam Lydia Wilhelmina's Tarot of Monsters, the Macabre and Autumn Scenes

Madam Lydia Wilhelminas Tarot of Monsters, the Macabre and Autumn Scenes - Three of Coins Madam Lydia Wilhelminas Tarot of Monsters, the Macabre and Autumn Scenes - Four of Coins Madam Lydia Wilhelminas Tarot of Monsters, the Macabre and Autumn Scenes - Eight of Coins Madam Lydia Wilhelminas Tarot of Monsters, the Macabre and Autumn Scenes - Nine of Coins

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The Lydia Tarot Swords

I’ve given this deck the nickname The Lydia Tarot to make the title a little less of a mouthful. This mostly comes in handy when my typo-happy fingers are trying to put all of that name into an instragram update on my phone. I think my thumbs just get a giggle out of making me look like I’m drunk texting all the time. That aside, samples of the full cups suit can be found on this deck’s page, link below. Previews of the swords suit are now going up. As for the deck itself and when it will be available again, pre-ordering for the deck will take place throughout September with delivery to begin mid October so first adopters can have it for Halloween. This is the plan for the moment. It might change if I can’t get some of the swords (the last cards I’m finishing up) to stop being so cranky. They’re giving me creation pains. I figured I would start previewing them before the other two suits so I can psyche my brain into embracing the idea of deadline. The wands and pentacles will have previews up as September progresses. So here are those first swords previews. 🙂

Madam Lydia Wilhelmina's Tarot of Monsters, the Macabre and Autumn Scenes

Madam Lydia Wilhelmina's Tarot of Monsters, the Macabre and Autumn Scenes - Three of Swords Madam Lydia Wilhelmina's Tarot of Monsters, the Macabre and Autumn Scenes - Five of Swords Madam Lydia Wilhelmina's Tarot of Monsters, the Macabre and Autumn Scenes - Nine of Swords Madam Lydia Wilhelmina's Tarot of Monsters, the Macabre and Autumn Scenes - Ten of Swords
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Tea & Tarot Tuesday

Attic Cartomancy - Tea and Tarot Tuesday - Nine of Coins

A little Miss Emma’s Tea in my favorite bee tea cup of my aunt’s. Miss Emma’s Tea features parsley, sage, licorice root, and fennel seed. It’s a nice tea to help sooth some of the things that ail us maturing women. 😊

Pictured with it is the nine of coins from my Isidore Tarot – a good card I use to think upon my slowly growing self confidence and enjoying what has come from my hard work. At the same time it reminds me not to get frivolous and chance messing up my accomplishments with foolish decisions. 🤔

Miss Emma’s Tea is an original recipe from the Orange Moon Tea Society.

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A Dreadful Night

It’s been so hot today! The air can’t keep up. Had to tuck the laptop away for a little bit. It has cooled down to get back to blog work. Feels like a marathon re-watching of Penny Dreadful kind of night. If for no other reason than to watch and learn that wicked elegant card spreading of Vanessa’s. 🖤🕷🕸🦇
Penny Dreadful from Showtime

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The Scarlet Girl

Attic Cartomancy - Oracles and Flutter-Byes - Scarlet Girl Card

Yesterday I made my first dedicated card post for my Oracles & Flutter-Byes deck. This was for the Scarlet Girl card pictured here in its finished state. I completed the outline for the card’s information page then and better organized the info to explain how this card might be used in guided meditation. My take on an oracle deck is something that offers insightful counsel or just helps you process your thoughts. Pick a card, focus on its message and let your thoughts go. This is pretty much how I approach most of my decks when I read for myself.

Yesterday’s post featured the creative writing part of the card. Today I wanted to post the final card artwork in full and detail, with a little of the card meaning. From the companion book:

“The Scarlet Girl represents two sides of a coin: On one side is how wonderful it is to feel loved, to have someone’s adoration or devotion, to feel beautiful, and finding yourself respected. The other side of that coin is the pain that can be so deeply felt when losing any of those things, especially someone’s love. And even though it represents these feelings that are most often associated with relationships, it is not a card that asks you to think about that relationship directly or in technical terms. This card, when used for meditation, asks you to simply take a breath, close your eyes, and think honestly about how that relationship feels. Do you feel the love? Do you feel respected? Do you feel the devotion to you that you have been offering in return? And this isn’t always a question asked for a romantic relationship. Life is filled with so many different types of relationships but there will always be certain things we need for them to consist of. If not love than respect.”

There is of course more to the card notes, but that’s to be offered with the complete deck and book. I just wanted to start offering a better idea of what I’m working with and the direction I’m taking this project. More to come.

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The Scarlet Girl – The Oracles & Flutter-Bye Oracle

I’ve worked on quite a few things today. That is just the nature of my day. What has given me the most pleasure is adding to the mythology of my Orange Moon Oracle. You see, it’s a combination of the story I’ve written for it (which is simply my inspiration) and how that writing translates into how to look at the card. This is all very important to me. I’m diligently working on how to organize and streamline this whole process so it doesn’t seem wonky. My oracle deck was born in my fiction, but is rooted in my life and how that relates to simply living. So below is the introduction to my Scarlet Girl card. What comes after, which you’ll have to see with the deck itself, is how the reading of it plays out. 😉

Azure held the vibrantly colored card in her hand and found a smile playing on her lips as the Scarlet Girl winked at her. She looked up and found the face from the card standing in front of her. She was still slightly hazy and undefined, but with each moment that passed she came into sharper focus and better detail. Still, there was a subtle dreaminess to her form that refused to pass. She was neither a ghost or an illusion; she was simply a vision.

“I gave you a name when I sat down and put fresh paint to an old canvas. Something told me to use hues that can only be seen and truly experienced by taking the reddest of roses and holding them underneath the brilliant afternoon sun. There, in that moment, there are so many shades of red, scarlet, and a litany of amber and oranges. These are the rarest shades and I wanted them to be yours. Though other than seeing a name on your shoulder and a profound twinkle in your eye, I don’t think I quite know you yet. Who are you my scarlet girl? What type of oracle do you present yourself to be?

The oracle graced Azure with a very warm smile. That smile radiated towards her and wrapped itself around her like a warm embrace. She felt loved, she felt good.

“I am painted in all the shades of a fine and brilliant heart and it is the heart I represent. I am the embodiment of absolute love, devotion, and respect. I am not the action of it, but the simple and genuine feeling of it. My offering and my wisdom is to help you set aside that which gets in the way of feeling these things in their purest form. I have no prophecy. I am no such type of oracle. The absolute only thing that I can predict is that in life there is always a moment where these things, these feelings, can be taken away for one reason or another. When this is the case, I implore to embrace the feeling, weather the hurt, and know that the pain comes from having felt something so wonderful to begin with. And know there is a place beyond that hurt where the memory is what is to cherish and the pain to be let go of…”

Follow the deck creation here. Or you can better embrace the story aspect of it here. More to come.

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Madam Lydia Wilhelmina’s Tarot of Monsters, the Macabre, and Autumn Scenes Updates

As I organize my next new deck launch, I’ve gotten a few emails asking me about the status of my (such a long name darn me!) Madam Lydia Wilhelmina’s Tarot of Monsters, the Macabre, and Autumn Scenes, which has been patiently awaiting the completion of its minor arcana. Well I am slowly working away at the other suits. The cups suit is complete so I’ve started adding a few samples to the deck’s page and will do so here and there as I finish up the next suit.

One thing I’m doing with the minors is avoiding just making cards with pips on them. I’m using the Rider Waite Smith deck as a frame of reference to create my dark scenes. It’s been challenging but rather fun honestly. Like with these two first examples below: I had my reference cards but wanted to keep with the autumn and spooky themes of the deck. So with the ace of cups the theme was Thing elopes and has some lil things. I’m a huge Addams Family fan (shocker I know) and thought who would make a better floating hand? 🙂 The two of cups I titled The Newly Dead with the Long Living. The couple on the card represent two lovers separated only by the thin veil of death. The man has lived a long time and now alone misses his love, but she is always right there beside him with a caring smile on her lips, just waiting for him to join her again. They hold the cups they once exchanged with one another in life.

Madam Lydia Wilhelmina's Tarot of Monsters, the Macabre and Autumn Scenes Madam Lydia Wilhelmina's Tarot of Monsters, the Macabre and Autumn Scenes

So the deck is moving right along as I find a moment to add a new card. And yes, I still plan to offer it for Halloween. It’ll be a soft launch most likely, given how much time I will be needing for my new oracle deck. But I do have some rather wicked planning for the packaging. I’ve already ordered samples for it. Much better than the original this time around. I’m excited about it. 🙂

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Tea and Tarot Tuesday Preview

Attic Cartomancy - Tea and Tarot Tuesday

I’m in Michigan presently taking advantage of my aunt’s excellent tea cup collection. I love tea. I love tarot. Bringing them together gives me another reason to take photos of my decks in pretty places with pretty things. 😉 And now I’m back to the process of getting marrieds tomorrow.

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Oracles and Flutter Byes

Alright, I’ve finally jumped into the oracle pool feet first. I should have plugged my nose! I think I have purple water on the brain. That aside, I’ve been finishing up on my second oracle deck. It’s expanded a bit, developed a deeper personality and meaning, and its whispers are getting a little louder. That’s how it starts for me typically. This deck is a chatterer. It’s telling me stories about who my oracles are and what I might find them to be. I updated the info on its page found here.
Oracles and Flutter Byes - The Orange Moon Oracle

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Card of the Day: The Tarot’s Lovers

Attic Cartomancy - The Lovers

It’s storming outside. Let’s play hand model! *jazz hands* I can’t believe I’ve never had the Lovers card on the site yet. I must be overlooking at it, which is alright. I tend to have a different thing to say about a card depending on my mood. In this case, my mood is all about the relationship nature of this card. Today I’m going to let it represent my gent and I.

I met my gent online more than twenty years ago. He was a fellow artist and graphic designer. We chatted off and on for awhile until my health acted up again and I took a break from my sites and clients. He wouldn’t let me disappear though. He wrote my then boyfriend (who had become my ex in that time) to see if I was alright. I got the message and called him and we talked. This led to him smoothly asking me to share a table with him at a convention. Over the next four months leading up to said con we got to know each other A LOT better. By the time he stepped off the airplane and I met him in person we were in love. We’ve had nearly no time apart since that time.

Our neighbors next to us fight a lot. They’re young and jumped into a marriage I think because they thought it would heal all their insecurities and issues with one another. She came over one night after a fight and talked with me. She asked me how Myke and I managed to be so close and connected. She wanted that. I told her we didn’t start out that way. That together we have battled so many things and lived through so much together. I said he was my very best friend and I didn’t like being away from him. She didn’t quite like that answer, but that’s all I had. Relationships typically don’t come ready made, you have to work at them. And that work will manifest itself in so many different ways and some of them will catch you off guard.

In my time with my gent we’ve had highs and lows. We have traveled all avenues of this card from upright to downward. We’ve come to a crossroad on a few occasions where taking the wrong turn might have ended us. More than once I tried to hide away from the consequences of my actions and their impact on him. Throughout that time, as we worked on our own baggage and personal demons, we tried to stay focused and use our heads. The longer we’ve been together, the closer we’ve become. Eleven years later and we’ve achieved a wonderful balance and relationship. To think we’ve been engaged for ten of those years.

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Card of the Day: The Tarot’s High Priestess

Attic Cartomancy - Card of the Day - The Isidore Tarots Justice

Late at night I hear a voice whispering to me from the hallway. I think it’s trying to give me subliminal suggestions as I sleep and dream. What does it say? Pay more attention to meeeeee…. pay more attention to mee…. and then makes clicky noises. I will wake up, sleepily look towards the door and see the shadow of my cartomancy blog standing outside my door. “I will update you tomorrow! Now get back in my laptop! I’m trying to sleep!” I will tell it as I lay back down and put a pillow over my head. To be fair, it has been awhile since I sat down and really got back into the swing of things. So here I am. Happy blog?

Today’s card of the day is the high priestess card from the Isidore Tarot, in both regular and tiny size! As a designer I adore this card for its symbolism and structure. As a student of tarot I adore it for the same reasons. Today I associate most closely to its suggestion of trusting my intuition. It’s telling me to set aside the very analytical and critical talky talky part of my head that wants to logic and reason everything to death and just listen to what my inner voice has to say.

I’ve always felt it very important to pay attention to your own intuition. So much so that I’ve always trusted my feelings when something didn’t feel right or something felt absolutely right. That has been a strong thing for me much of my life. The down side is when my anxiety comes to call, usually in times of stress, I don’t listen to my intuition. Dramatic events or changes in my life (the Taurus of all Taurus creatures of comfort and habit that I am) stress me out incredibly and the anxiety tags right along. When I fell I removed my comfort and changed my day to day drastically. My anxieties came to roust. And as they sat there on my inner fence squawking at me like crows, I had a hard time allowing myself to trust my intuition. I second guessed myself constantly. I couldn’t decide if I was making my decisions based upon my actual intuition or because of the fear anxiety was helping flower within me. This all came to a head at the first of May.

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May the Fourth be with You

I had my months off last month because honestly? The last two months have been a bit hectic. So now I can officially let the Star Wars geek out a little for the day. Though that has very little to do with my current tarot sale.

The Sepia Stains Tarot is the very first deck I ever created. It took me two years to complete it and it served as my first introdution to printing and packaging this style of thing. I made a right mess of it. That was long ago though and I still adore this deck and now have enough experience under my belt that offering it for sale is a pleasure. The deck will be available for pre-ordering throughout May and estimated shipping time is mid June. There are two ordering options: Purchase with full packaging or just the deck and book.
The Sepia Stains Tarot