Author: C. LaVielle

Wish Me Luck!

Posted C. LaVielle6 CommentsPosted in Getting Published, Synchronicity, Young Adult Fantasy

The rewrite of the first few chapters is complete. After several back and forth e-mails of suggestions on her part and revisions on mine, Jessica, my editor, says it’s “in good shape.” She wanted me to tighten it a bit more, and I tried, I really did, but I was only able to pare it down by a sentence here and there. She doesn’t like the title either. She says it needs to be more active and let the reader know that this is a fantasy. I’ve thought about shortening it to The Remaking, or possibly Forging the Blade. I also had Kris, a friend who teaches English and Writing at a community college, take a look at it. She critiqued the manuscript in a totally different way than Jessica. As an English teacher, she mostly looked at sentence structure and length and word usage. And because she’s only read the first three chapters she was able to give me a viewpoint of someone who’s… Read More »

Major Arcana, The Hero’s Adventure: Wheel of Fortune: Epilogue

Posted C. LaVielle14 CommentsPosted in Major arcana, Synchronicity, Tarot, The Hero's Journey, Uncategorized

The Wheel turned for us today. I was fixing breakfast when my husband walked into the kitchen and handed me the phone. “This man is saying Paris (our cat) is dead. Talk to him, I’m going up to get dressed.” “Where are you?” I asked the caller. He was right outside the house. Two of the utility guys that were putting in a gas line at a neighbor’s house met me as I came running out. Their faces were grim with concern and sympathy as they handed me Paris’s collar. “We were over there working and when we looked up he was laying in the street. He was up on our rig earlier saying hello. Really nice cat.” “Where is he?” “He’s just over there ma’am,” One of them said. He put his arms around me when I started to cry and patted me gently on the back. “If you let me know where you want me to put him, I’ll take him there for… Read More »

The Major Arcana and The Hero’s Journey: Wheel of Fortune, Part III

Posted C. LaVielleLeave a commentPosted in Major arcana, Tarot, The Hero's Journey, Wheel of the Year

The Wheel of Fortune’s number is 10 which puts it as close to the center of the major arcana cards as you can get, assuming The Fool, 0, is at the beginning, so it signifies a turning point or balance point. The number 10 is also the beginning of the next series of digits after 0-9 (The Fool through The Hermit), so it can be seen as the beginning of a new cycle. This cycle can be either “better” or “worse” than the one before it, but it is always a step up in complexity and challenge. Jupiter is the planet assigned to the Wheel of Fortune. As the largest planet in the solar system, it is the planet of expansion, which is what the Wheel does—it expands not only our outlook, but our options. Astrologers also call it the Greater Benefic, or bringer of good fortune, with Venus, The Empress, being the Lesser Benefic. Kaph, or Kaf, is its Hebrew letter. Its symbol is… Read More »

Happy Beltane!

Posted C. LaVielleLeave a commentPosted in Wheel of the Year

If there’s a bustle in your hedgerow, Don’t be alarmed now. It’s just a spring-clean for the May Queen. Robert Plant Stairway to Heaven Beltane, the celebration of the union of the God and Goddess which brings fertility and abundance to the land, was probably celebrated in the British Isles in some form centuries before Christ was even a twinkle in God’s eye. I doubt that it was a coincidence that the wedding of the future king and queen of Britain was scheduled for this weekend.

The Major Arcana and The Hero’s Journey: Wheel of Fortune, Part II

Posted C. LaVielle2 CommentsPosted in Major arcana, Tarot, The Hero's Journey

Ixion was king of the Lapiths, a tribe in ancient Thessaly, and to my mind, one of the most notorious men in Greek mythology. He lived back in the day when gods and mortals still socialized and when possibly mortals were a bit immortal, since gods and mortals interbred with gusto. Depending on who you are reading, Ixion’s lineage goes back to Gaia herself, or he may have been a son of Ares, or he may have been a mere mortal. At any rate, he murdered his father-in-law, who was a guest in his house, thus becoming both the first kin-slayer and a violator of xenia, the Greek concept of guest-friendship. Because no one had ever slain a family member before, his neighbors had no idea how to perform the rituals that would cleanse him of his guilt. Ixion went mad and roamed the land as an outlaw. Zeus took pity on him, released him from his guilt, and brought him up to Mount Olympus.… Read More »

The Major Arcana and The Hero’s Journey: The Wheel of Fortune, Part I

Posted C. LaVielle5 CommentsPosted in Major arcana, Tarot, The Hero's Journey, Uncategorized

Whether it’s Vanna White that spins the wheel, The Greek Moirae, The Norse Norns, or Shakespeare’s Weird Sisters, this card is about Fate, i.e., Luck. And as you can see, Luck is always a Lady, and she’s usually not real pretty. Like the Three Fates, there is a remorseless inevitability about this card, and I have never understood why most readers regard it as benefic. Fortune is not the same thing as fortunate. Seven days after a child is born, The Three Moirae, come to the infant’s hearth and determine the babe’s fate. Clotho spins the life thread, Lachesis measures it, and Atropos cuts it off. They are remorseless and powerful. Even Zeus bows to their authority. Once a destiny has been spun, measured, and cut there is no changing it. But who wants to surrender their free will to three cantankerous old ladies? We live in a time when marvelous advances in medicine and technology have given us the illusion that we are actually… Read More »

The Major Arcana and The Hero’s Journey: The Fool and The Hermit

Posted C. LaVielle1 CommentPosted in Major arcana, Tarot, The Hero's Journey

And androgyne looks up at the morning sky and dances on the edge of a cliff. He/she could be either going up the mountain or coming down. The point is, He/she is going. The Fool is a card of beginnings, of endless possibilities, the card of the seeker. And old man stands at the very top of a mountain holding a lantern up against the night and looks down. He has arrived. There is nowhere higher for him to go. The seeker has found what he is looking for. And to make sure the reader doesn’t miss that these two cards are related, Coleman-Smith and Waite made them the only cards in the tarot deck that place their subjects high up in the mountains at the edge of a drop-off. (The Emperor has rugged cliffs behind him, but he’s not so high up, there’s no drop-off, and he’s seated.) The Fool (0) and The Hermit (9) are the beginning and the end of the ten-digit… Read More »

Two of the Worst Things That Could Happen Just Happened (Continued)

Posted C. LaVielle12 CommentsPosted in Getting Published, Major arcana, Synchronicity, Tarot, Young Adult Fantasy

Thing 2: A few days after I got The Letter I went to the library to find a book to read. I was too lazy to check my list of books that I need to read, I just wanted something to relax and entertain. It would be nice to be able to to say that a sense of foreboding settled over me as I approached the New Books rack, but it didn’t. I just picked a likely looking book, The Last Days of Madame Rey, skimmed the blurb, and checked it out. It was several days before I got a chance to sit down and begin reading it. The prologue was titled “The Fool”. Oh good, I thought, a book with a tarot theme. When I got to the first chapter and it was titled “The Magician: I began to panic. I looked ahead. Sure enough, the second chapter was “The High Priestess” and the third was “The Empress”. To my horror, A.W. Hill, the… Read More »