Future Shock Encounter SuitAs sci-fi/fantasy conventions go, OryCon is medium sized, has a good, steady following, and has been around since the late seventies. It’s Oregon’s only convention of this sort. I was told that all the others failed in their first few years.
Even though OryCon is packed with writers and thought provoking writers’ panels and workshops, it is a very different sort of gathering than the Willamette Writer’s Conference. WWC has a serious air about it. Writers go there to pitch their manuscripts, network, and improve their techniques by attending excellent workshops. OryCon is an extravagant outpouring of fans’/writers’ love of science fiction and fantasy, and their joy at being with over a thousand other excited people who are ready and willing to talk for hours about the genre and all the philosophies and ideas connected with it. “It’s my yearly dose of sanity,” quipped one conventioneer.
And the costumes were fabulous.A Stempunker named WillA Steampunker named CollinWizards conversed with pirates and steampunkers strolled down the halls with barbarians. In fact, steampunkers dominated this convention.
But there was no shortage of other characters. I came upon what looked like an upright coffin lid in middle of the hotel restaurant. When I peeked Stormfeather, Navigator for the Heart of Goldaround to see what was on the other side, I found Kate, aka Tinseltop, aka The Back of Tinseltop's WheelchairTinseltop, aka Ghoulia ChildGhoulia Child. She was having coffee with a Wizard and a Star Fleet officer.
The Wizard PalandarI was nearly attacked by a barbarian, but the steampunk centaur was a calming influence.And pirates were everywhere. Sara Hooker and Captain Zorgon were quite friendly and didn't say "Arrr" once.But the main reason I went was for the writer’s workshops, which were really helpful. The critiquers had good things to say about both manuscripts, except for one pro who totally hated Molly Adair, Beware and went to great lengths to tell me how awful it was; and how, perhaps, I should just trash it and start on something new. But when I filtered out the nastiness, her criticisms were identical to those of the pro who liked it. I started the story in the wrong place and didn’t supply enough back-story. I also hadn’t made it clear that it was a sequel. There’s a ton of rewriting to do on this manuscript.
The critiquers didn’t like the first chapter of The Remaking of Molly Adair either. It’s the kiss of death when readers don’t like the way a book begins. In this fast-paced world, we don’t get much time to hold a reader’s attention; and, according to author Sandy Whelchel, editors and agents only give a manuscript five seconds. If they aren’t hooked by then it goes in the slush pile.
The good news was that the critiquers liked the second and third chapters of The Remaking.
I’m glad I waited to get the OryCon critiques before I sent The Remaking of Molly Adair out to agents. After I rewrite the first chapter, it’ll be a much better story.
And what, you may ask, do OryCon and Lake Oswego High School have in common? Image by Chad Savage
They both are sources of critiques for my manuscripts.
OryCon is a huge Science Fiction/Fantasy convention that’s been around since the late seventies. I’ve never been before and I can’t imagine why, it looks like fun. How could it not be with over 1,500 sci fi/fantasy lovers all in one place?
At the OryCon Writer’s Workshop I’ll get a fellow writer’s and a pro’s critique on the first 7,500 words of both my manuscripts for just $10 apiece. Such a deal!
Of course, this means that I had to critique two manuscripts. The ones I received were Vampire Seminarian by Jeff Nichols and Tales from the Curr’s Head by Anna Lewis. They were fun to read and I was surprised at how inspiring and instructive it was. Looking at another writer’s work, seeing what they do well and not so well, and thinking about what it needs to make it even better helps you look at your own work more constructively.
As for the Lake Oswego connection, a friend of a friend is an English teacher a Lake Oswego High School and was kind enough to ask her students if any of them wanted to critique a Y/A fantasy. She got ten takers.
And I have another friend who just happens to be in high school, loves fantasy, and knows something about the tarot. She is reading my manuscript as well.
And I have two other other friends who are voracious sci-fi/fantasy geeks. I’m also waiting for their comments on the first manuscript.
So right now, I’m living the Emperor card reversed. Nothing to do but wait and hope that my readers will like the manuscripts and have lots of useful suggestions for me.
Once I get the critiques back, I anticipate a massive rewrite. When that’s finished, I will call the first manuscript done and start sending it off to agents.
I’ve just returned from visiting with a friend at The Random Order. This is a great name for a coffeehouse—an oxymoron you can really sink your teeth into, one that sets a caffeine-fueled brain racing. As I turned the phrase this way and that in my mind, one of the many ideas that surfaced was that very few things in this universe are truly random. There’s usually a pattern or method to be found if you look hard enough.
The order of the tarot major arcana keys is not random. Unfortunately, due to their complexity, you can see many patterns, some more useful than others. To me, the pattern of the first five keys is polarity, positive and negative, yin and yang. The Fool , key zero, is the androgyne, both masculine and feminine, yin and yang. The fool is each and every one of us. As the song says, “Everybody plays the fool,” and we are all on a fool’s journey.
Zero is the shape of the cosmic egg, and when it hatches, it breaks apart and becomes I and II, The Magician and The High Priestess. The sterile duality between logically formed ideas (The Magician) and innate knowing (The High Priestess).
The sterile dyad unites and give rise to the fecund dyad of III and IV: The Mother—the ever fruitful, abundant earth (The Empress), and The Father—leadership, law and order, protection (The Emperor).
A kingdom is the combination of the Empress and The Emperor. The land and it’s abundance becomes useful and cherished when a strong leader assures protection and law and order. This is the probable origin of the “divine right of kings”. The true king got his mandate from the Goddess, Mother Earth herself. It was this marriage of the divinely designated king (The Emperor) with the Sacred Earth (The Empress) that created a fruitful kingdom.
The king is the divine spark that ignites the fecundity, fertility, and creativity of the earth and brings its prosperity and abundance to the people. When the king was no longer perfect/virile/potent, the kingdom suffered and he had to be replaced. Back in the day he was sacrificed or killed by a rival; today he doesn’t get re-elected.
The thing to remember is that the cards are archetypes, not personalities. No one is just The Empress or just the Emperor. We all contain both. Everyone needs to be assertive as well as patient, active as well as passive, severe as well as gentle, tough as well as nurturing. Because of our different genders and personalities, each of us has different proportions of yin vs yang. It is these differences that add interest, spice, and conflict to relationships. If everyone was the perfect balance of yin and yang as shown in the Taoist symbol, the world would be a peaceful, boring place. Photo by leej14
This is a cool picture, but it misses the point. This image is made up of two beings intertwined, the yin-yang symbol is a representation of the duality within one being.
photo by Toby Ord, Oct, 31, 2003
The veil between the worlds is thin this time of year and spirits walk.
This evening or tomorrow evening would be an excellent time to have a Dumb Supper and visit with your ancestors.
Set up an altar on your kitchen or dining room table and decorate it with your favorite Samhain/Halloween stuff – gourds, marigolds, tiny pumpkins, skulls, orange and black candles, etc. If someone you love passed away last year, put their picture on the altar with a few of their favorite things. Put out pictures of your other ancestors too if you like.
Cook a wonderful dinner and set an extra place at the table.
Cast a circle and invite your ancestors to join you for dinner. Serve up the food and make sure you are extra generous with that extra place setting. Relax and enjoy your meal in total silence so you can hear what your ancestors have to say to you. Some years our dining room is full to bursting with the spirits of our loved ones and other years there are only a few. My brother usually comes, although he’s not dead yet. He lives three time zones east of us and goes to sleep early. Ancestor Altar from the book: Altars and Icons, Sacred Spaces in Everyday Life, by Jean McMann
This is Big Daddy, Big Business, Big Government, The Pentagon, and Science and Industry. All the things we love to hate, but still count on to keep us safe from foreign invasion and common criminals, bring food to our tables, solve problems, distribute Social Security and Medicare, and fix the potholes in the streets.
Moses or The Emporer, Salvador DaliThe Emporer is the quintessential macho man; the fertile, tough, authority/father figure; The Magician on a double dose of testosterone. He stands for law and order, assertiveness, fairness, strong leadership, use of practical intelligence to guide and support creativity, protection of the weak, and all round studliness. A super hero, you might say. But think again. Super heroes swoop in and right wrongs, uphold law and order, out wit the bad guys, and slap them around. But then they leave. The Emporer stays and deals with the consequences of his actions and takes the flack if he bungles it. That, of course, is the only way to create an empire, rule a country, build a business, or conquer an enemy. And this wreaks havoc with his image. To paraphrase the quote attributed to Abraham Lincoln, “You can [please] some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not [please] all of the people all of the time.”* And then there are the Evil Emperors like Hitler, Nero, Ghengis Khan, and G.W. Bush that send people screaming into the streets whenever a strong leader emerges and begins to accumulate power.
The Emperor’s letter is heh or hei, whose image is window. Windows let air and light into a room and let people look out to see what’s coming and decide what to do about it. Looking ahead and thinking clearly are basic Emperor skills.
He is associated with the astrological sign, Ares, the sign of the leader, the pioneer, and the warrior. Ares, the Greek god of war is, of course ruled by the planet Mars, the Roman god of war. Ares’s symbol is the ram. No surprises here. Zeus - From the Age of Mythology (I think)
The Gods I associate with The Emporer are the top guys in all the pantheons and all the horned gods. It’s easy for us to see The Emperor archetype in Zeus, Jupiter, and Thor, as they sit up on Mt. Olympus or in Asgard tossing down the occasional thunderbolt. Zeus was particularly fond of raping (or seducing, depending on how you look at it) both mortal and immortal women. He had lots of children—Wikipedia lists nearly a hundred. He became a swan and seduced Leda, who later gave birth to the twins, Castor and Pollux, and Helen of Troy. He ate the Titan, Metis,Thor goddess of wisdom and knowledge, who was pregnant with his child, because he was afraid of a prophecy that said her daughter would be greater than he. Metis gave birth to Athena inside Zeus’s body and she grew there until Zeus started getting headaches and called for Hephaestus, the smith of the gods and general fix it man, to split open his head (the original splitting headache). Out burst Athena from his forehead, fully armed with helmet, shield, spear, and lightning bolt. A Jungian patriarchal nightmare if ever there was one!
We have trouble understanding the horned gods, and the Catholic Church engineered much of this misunderstanding. It worked very hard at Cernunnosconverting pagan Europe to Christianity, and one of its tricks was changing the pagan gods into demons and devils—with horns, of course, because the most important pagan gods had horns. And they had horns because horns represented the physical power and reproductive potency of the animals (who all had horns) that formed the economic basis of the ancient hunting and farming societies. Their phallic shape indicated raw sexuality. In a final masterstroke, the Church’s propaganda machine gave horns to the fool and the cuckold, two of the most laughable figures in medieval society.
Alexander the Great coin, c 310 BCEBut to a pagan, horns represent power, virility, wealth, fertility, and kingship. The coinage of Alexander the Great’s empire bore his image wearing rams horns, the symbol of The Emperor.
The two horned dieties that come to mind are the Greek God Pan and the Celtic god Cernunos, mighty lords of the forest and protectors of nature.The God Pan, Mosaic, Roman Imperial Era, Turkey They are bawdy, earthy deities, bursting with raw, sexual power. It’s difficult to imagine them addressing the senate, chairing a board meeting, or commanding a battle, but I have no doubt that they could get their “point” across.
In a reading, this card means stability, practical intelligence, strong leadership, control, a protector, or an authority figure. If it’s reversed, there’s trouble. Depending on where it is in the reading and the other cards around it, it could be the querent, the querent’s struggle with authority, a protective influence, or a powerful person in the querent’s life. This person may have good intentions, but sometimes the unsubtle, heavy-handed energy of the Emperor is not what is needed to solve a problem. Emporer Plapatine, Star Wars
In the hero’s journey The Emporer seldom appears as the hero, he’s already made his hero’s journey—several probably. He’s too straightforward to be a shape shifter, and it’s unlikely that such an important person would be a herald, unless he offers a quest to one of his children. He can be a mentor, an ally, a threshold guardian, and/or a trickster. The plot really thickens when he is a shadow.
It seems like a huge patriarchal rip-off that neither the Roman Catholic Church, the Greek Orthodox Church, nor the Russian Orthodox Church considers the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Mother of Christ, to be divine. They caution their flocks that they may honor and venerate Mary, but they must not worship her.
In all fairness, she was a mortal. By all accounts, a nice Jewish girl that would have made a good wife for any doting
The Virgin Mary Suckling the Baby Jesus
mother’s son—until voila! The Immaculate Conception. This move is not without precedent. Seducing mortal women was one of Zeus’s favorite pastimes. But the key word here is seduced. At least Leda got to enjoy it. God didn’t seduce Mary. He didn’t even offer polite conversation. All she got was a visit from his messenger, the Archangel Gabriel, who said, “Honey, you’re pregnant. In nine months you will bear God’s son. Take good care of him so that he can grow up and be crucified.”
She did.
And he did.
Mary did a lot of weeping.
Simone Martini (c. 1284-1344) is the only painter I know of who got the Annunciation right. Mary doesn’t look stunned or enraptured. She looks pissed, and even Gabriel cowers before her anger. I’d love to know what the writing in the frost line she’s glaring at him means.
As a pagan, I’m quite happy to view Mary as a goddess; according to Catholic dogma, she never died, but ascended directly into heaven. That’s immortal enough for me. Catholic laity, as far as I can tell, worship her as a goddess and the clergy make little effort to patrol that fine
Virgin Mary street shrine, Florence, Italy: May, 2007 photo by wanderer and wonderer, flickr stream
line between veneration and worship. The Virgin Mary has inspired, healed, and transformed people’s lives for centuries. Millions of people, even non-Catholics, visit her sacred sites all over Europe, Western Asia, and the Americas. Every other street corner in Italy is graced with a shrine to The Virgin Mary. She even has her own radio station, WBVM, out of Tampa, Florida. Protestants point out that the New Testament has very little to say about Mary and makes no mention of anything that would set her apart from all other mortal women—except that she was the mother of Jesus.
The similarities between the Egyptian goddess Isis and The Virgin Mary are so striking that some believe that early Christian spin-doctors lifted the Mary’s story straight from the myth of Isis.
Isis Suckling Horus: Bronze, 664-332 BC, Egyptian Museum
Isis is a loving wife and mother, a friend to beggars and slaves as well as pharaohs and wealthy aristocrats. Centuries before Jesus was even a gleam in God’s eye, Isis was worshiped all over the Mediterranean as The Great Goddess of magic and fertility, the protector of the dead, and guardian of the Mysteries. She is primarily a solar goddess, but she also has lunar associations. The Virgin Mary is sometimes pictured with a crescent moon at her feet. When Isis wept for the loss of her husband, Osiris, her tears flooded the Nile River, bringing water and rich silt to the parched fields. The Virgin Mary’s tears are also legendary.
Some of Isis’s many titles are:
Queen of Heaven,
Mother of the Gods,
The One Who is All,
Star of the Sea,
Great Lady of Magic,
She Who Knows How To Make Right Use of the Heart,
Light-Giver of Heaven,
Lady of the Words of Power,
Moon Shining Over the Sea.
Virgin of the World
Some of Mary’s many titles are:
Queen of Heaven
Mother of God
Stella Maria (Star of the Sea)
Our Lady of Good Council
Our Lady of Victory
Our Lady of Sorrows
Ever Virgin
All Holy
As I was writing The High Priestess post, I wanted to mention The Virgin Mary as a goddess that represented this archetype, but I took a second look and realized that this wouldn’t work because she also fit the archetype of The Empress. Then I looked at my goddess attributions for these two cards and noticed that Isis also represents both archetypes. In her veiled aspect, she is The High Priestess; and in her unveiled aspect, she is The Empress. This dual association suggests how these two immensely popular goddesses embody the mysterious and paradoxical feminine archetype. They are virgin mothers, symbols of fertility and aesthetic guardians of the Mysteries, ladies of great joy and great sorrow, and mothers of gods and loving mothers of humanity. A perfect and potent combination of the High Priestess and Empress archetypes.
The Empress is the symbol of the Great Mother, and the Great Mother is the Earth. It’s her body. The rivers, lakes and oceans are her blood, the mountains are her bones, the rolling hills are her breasts, belly, and buttocks, and the wind is her breath. Every pagan knows this. But knowing something intellectually is not the same as knowing it with all your senses.
Photo by Barcroft Media
I learned this lesson several years ago in Enna, Sicily as I stood on The Rocca di Cerere (Rock of Ceres) and looked out over a checkerboard of miles and miles of newly planted wheat fields. It was the Mediterranean growing season. Persephone had returned from the underworld and Demeter’s love and joy were pouring out of the earth. Magic swirled up out of that rock and tap-danced through my body. I felt like a flash drive that was plugged into the Mother Computer, downloading file after file of nourishing knowledge that would take years to assimilate.
Enna, Sicily with wheat fields in the distance. Photo by Urban
The town of Enna covers the flat top of a small mountain that rises up out of a fertile plain—a truly impregnable site. The only times it’s been conquered have been by treachery. Human nature being what it is, Carthage, Greece, Rome, Byzantine Greece, Spain, the Moors, and the Normans have all occupied the city, frequently enslaving and/or butchering its inhabitants.
The Romans occupied Enna in 258 BC during the First Punic War against Carthage and turned Sicily into a gigantic wheat farm, the “Bread Basket of Rome”. The city became the center for the thriving cult of the earth goddess Ceres/Demeter. “We learn from Cicero that there was a temple of Ceres of such great antiquity and sanctity that (worshipers from all over the Mediterranean) repaired thither with a feeling of religious awe, as if it were the goddess herself rather than her sanctuary that they were about to visit.” (Enna entry in Wikipedia)
Author and friends at the Well of Demeter atop The Rock of Ceres
We found a shallow well, similar to “The Well of Demeter” at Agrigento, Sicily, carved into the top of The Rock—a gateway into the earth, a path to the goddess.
The Temple of Castor and Pollux at Agrigento, Sicily was built over The Well of Demeter
Author at the base of The Rock of Ceres. You can still see the profile of The Goddess in the cliff face. Perhaps the temple was her crown
Legend has it that a huge statue of the goddess, ancient and not carved by human hands, existed at the site. I like to imagine that Mother Nature herself sculpted her image in the cliff face so she could gaze out over her fertile fields.
The temple is gone and the cliff face has fallen, but the reason they were there still remains.
I submitted the first 7500 words (about three chapters) of both “The Remaking of Molly Adair” and “Molly Adair, Beware” to the Orycon writer’s workshop. This is a great deal. You meet with two published authors and another writer who has submitted a manuscript. One pro critiques your manuscript and the other critiques the other author’s. The two submitting authors critique each other’s manuscripts. So you get two valuable critiques and the chance to ask two published authors questions about your manuscript. The whole thing costs $10.
I have been dithering about my second manuscript. Much as I hate to join the throng of YA fantasy authors who are writing about vampires, I’ve decided to add one to my cast of characters. The piece of information that Molly needs will have more impact and drama if it comes from vampire’s cold, red lips.
However, I know nothing about vampires, and started plotting a quick and painless way to learn about them. “Twilight” didn’t strike me as a reliable reference. A good friend of mine is writing a book about how Bram Stoker’s “Dracula” is actually a detailed description of a magical initiation. Fascinating, but I doubted that “Dracula” would be an accurate reference either. And then someone on an e-mail list I follow that’s concerned with magic and spirituality inquired if anyone had read Claude Lecouteux’s “The Secret History of Vampires: Their Multiple Forms and Hidden Purposes”. He was working on book reviews for “The Invisible College”.
BINGO
I checked the book out at the library, came home, set it down next to the computer, and opened my e-mail. The manuscripts I’m reviewing for Orycon had arrived.
The year is just a smidgen of the way past Fall Equinox, The Harvest Festival. The farmer’s markets are bursting with fresh, local apples, pears, Italian plums, winter squashes of all shapes and colors, piles of bright orange pumpkins, tomatoes (finally), corn, wild crafted mushrooms, and golden, raw honey. For such a chilly summer, the northwest harvest has been bountiful—except for tomatoes. If the weather holds, even the grape harvest should be excellent, but late.
What better time to talk about The Empress? She is The Great Mother, Mother Earth, Mother Nature, the nurturer; the one who showers us with beauty and bounty and reminds us that, yes indeed, there is plenty to go around if we’d all just behave ourselves and share.
She lounges in the midst of a beautiful garden of ripe wheat, the universal symbol of nourishment. The waterfall behind her reminds us of her counterpart, The High Priestess, the ever virgin, mysterious guardian of the secrets behind the veil. But there is nothing virgin or mysterious about The Empress. In fact, many decks portray her as obviously pregnant. Her crown of twelve stars represents the zodiac and reminds us that she is also the Queen of Heaven.
Her planet is Venus, goddess of beauty, love, and pleasure. This goddess also rules Libra, the zodiac sign of balance and harmony that begins with Fall Equinox; and Taurus, the springtime sign of fertility, wealth, and stability.
Dalet is the Hebrew letter assigned to this card. The Modern Hebrew word for door is “delet” and the shape of the letter is based on the Egyptian hieroglyph for door. Our Mothers’ wombs nourish us and are our doors into this world.
The goddess I associate with The Empress is Demeter, the voluptuous, Greek earth mother who taught humanity how to farm and preserve food with the seasons. This sounds like a wonderful gift, except she did it out of pity.
Harvest Mouse on Wheat with Spider Web from Barcroft Media
Demeter cast the world into eternal winter until Hades released her daughter, Persephone, from the underworld. Then she visited winter upon humanity every year during the months when Persephone had to return to her husband in the underworld. Mother Nature can be harsh. We get the word “cereal” from Demeter’s Roman equivalent, Ceres. Other Empress-type goddesses are Isis—in her unveiled aspect, Inanna, Lakshmi, Freya, Pandora, and Juno.
Demeter’s symbols are Poppies and Wheat–image by HoranyiMari
The Empress is one of the most auspicious cards in the deck. She brings abundance, pleasure, and assured success. She may also signify a mother, a motherly woman, a generous woman, a pregnancy, the need for nurturing and kindness, domesticity, or creativity.
Fall Garden by Yvonne Cunnington
In the hero’s journey The Empress is usually an ally and a mentor. She may be an empress or queen; a wealthy, motherly woman; or an actual mother. She is sometimes the hero. And she can be a chilling shapeshifter, trickster, and/or shadow figure—think Joan Crawford in Mommie Dearest or that fairy tale staple, the wicked stepmother.
Several years ago, a group of fabulous women organized a Moon Magic weekend and invited a bunch of their feminine type friends. I was lucky enough to be included. All the attendees, either singly or in groups, had to present a workshop relating to the Moon.
Everyone in the study group I belonged to at the time was going, so we decided to do a workshop together. The thing we happened to be studying was the tarot major arcana. One of the techniques we used to understand each of the cards was to place ourselves in the position of the figure on the key we were studying and meditate for a few minutes, noticing how the pose made us feel and where our train of thought went. The results were most instructive and really helped us get in tune with the message of each card. So we decided to bring all the stuff in the High Priestess card, which is ruled by the moon, and, over the course of the weekend, dress up each attendee as the High Priestess. We had the white under robe, the deep blue cape, the silver full moon and crescent moons crown, the gray cube that she sits on, the equal armed cross, and the scroll. I think we even had the pillars with the curtain hung between them—although it didn’t have palm trees and pomegranates on it.
When each woman was dressed and positioned on the cube with the scroll in her hand we left her to meditate for a few minutes and get into High Priestess mode. When she was finished meditating, she rang a tiny bell and another woman would enter the room as a seeker and ask the High Priestess a question. We received some amazing answers that left both the priestess and the seeker in awe.
These are the words we read to each woman to help her become the High Priestess.
You are the High Priestess
Your planet is the ever changing, reflective moon, Your element is water, Your color is the blue of the waters of the subconscious, your number is two, meaning duality and balance.
Your crown is the waxing, full, and waning moon, The 3 aspects of the goddess.
Image by Phoenix-DAYou are seated on the cube of the material world; that which is, was, and ever shall be.
On the scroll in your lap are the memories of the world, the cosmic consciousness.
You are seated between the pillars of Jachin and Boaz: positive and negative, emotive and receptive, active and passive.
On your breast is the equal armed cross, which, again, symbolizes balance between active and passive.
Behind you is the veil which divides the conscious from the subconscious and obscures the Greater mysteries.
You are seated at the nexus point of positive and negative, active and passive, conscious and subconscious, logic and intuition. Your foundation is ultimate reality and cosmic consciousness is at your fingertips.
You are the perfect oracle.
Ring the bell when you are ready to advise the seeker
