Ritual Tarot

February 8, 2022 — Pat Bertram

The tarot cards I am using this month are The New Dawn Ritual Tarot. The deck is based on the traditional teachings of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. It touted itself as the tarot deck of the 1990s (it was published in 1991), and was geared toward people who wanted to get back to the basics of Ceremonial Magick.

I’ve waited this long to use this particular deck because the cards never appealed to me. The cards themselves seem to be cardboard without any sort of slick coating to make them easy to shuffle and deal, which is bad enough, but the designs are also off-putting. Still, I have the cards as well as an oversize 230-page book, so I figured I should at least try to learn something from this particular tarot. So far, the only thing I’ve learned is that my original assessment holds true: these cards don’t at all appeal to me.

As for the book, it gives the history of the tarot, an account of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, an examination of the principles of the Qabalah (an ancient mystical system that more or less parallels the tarot), and explains a variety of rituals and divination procedures specifically “designed for magickal work with the Tarot.”

Mostly, the book describes in great detail each card, telling us what we are seeing (though why they need to point out the red and yellow and black parts of a card when the colors are obvious even to the most disinterested person, I don’t know). The book also describes what each part of the card signifies, how the card relates to the Qabalah, what the cards significance is to the earth and the solar system. Two pages to describe a card, but when it comes to discussing the meaning of the card itself, all they can come up with is a brief phrase. In other words, that huge book says nothing more what the booklet that came with the cards says.

I suppose for those who are deep into the mystique of the tarot, all the intricacies of the card are important, and perhaps someday I will be interested enough to delve further into the cards, but for now, all I need to know is what they mean.

Today’s cards are the six of pentacles, which means “success and gain in material undertakings,” and the ten of swords, which means “ruin, defeat, disruption.” An interesting combination, right? The cards seem to negate each other, though I suppose it could also mean that I will find some sort of success today followed immediately the ruination of that success. Or . . . something.

I’m still searching for a tarot deck that speaks to me, one that I might care to learn about its intricacies beyond the few divinatory words that usually pertain to the cards, but this is not such a deck.

***

What if God decided S/He didn’t like how the world turned out, and turned it over to a development company from the planet Xerxes for re-creation? Would you survive? Could you survive?

A fun book for not-so-fun times.

Click here to buy Bob, The Right Hand of God.

Posted in books, life, tarot. Tags: , , , , , , . 7 Comments »

Exchanges

February 7, 2022 — Pat Bertram

A common “exchange” at Christmas is a cookie exchange, where everyone involved makes a big batch of cookies. The exchangers then get together to trade cookies, so at the end, each person comes away with an assortment of cookies they didn’t have to take the time to bake.

There are two problems with this — too often the various bakers have different skill levels, so the person who spends a lot of time and effort on their cookies can come home with cookies they couldn’t eat themselves and certainly wouldn’t serve to guests. The second problem is that many people are on prescribed diets to limit sugar intake, which takes away the fun of such an exchange.

A different sort exchange I recently heard of is a book exchange, where each person buys their favorite book and includes a note as to why they liked it so much. This would actually work better as a group gift idea for one person, so that person would end up with a whole slew of books as well as a great insight into each of her friends, but it still works nicely for an exchange with a group of book lovers, where each person gets one new book. As nice as that sounds, though, it’s not all that special. I frequently do book exhanges — it’s called “going to the library.”

Another idea is a plant exchange. The woman I work with and her daughters exchanged plants for Christmas — each of the women set up plants for all the others. After the exchange, each ended up with four new house plants. So very clever!

In an oblique way, I am a participant in this exchange. I didn’t end up with any plants (whew!) but I get to enjoy seeing the plants grow up.

I’ve never had any luck with house plants so I shied away from them. Oddly, I have done well with a couple of plants I’ve been gifted with since I moved to this house, and as long as the plants stay small enough to sit in front of my south-facing kitchen window, they do fine. Elsewhere in my house, it’s too dark or too cold or no space for them. But at that window? Perfect! In fact, one plant grew so large I had my own private plant exchange, the big plant for a little one.

But that’s just to explain the “whew” a couple of paragraphs ago and is not really part of today’s story.

One of the plants that was gifted in the group plant exchange was an amaryllis. I don’t think I’ve ever seen one in real life, so I have enjoyed seeing the flowers bloom. Not only are they spectacularly pretty, but they brightened the dreary winter days we’d been having. Too bad they don’t grow outside in Colorado. I’d certainly love to see a whole garden filled with such gems! Still, being able to see even one amaryllis plant in bloom is a joy.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of intriguing fiction and insightful works of grief.

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Facebook Troubles

February 6, 2022 — Pat Bertram

I don’t believe in ill-wishing anyone or anything, but if I were that sort of person, FB is the one entity I would ill-wish for all the trouble they’ve caused me. Luckily, if the rumor is true, they are doing it to themselves without any help from me. (What I heard is that they are having financial troubles.) I don’t care enough to check on the rumor to see if it’s true, but it makes sense. They have a terrible business sense, embracing those who do harm and all but destroying some who are totally innocuous. Like me.

First they banned my blog. They have labeled it spam, which is totally unfounded as well as totally nuts, and there is absolutely no recourse. Next, they banned any URL stemming from my blog. For a while, I let it go, just stayed away from FB altogether, but several friends I’m connected to only on FB told me how much they miss seeing my blog in their feed. And besides, my absence from FB killed all book sales. (That was the only platform that worked for me to sell books.) So I got around their stupid block by reblogging my blog onto another blog, and then posting that link. It wasn’t a total workaround, because very few people saw it, and of those who saw it, very few people bothered to click on both links (the link to the reblog and then to the original blog). Some people did comment on the photo, so at least that was good.

I have the reblog blog set to post automatically to FB, but now, FB won’t accept the automatic post. I have to reblog, then manually cut and paste the reblog intro onto FB (can’t post the whole thing because of the aforementioned URL is included) along with the reblog URL. Then I have to change profiles from my author page profile to my personal profile so I can share the blank space with the URL to an URL.

If you’re confused by now, I don’t blame you. I know what I’m doing, and it confuses the heck out of me! And that wasn’t the end of it.

The photo that from the original blog post stopped showing up on FB because of that devilish URL of mine. I’d post the photo separately for a while, and so did a friend, but that got to be a pain. So now what shows up on FB is a post with a big blank space where the photo should be.

To add insult to their injury, FB keeps sending me notifications of what other authors are doing on their FB pages, and asking why aren’t I? Sheesh.

So, views to my blog are down, limited now to those who go to my blog directly. And book sales never picked up again, and in fact are non-existent.

So, do I care that FB is having problems? A resounding NO!

***

What if God decided S/He didn’t like how the world turned out, and turned it over to a development company from the planet Xerxes for re-creation? Would you survive? Could you survive?

A fun book for not-so-fun times.

Click here to buy Bob, The Right Hand of God.

Posted in blogging, internet, life. Tags: , , , . 20 Comments »

Anxious About Anxiety

February 5, 2022 — Pat Bertram

Despite the title of this piece, I am not anxious about anxiety, or anything, actually. I just thought the title a clever one for an essay about worry at things and worrying about things.

In a comic strip from 1992, Calvin told his buddy Hobbes that he prayed for “The strength to change the things I can, the inability to accept what I can’t, and the incapacity to tell the difference.”

A blog reader sent me the link to that cartoon, and when I read it, I couldn’t help laughing out loud. It seems so apt, particularly now when I am trying to puzzle out my water meter situation. Actually, it’s not truly that situation I’m trying to puzzle out, but my response to it. Like so much else I have little control over, I tend to worry at such things, like a dog worrying at a bone.

I figure I have two choices. The first is to learn not to worry at things, though it’s not only a lifelong habit but also an inherited one, and those are hard to break. My dad solved his tendency to worry at things by writing notes to himself, and as long as he had those notes, he could generally let the matter go

His notes were sort of a running joke. My mother told me she found a note he’d written for himself after they were engaged with the date of their nuptials and the message to “Marry Stella.” (He used her real name, of course, not “Stella.”) It appalled her, so she’d asked him, “Do you really think you’d forget to marry me?” He said, “No, but I didn’t want to take a chance.”

Now that I myself write notes to get things out of my head, his note writing isn’t as amusing. But it does show that my worrying at things is honestly come by.

My second option, if I can’t break myself of the habit of worrying at things (and truly, “worrying at” things is a vast improvement over “worrying about” things) is simply to accept that it’s the way I am.

This situation has made me wonder what my old elderliness will be like. (As opposed to my current “young” elderliness.) My father was on anti-anxiety medications, and perhaps it might have been a good thing because although he didn’t seem anxious to me, he did worry at things a lot. This seems to be a characteristic of many old elderly — an inability to accept things they cannot change and the incapacity to distinguish those things from what they might be able to change. (Though with the oldest of the elderly, there is little they can change.) And since they also worry about death and dying, many physicians routinely prescribe anti-anxiety pills whether the person needs it or not.

I hope I am wise enough at that age (and in control enough of my own life) to forego the doctor’s interference with my worrying. As I thought when I found out about my father’s prescription, if a person can’t worry about death and dying at the end of his life, when can he? In fact, shouldn’t he be worrying about it? Or maybe not worrying, but thinking about it in preparation for the end? Apparently, not, according to my father’s doctor. A fretful old person is harder to deal with than one who is sedated, which I do understand. It really is hard dealing with someone who doesn’t comprehend the changes they are going through, can’t comprehend why their life isn’t totally their own, and can’t comprehend why they can’t comprehend.

It seems then, that there might be a third option in regard to my “worrying at” things: Learn to live with a whole lot of incomprehension.

As for the water meter situation: As it stands now, the water company guy insists it isn’t the meter’s fault. My contractor (who knows this house almost as well as I do) thinks the problem is at the meter. So, I wrote a note to myself about the situation in case the matter isn’t resolved, then I’m going to try to forget it and let those two men duke it out at high noon during a showdown at Bertram’s corral.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One. “Grief: The Inside Story is perfect and that is not hyperbole! It is exactly what folk who are grieving need to read.” –Leesa Healy, RN, GDAS GDAT, Emotional/Mental Health Therapist & Educator.

Posted in dealing with old age, life. Tags: , , , , , . 2 Comments »

Just a Kid

February 4, 2022 — Pat Bertram

One’s concept of old and young seem to change as the years pass. I remember when I was very young asking my aunt how old she was. I think she was in her forties, but she answered, “Twenty-nine.” Then she and my mother laughed. I had no idea what the joke was. To me, back then, twenty-nine was unfathomably old. And now? Unfathomably young.

For many years, I looked young for my age, so the one time I asked for a senior discount that was advertised, I thought there might be a problem proving I was old enough, but the clerk (just a kid) told me she’d already given it me. What a come down that was! I never bothered asking for a discount again; I didn’t think my ego could handle it.

Now I do look my age, even to my age-adjusted eyes. Even if I didn’t look old, I’d know I was because people seem so dang young. I watch the news sometimes with the lady I help care for, and it seems to me that people reading the news are a bunch of children playing at being newscasters. They’re not that young, from mid-thirties to early forties but still, they look like kids to me. But then, to the woman I care for, I look young. “You’re just a kid,” she tells me.

Not that it matters, really. I once was young, and now I’m not. It’s all part of the cycle of life.

Oddly, unlike my aunt, I never told anyone I was twenty-nine. Even when I was twenty-nine, I doubt I told anyone my age. The topic just doesn’t come up. Or perhaps other people aren’t as rude as I was when I was young. Come to think of it, I don’t know what prompted me to ask my aunt her age. I really wasn’t at all rude when I was young. I’m not rude now that I’m not young, either.

This last part has nothing to do with age, but is a follow-up to my water meter dilemma. The meter reader was just here. He checked the meter, and says it’s working fine, that I have no leaks though somehow the meter shows another 4,000 gallons used in the past three weeks, which is impossible. Normally, one person uses about 3,000 gallons a month, and that includes, all indoor and some outdoor water usage, which is what I use in the summer. But it’s winter, and in the winter, I use half of that amount.

I suppose this is more proof that I’m not just a kid anymore; if I were, I wouldn’t have to deal with this mess.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of intriguing fiction and insightful works of grief.

Posted in culture, dealing with old age, house, life. Tags: , , , , . 6 Comments »

Unresolved Issues

February 3, 2022 — Pat Bertram

I tend to worry about things, especially those I can’t do anything about, which makes sense because if I can do something about an issue, I would do it and not have to worry. A case in point: this current situation with the water meter showing that I am using water at the rate of 1000 gallons a day. I’ve already set things in motion to find out what is going on, but I can’t follow through. It snowed for almost twenty-four hours straight, and we’ve been dealing with below zero temperatures, so there’s not a whole lot of probing for outside water leaks that can be done. Nor can anything be done about the meter until it’s been shown there is a problem with the meter itself (which the water company vehemently denies.)

So I worry, but not the anxious or frantic or agitated or feeling mental distress sort of worry. The worrying I do is the more insidious kind — pushing thoughts around in my head, continually going back to them to see if there is a different way of looking at them, and touching the thoughts the way one probes a sore tooth. When I do manage to put the thought out of my head, I feel it in my body, a sense of forgotten things left done.

But nothing changes. Nothing can change until the snow melts at least partway ant the ground warms up a bit.

Because of this tendency to worry, I’ve always been one to charge at problems. I don’t like unfinished things, the sense of having forgotten things, or feeling as if things are hanging over my head, so I try to do whatever I can to resolve these things. I don’t know if any of this — the worrying at things or the charging in to fix problems is good or bad, and I doubt it matters. Life goes on either way. (Well, life goes on until it doesn’t, but that’s a completely different discussion.)

I’ve been doing well keeping things out of my head and learning to deal with unfinished things since there are so many unfinished things to be done around the house and the yard, but this water meter thing has me flummoxed.

In the end, I’m sure, it will all work out. Meantime, it’s just one more unresolved issue in my life.

In a way I should be glad of such issues — it gives me something to blog about. Otherwise, all I’d be discussing is shoveling the snow and it’s bad enough having to do the work without having to talk about it.

***

What if God decided S/He didn’t like how the world turned out, and turned it over to a development company from the planet Xerxes for re-creation? Would you survive? Could you survive?

A fun book for not-so-fun times.

Click here to buy Bob, The Right Hand of God.

Posted in blogging, house, life. Tags: , , , , , . 3 Comments »

Water Saga

February 2, 2022 — Pat Bertram

I was a bit disappointed when I moved here and saw my creepy basement because I’d imagined a finished room. Instead, I got a dark dungeon-like space with a rotted floor from too much flooding, crumbling half walls, and spooky nooks, though no crannies. (A nook is a corner or other small space; a cranny is a gap or a crack in a wall.)

Above and beyond the walls shown in the photo are deep crawlspaces with all the pipes and ducts and other arteries of a house exposed.

As it turned out, the new garage with plenty of storage space precluded any need for basement storage. Still, I had the basement cleaned out, the floor concreted, the walls painted white, all of which made the place look a trifle less like a dungeon and a bit more like what it is — a utilitarian space for the water heater and furnace, as well as those “arteries.” It’s still not pretty any way you look at it, but it does the job.

The best thing about the basement turns out to be the thing I really didn’t appreciate — the visibility of all those pipes and ducts (visible in real life, that is; they’re not visible in the attached photo). When I got my water bill with the hugely inflated water usage, it was easy enough for me to go down to the basement and look for any drips or flooding. I didn’t see anything. A worker who came to help me find the leak didn’t see anything, either.

This is a basic house, fairly simple with not much hidden besides the buried pipes leading to (and from) the house — the gas line, the sewer line, and the water pipe. So, if there is no leak in the house, no water running anywhere in the house, there are only two places for a leak — where the buried water pipe connects to the meter and where it connects to the house. The pipe itself should not be a problem — the old lead pipe was replaced before I got here as a condition of the sale. (I even have the receipt somewhere.)

Unfortunately, with all the snow that was dumped on us, as well as the frigid temperatures we’re going to be treated with the next few days, no one will be able to get out here to probe for water leaks. But that’s beyond my control. What I can do — I did: go down to the basement and look for leaks and listen for water movement through the fully exposed pipes.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One. “Grief: The Inside Story is perfect and that is not hyperbole! It is exactly what folk who are grieving need to read.” –Leesa Healy, RN, GDAS GDAT, Emotional/Mental Health Therapist & Educator.

Posted in home, house, life. Tags: , , , , . 4 Comments »

Interesting Days

February 1, 2022 — Pat Bertram

This is another of those interesting days where a problem looms that takes a lot of time on the phone to resolve. Yesterday it was my water bill — apparently, 19,000 gallons of water have disappeared on my side of the meter. After talking to six people yesterday, I finally found someone who will probe for the leak. The problem is that if they can’t resolve this today, it will continue for the next week or so because a major storm is coming through here tonight and tomorrow, with subzero temperatures and six inches of snow.

Today, I got a message that PayPal had paid my virus protection renewal bill even though it doesn’t come up for renewal for another thirty-five days. I also don’t have money in the bank account associated with the PayPal account to pay for it (I always keep that account almost empty in case of such problems), so that’s another issue to deal with. The virus people were supposed to email me before they renewed, but didn’t, so I didn’t get a chance to stop the auto-renewal. Normally it wouldn’t matter, but after I signed up for the services, I found out I got the same service free through my internet provider, and I certainly don’t want to continue paying for something I don’t have to. I would have stopped the auto-renewal months ago, but they made it sound as if they would immediately cancel all services, and I didn’t want to take a chance. Instead, they decided not to take a chance on me and renewed early.

I called the virus protection people to have them issue a refund, and because of a language problem, they didn’t understand what I wanted. Finally, the word “refund” got through. Now I only have to wait for a few days to make sure that if/when PayPal takes money from my account, it will be refunded, though perhaps there won’t be a problem because the refund went through before the money was debited from my bank.

When all that is taken care of, I will have to contact my internet provider to set up the new protection plan (which actually is the very same one I just discontinued). I don’t want to get started on that until I have a lot of time at my disposal because nothing to do with the computer is ever easy. It should be, but it isn’t. There always seems to be a problem.

These “interesting days” will be continuing, not just because of the switchover for the virus protection plan, and not just because of the water issue, but because of the winter weather advisory and all of the problems that will arise from the storm, such as shoveling the walks and getting safely to and from my job.

But it will all work out, one way or another.

***

What if God decided S/He didn’t like how the world turned out, and turned it over to a development company from the planet Xerxes for re-creation? Would you survive? Could you survive?

A fun book for not-so-fun times.

Click here to buy Bob, The Right Hand of God.

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