Parisian Phoenix Publishing

In keeping with the spooky and supernatural, we’re also hosting informal tarot workshops at the Portland event. The witches in the Fashion and Fiends series use the Tarot and we thought the tie-in would promote Eva Parry’s divination journal. We’ll have copies of the Fashions and Fiends books as well as the Shuffling & Scribbling journal at the event, with a collection of Tarot cards and some free sample worksheets.

Galen collected the cards, their large size comfortable in his palm. He put his cigarette on the counter beside him, ashes falling on the smooth wooden surface. Galen shuffled. The act of holding the tarot, absorbing its energy and redirecting it, shuffling and cutting the deck quieted him. Galen thought of Adelaide.

The cards grew heavy, one end of the deck pressed into his flesh. He cut the deck, at first only once, but then again. He reordered the deck in his right hand. Electricity surrounded the cards as Galen arranged them in four neat horizontal rows of four cards.

One by one, the familiar archetypes appeared. Seventy-eight cards in the deck, and every time he read for himself he saw the major arcana, the archetypes. The minor arcana, the remaining fifty-six cards, depicted the everyday struggles of life to which he had grown immune.

He finished the first row and paused. The Fool. The Empress. The Lovers. The Sun.

That row rarely changed. That row depicted the beginning, the past. He was The Fool who knew everything but nothing, ran forward but never looked back or ahead.

We had hoped to have Eva herself on hand to sign books and talk to people about her intuitive approach to the cards, but after a pause on her educational endeavors, Eva has enrolled at Lafayette College. August 26 is the first day of first-year student orientation.