Haus of Rhi

For the month of June, the Tarot Rebels Blog Hop subject is "Guilty Pleasures," but it occurred to me that regardless of how I try to twist the perspective, guilt is one thing that --for me at least -- doesn't enter into the equation anywhere. So let's go with indulgences, maybe? Frivolities which serve no real logical or rational purpose. One could argue that there aren't many of these either, that the trappings in which we indulge are part of the atmosphere, the ambiance, the process that deepens our connection with the tools, tapping into our subconscious. Mary-el tarot, blue silk scarf wrap. In the course of the past six months or so, I starting focusing on how I house my decks. The reading cloths in which I fold my cards contribute to the sensory experience and immersion, creating a tactile trigger for the subconscious engagement. I doubt I'll ever grope velvet or silk with quite the same emotive response in the future; all of my decks have hom...

Trionfi Della Luna, daily spread. Belief systems are usually instilled foundationally from a very young age. Mine certainly were. It took me a great deal of time and willpower to buck them, to find something I wanted to believe in, to figure out just what I believed as opposed to what I'd been told to, programmed to, and brainwashed to believe. These days, I like to think I have a solid foundational structure to what I believe, but there's a great deal overlaying that, and it's really subject to change with little to no notice whatsoever. I like to renovate. I like to try out new ideas and concepts before I disregard them entirely. Sometimes they're too similar to the constructs I razed in my twenties for me to even be remotely interested in them. When it comes to tarot, for me it's about exploring my precognitive tendencies, my divinatory abilities, and opening up the creative outlets and process. I keep anything akin to religious derivative out of my inte...

The Dark Arcana tarot playing cards. Aprils' Tarot Rebels Blog Hop is about the Make Or Break cards in a deck. The volatile relationships we have with archetypes are what shapes our intuitive responses to the imagery we experience in the tarot deck. For me, there have always been a few cards that have the power to make me totally fall in love with a deck -- or completely kill any chance of me being able to work with it. They're also the archetypes I struggle with most in my personal life and spiritual journey. The Emperor is the first. It's a card of Fire, of harsh rulership, of intellect and logical detachment. While those are theoretically aspects to which I relate well internally, it's the external that I have difficulty relating. And so the attitude, body language, and presentation of this dominant persona is crucial. It's like putting my finger against the thrumming pulse of the deck as it tightens its fist. This is its hard side, and if presented t...

Deviant Moon extras, taking a walk on the wild side. This month's Tarot Rebels Blog Hop topic is about reading tarot card reversals, and why I choose not to employ reversals in my practice. And yes, it is directly related to my philosophies of magic-working and pagan belief system. Not that I adhere to a specific system of singular construction. I'm an eclectic, a spiritualist of indeterminate path. But the fact remains that I've spent much of my adult life hypersensitive to the energies of others. I adhere to the belief that attitude, outlook, intent, and focus have as much influence on events, choices, and those around us as the gravity holding us to terra firma. I expend a great deal of effort maintaining a deliberate focus on the positive aspects that can be found in any given situation, and the positive options and advantages that I can find for both myself and others. I approach tarot reading with this same frame of mind. In such a perspective, there's no...

The pirouette, or dancing in circles. Capriole on the lines. Forging Piaffe's world on the page for the reader is crucial to the immersion, suspension of disbelief. One of the greatest challenges for me as the writer fell in the realm of the insigni, specifically their warfare tactics and strategies. Once upon a time, before tanks, mounted cavalry units were the single most intimidating force on the battlefield. A well trained steed could scatter infantry with a kick, and was a force to be reckoned with -- wielding hooves, teeth, and its greater weight against adversaries at its rider's behest. Capriole under saddle in action. The remnants of those techniques are preserved in the militaristic discipline with which horsemanship is taught to both equine and human pupils at the Spanish Riding School in Vienna, Austria. For those who aren't familiar with classical dressage, describing a horse's movements with terms more complex than jog or gallop may p...

As promised, picspam! Sorted roughly by order of appearance (except for Traken down there at the bottom), here's the rest of the cast of characters in Piaffe. Some of them don't have much page time. Others have a much larger role than what is seen or claimed in this volume of the series. I had fun exploring these first two, because Neolus and Erryn are two of my favorite supporting characters. We'll see more of them. Can I say that without it being spoilery? I really like them. Willoughby, who plays Neolus, is of Ojibway from Whitesand First Nation and Jamaican descent. Thuy is a Vietnamese model. Also worth mentioning is that Jherrfaulken Torrente character about halfway down. He doesn't actually get page space, but he kind of steals it. And his presence and influence loom a bit. He never really had a face, until I stumbled on a photo shoot a while back, and then I couldn't see him as anyone else. I'm sure he won't mind. Everyone wants to be named ...

The Sacred Manda Grove It was in drafting a spiritual system for Piaffe's world that trees became a major player. I didn't want there to be religious structure, per se, but I did want to create a measure of spirituality in the form of respect for the planet and all its inhabitants. A sharing of resources and space. Filtered Sunlight Because their language system is heavily Latinus influenced, I opted to transform Gaia into Ommat, literally "all things are," from om mat , which means "mother of all." She began not so much a specific goddess entity as she is a communion with nature. The sacred groves were space set aside for rites in which the dead were returned to the earth, the final embrace. I was in the throes of working these details back into the story, trolling the internet for images of what these groves might look like. How old were they? What kind of trees were mandas, beyond being old, dense, and dark? That was when my longtime friend Am...