mountpleasantmagic-blog

[mountpleasantmagic-blog]

I hate to be a bother, but would you know where I can find free ebooks or something on witchcraft? I have looked and scoured site after site and I've read posts where people say you can, but I sure haven't found a single one. I'm new and not open, so I'm so lost.

Why yes! I actually have several Free PDFs I can give you that I’ve collected over the while!

Herbal Enchantments

The Complete Book of Incense, Oils, and Brews

The Ultimate Book of Spells

The Gardnerian Book of Shadows

Every Witch Way

Witch Crafting

Wicca In The Kitchen

The Magical Household

Circle, Coven, and Grove

Magick When You Need It

The Element Encyclopedia of Witchcraft

Encyclopedia of Magical Herbs

Spells For The Solitary Witch

A Grimoire for Modern Cunningfolk

The Great Book of Spells

Spell Crafts

Scottish Fairy and FolkTales

The Call of the Horned Piper

Book of Protective Charms

A Whole Folder of Nature/Herb Books

Cornells Digital Witchcraft Collection

All of these are, to my knowledge, still up and running! Enjoy these, I’ll add more if/when I find them! 

constantly-disheveled.tumblr.com/ask

[mountpleasantmagic-blog]

You Have Nothing to Fear

It has been approximately a month since I did my promotions and got my decks out. I started this blog, and immediately ran away and hid from it. There were times in my past when I hid from my gift(s). I hide from my writing most of the time, and a solid third of my Mount Pleasant Magic Pie Chart is ‘Get Mari writing again’. In my very mundane private school, I was hardly welcomed as an overweight, outspoken nerd. The pentagrammed black velvet card bag didn’t help. In college, I wanted to be too busy to practice, because that would mean I had accomplished a success that had evaded me all my life.  When you don’t accept yourself, you won’t find people who accept you. The world is your mirror as much as your oyster.  There are going to be times where your divination scares you. Maybe you’ll see more than you thought you could see from just a five card spread. Maybe it’ll be the way you find yourself lying about how you know things to those who won’t understand that this is possible.  I want to debunk the four fears I have, or have had, about cartomancy. Fear hates a spotlight.  Fear: People will think I’m weird. Fact: If you are weird, they probably already think it. But there’s great liberation in two things.  1. You don’t have to make anybody’s opinions your business. 2. People don’t really have the time to think about you. The people who love you might, but even then, you don’t have to care about their opinion of your cards. You don’t even have to tell them you have them. None of their business, none of yours.  Fear: I won’t be any good at it. Fact: Ten thousand hours to Carnegie Hall, sweetheart. Occasionally a reader and a deck will hit it off right away, and you’re off to town. There’s a very talented reader who drew all the right cards for a spread she knew nothing about (my zombie love-life, if you’re wondering) but didn’t know their meanings well enough to interpret.  Read about cards. Read blogs (blogs like the one mine’s gonna grow into!), read articles, listen to podcasts! And talk to your cards. Hold them for a bit if you don’t have time for a spread. They appreciate all attention. 

Fear: My friends will treat me differently Fact: If your friends start treating you like a sideshow act, dump them. A good way to salvage the friendships is to ask them to pay you for the readings first. People are stingy. Alternatively, take them shopping for their own deck! I think everyone benefits from having a deck of tarot cards and knowing how to use thm, that’s 50% of the Mount Pleasant Magic Pie Chart. Fear: It’ll take over my life. Fact: If you let it, it will. If you get to the point where you want a spread before you pick yor shoes in the morning, you do have a problem. Good news? The cards will blatantly tell you when you have a problem. You’ll start seeing the Fours pop up in your spreads, the Five of Pentacles, the Hermit more than the High Priestess. Your cards speak for your highest self, the self that was born from the Source. Listen to them, and they won’t steer you wrong.  Oh, and the last 20% of the Mount Pleasant Magic Pie Chart? Meeting people. So send me a line any time. We’re all in this together. :)

[mountpleasantmagic-blog]

Rising Bitch Face; RBF by Ascendant

Aries: Their face would have to be resting to have resting bitch face, wouldn’t it? Expressions pass too quickly. That said, if they’re made to rest, the face does indeed turn bitchy. 15% RBF. Shakira, Bette Midler, Barbra Streisand & Lea Michele are a few examples. Yes, you know what they look like in pictures, but you think of them in motion, don’t you?  Taurus: Affable. Usually smiling. Suspiciously affable? A little bit; a Taurus Ascendant can be a bit like a draping a tarp over an elephant and acting like it’s not there. Mariah Carey, Donatella Versace, Miley? We’re not fooled, we’re charmed. 33% RBF.  Gemini: Of course they’re split down the middle. Half of the time, like Drew Barrymore, give such great smile. Other times, there’s a bit of a Terminator vibe (see Rihanna). Aries Rising faces don’t rest because they’re always being; Gemini Rising faces rarely rest because they’re always expressing. 10% RBF.

Cancer: Cancer Rising looks like they’re trying not to look like a bitch. Look at Angelina, Julia Roberts, Kate Hudson. 0% RBF, in vain.

Leo: Leo Ascendant can be tiresome, because they are here to bestow their splendour. A little smug, but not RBF. Meryl Streep, Muhammad Ali, Tina Turner. But like a good cookie calls for a pinch of salt, 5% RBF. Virgo: More accurately, Virgo Risings have ‘COULD YOU NOT’ Face. Madonna has served this up excellently. Renee Zellweger and Charlize Theron, too. 90% RBF. Libra: Libra Rising is so darn pleasant that even their grumpy face is just endearing. Remember Elizabeth Montgomery from Bewitched? Maybe not, you young’uns, but she was frequently disgruntled and it looked so good. There’s tons of celebrities with this rising placement, because looking at them feels good. Look at Brit-Brit, look at Leonardo di Caprio, Beyonce. ????% RBF, because no one would ever say anything negative about the faces they serve. Scorpio: Any face they make is an RBF face because they’re a bad bitch, resting, serving face. They’re aware of it, though, so there’s always a little mischief. Nicole Kidman, Diana Ross, Debbie Harry.100%, but in a good way.  Sagittarius: Similar to Aries in that it’s an RBF born of impatience. But it’s a more curious impatience. They really want to hear what your point is. They really hope you have one! Sag risings love smiling and engaging, so despite the effectiveness of their RBF when they wear it, not going to give them more than a 30%. Catherine Zeta Jones, Brad Pitt,Jennifer Lawrence.  Capricorn: You WISH that Cap risings had RBF. But their brains are always going, always judging, assessing, even when they’re smiling. In fact, you can slap ~judging you~ onto any photo of a Capricorn Rising. Naomi Campbell’s the best example of this. If you think being judgmental is the same thing as being a bitch, 150%. If you don’t, 75% RBF.  Aquarius: They don’t mean for it to be RBF. It’s just that they give off this very practiced vibe of ‘I’m not like other people’. And it feels bitchy. To their credit, people with this placement usually prove themselves right about it, so, what, are you going to call them out? Obama, Bowie, Adele, Christina Aguilera, Nicki Minaj? 66% RBF. Pisces: Oh, heck no. They have open face. They show all their feelings, those eyes don’t rest. The Gos couldn’t even keep a straight face during the Oscars blow-up. Michael Jackson, Ryan Gosling, Demi Lovato, Bruno Mars. -45% RBF 

[mountpleasantmagic-blog]

Our Cast of Players, Part 2

On the other hand, some decks....just will not suit our purposes. Since I’m not crazy about them, I’m not going to include purchase links. 1. Oswald Wirth Tarot, 1976, Oswald Wirth.  You’ll see the term ‘pippy’ appear on a lot of tarot sites. If you’re just starting out, what this means is that the Two of Cups is just...two cups. And if you don’t remember what that represents going in, that’s not the artist’s problem, that’s yours. 

Compare this to the Stars we saw before. Yes, she’s a naked lady with big jugs....pouring out liquid (heyyo) but I don’t personally emotionally connect to this. Is it the faux-medieval art? Yes. Yes it is.  2. The Hermetic Tarot, 1979, Godfrey Dowson. 

This deck has never been opened, in my stash. My sister forgot it when she was moving, and it wouldn’t surprise me if she forgot she ever had it. I actually rather like this depiction of the Star. For forgoing colour, it actually manages to pack a bit of a wallop.  I’m going to put up a poll to see whether anyone would prefer this deck to the Fairy Tale Tarot. 3. The Druid Craft Tarot Deck, 2005, Philip & Stephanie Carr-Gomm, Bill Worthington

For any more diligent Wiccans or Druids, I’d recommend this deck. But it doesn’t speak to my understanding of the cards, and I don’t like appropriating things that don’t belong to me. This is less acceptable to me than the Fairy Tale Tarot; at least folklore belongs to the collective unconscious.  If you yourself identify as a druid or a Wiccan, have at ‘er, though, and more power to you. 

[mountpleasantmagic-blog]

Our Cast of Players, Part 1

So! Before I get started with any formal posts tomorrow, I wanted to introduce my decks to you. Some I came into from friends and family, while others I chose for myself. Two decks I have are fantastic for beginners; a third is my favourite, and a fourth is a little more advanced, but I very much want to get to know it better with you. There are seven decks, all in all, that I considered bringing into my posts. Only these four made the cut for all postings. The other three decks might be fantastic. But for different reasons, I don’t feel comfortable teaching off of them. And I’ll show you why in Part 2. To avoid spoilers, I’ve chosen the same card for all of the decks (with one exception).  These cards are not displayed so that we can judge which “best” delivers the message of the Star. That is entirely subjective. We’ll discuss the different explorations of the same theme of each card in its respective post. This is just a quick Hello.  1. Tarot of a Moon Garden, 1994, Karen Marie Zeikhardt

This was my very first deck, purchased at the now-defunct Phoenix Books in Surrey, B.C. (I’ll investigate whether Phoenix Rising in Fort Langley is a related business; if so, the road trip will be all the more joyous!). I have always kept this bag in the traditional black velvet bag with pentagram. It’s gentle, and if you received a promotional reading from me, this is the deck I used. Its iconography is quite traditional, though the suit of Swords is represented with dragonflies, in a nice bit of whimsy.  This deck is well-regarded as a good beginner’s deck, and particularly a good deck for a young beginner. It’s out of print, but you can still get it on Amazon through resale. 2. Morgan-Greer Tarot, 1979, Lloyd Morgan & Bill Greer.

If I was asked to recommend a good deck for someone just beginning, I would either point them towards this deck, your absolute basic Rider-Waite, or an Aquarian Tarot. This deck is even more traditional than the Tarot of a Moon Garden, and it’s quite easy to come by. No space is wasted on a border here, and I think it helps a new reader to fall that much more deeply into the imagery. I prefer heavy linework in my decks, which is something I had to discover the hard way. This deck is in fantastic shape; I tend to use it when I need a more impartial voice. You can get it from the publisher here, including in Italian or Spanish, or you can find it for a few bucks cheaper from Amazon.  3. The Fey Tarot, 2002, Lo Scarabeo

This is the deck I read with most often for myself, and it is....well-loved. It’s survived some very rough encounters with the world, and I’m strongly considering retiring it.  But not any time soon! As befits a European deck, it’s automatically multilingual. I find the off-white border less stark than the Moon Garden. The thin yellow line marks it as a Major arcana; that border’s colour will change when we get to the pips. This deck and I are close; when I gave readings in promotion, this deck wouldn’t cooperate. Perhaps it will be kinder to paying customers! You’re better off going to its publisher, Llywellyn than Amazon. Slightly cheaper, which I think is a good sign. It means few people are parting with it, at any rate! 4. The Fairy Tale Tarot, 2009, Lisa Hunt

This deck. When I was at university, I studied fairy tales in as much detail as I could muster. I actually finished all my courses the winter this deck came out! (God, I’m old.) The art is beautiful. But this is not a deck I’d recommend to a beginner. It comes with quite a little book (only 300 pages!) and rather than explicitly depict the themes of the cards with fairy tale iconography, Hunt chose to connect the bend the themes of the cards to fit the folk tales. Some Major Arcana are renamed, and some of the Pips demand a look at the aforementioned 300-page tome. If you’ve got issues with a white woman hijacking an Ojibwe folktale for profit, that’s entirely fair, and I don’t have to use this deck if we don’t want to. The majority of the folktales explored by the deck are from the European tradition, but with Chinese, Japanese, Indian, and Brazilian stories all incorporated, I would completely understand if this deck was one people want to avoid.  What this deck sets out to do, it does successfully. But whether we look at it, I put to you. 

[mountpleasantmagic-blog]

[mountpleasantmagic-blog]

Hello.

Hi everyone! My name is Mari, and I’m @mountpleasantmagic.  I was lucky enough to grow up in a household where I was encouraged to explore...esoteric things. My mother prided (still prides) herself on her insight, inherited from her mother who read a crystal ball, inherited from her mother who read tea leaves, inherited from her mother who died in a mysterious fire. Which to me is not evidence against the gift going back beyond that.  I was five or six when I started reading astrology books, and thirteen when I got my first deck. My practice has hardly been uninterrupted. There have been phases when I shied away, phases when I got caught up in the more mundane details, but if I can be a help to anyone, either through providing readings or sharing what I think & know, I’m happy to do it. I don’t want to be didactic, and I’m always going to be fandom trash, so expect a fair amount of popular culture to weave its way through my posts.  There are some fantastic astrology blogs out there. I’m a huge fan of @ayyries @astrolocherry @zodiacatsea @astroadvice, just to shout-out a few who saw & shared the post that led to me giving readings to quite a few people, whom I hope will be following shortly. :)  Welcome to my blog, you guys! I’m so excited to be contributing, and helping more young practitioners learn!