Fairies, angels, tarot, and you’re all weird

Saturday Signal: sifting the signal from the noise of the Internet’s occultural cacophony.

Holy cow. December was quite a month for holy days. (Though none, in fact, observed cows – as far as I know…?)

Hanukkah, Agnostica, Saturnalia, Winter Solstice, Yule, Natalis Invicti, Christmas, Kwanzaa, Boxing Day, Day of Ashura – and apparently December 12th, 2009 was also the 53rd anniversary of patenting the first hovercraft. (Who knew?)

It kept me busy. So did work on the (not so) Secret Project ™ announced on the Facebook group. Beta version to be released Monday.

Now, on to the linkage:

• In Papers Falling from an Attic Window, Dan Harms asks (and answers) a rather interesting question: “Why did the fairies shrink?” Apparently we can blame Paracelsus and Shakespeare.

• However, fairies can’t fly, so says Graeme Paton in the Telegraph, who also advises that angels can’t fly either. Paton writes: “A leading biologist has compared the physiology of flighted species with the representations of spiritual and mythical creatures in art – and found the angels and fairies that sit atop of Christmas trees did not get there under their own steam.” I know, deep down, you’re just as disappointed as I am.

• The folks at Students of Tarot have created eleven Flash jigsaw puzzles out of images from the 1918 Rider-Waite-Smith tarot deck. Each puzzle piece is double sided, with an image from a major arcana card on each side.  I’ve done a couple of them. It’s pretty nifty.

• Winston Rowntree, who writes and illustrates Subnormality, a wonderfully weird comic hosted by a fake company called Virus Comix, reminds us why it’s ok to be weird as there’s no other way to be. Spotted on Mutate!.

Speaking of weird, after my festive Cthulhu-themed gift idea post I thought I’d also mention a search engine I found: Cthuugle, which bills itself as “the complete HP Lovecraft Search Engine”. Indeed.

That’s it for this week, folks. I still have half an hour to post this where it can still be considered Saturn Day, so I’d better make it quick!

Psyche is the editor of ahrfoundation.org and the curator for the occult resource SpiralNature.com, Psyche also operates a tarot consultation business, Psyche Tarot. She has been published in The Cauldron, Konton, Tarot World Magazine, among other magazines, and her essay “Strategic Magick” appeared in Manifesting Prosperity (Megalithica, 2008).

Psyche's website is http://www.ahrfoundation.org.