Congratulations to Rebecca, the lucky winner of possibly the very last vintage 2002 Llewellyn Tarot Calendar! We received a number of great tips last week for the contest. Check out the comments here. Being an artsy-craftsy type of girl, I liked Arwen's suggestion of using old, worn out decks in art journaling. I do make photocopies of cards to use in my art journals, but using the actual cards would add texture and layers, which I really like in a journal. ML Hardin gave a fantastic idea about using old cigar boxes. She includes small journals in the box that she keeps for each deck. Again, the glue-stick-and-paint lover in me is all over that idea. How about decorating the boxes to

Over at the Aeclectic Tarot forum, there was a conversation about shuffling. Well, it started off as about asking the question, but wandered over into shuffling. Shuffling is something those of us who have been doing it forever don't really think about. But those who are new to tarot sometimes have concerns about doing everything just right. They have an idea that tarot is this magic formula that unless you do everything just so, then it won't work. There may be tarot readers who believe that. However, among my tarot friends and colleagues, the common belief is that there is no magic formula and that every practitioner has their own methods. I like the idea of making the shuffling

Because I am so suggestible you all get the chance to win a prize. Christopher Penczak is one of the my favorite authors and his new book The Witch's Coin: Prosperity and Money Magick is just out, so of course I am reading it. He writes, "New witches start their magickal practice doing waxing Moon magick to accumulate all the things they want. Wiser, more experienced witches find as much value, if not more, in waning Moon magick, banishing unwanted forces to make room for blessings they might not yet have dreamed of." Then he tells us to clean our home or office. So I cleaned my home office. I found that I had two copies of the 2002 Llewellyn's Tarot Calendar. The Tarot Calendar

One thing I love about my job as tarot acquisitions editor is watching an idea go from concept to manifestation. An author or artist approaches us with an idea. Everyone likes the idea. It grows and evolves. It is completed…well, the art and the text are completed. But there is still a lot that happens before the deck hits the bookstore shelves. There are numerous meetings about the look and presentation of the deck. Who is the audience? What is the personality of the deck? How can we best express the essence of this deck in an image a buyer may look at for a split second before moving on? How do communicate all the promise that these particular seventy-eight cards hold? And all of