Writing and Ripening- July 2024
Plans and Promises for July, The Fool's Calling Tarot Course, Writing Update, & so much more!
FIRST – A HUGE WELCOME to the explosion of new subscribers this month! I’m so honored you’ve joined me and I hope you enjoy my musings. Thank you so much to my fellow Substack writers who recommend my newsletter and as always, deep gratitude to you who have been with me for a long time! Please know how much I appreciate each of you.
We’re in the deep heat and humidity of summer where I live. Life is ripening all around me, and yet I find myself in a fallow time. After a crazy busy June and several deep losses, I need to go within. I need time to sort through a roller-coaster of emotions, from the joyful highs of my role in the play we just closed and the publication of a new creative nonfiction work, to the deep lows of the deaths of friends, two of whom I’ve known for more than fifty years.
July Plans and Promises
In July, 2002 – twenty-two years ago – I began work on A Good Friend for Bad Times: Helping Others through Grief. Words just poured from my heart to the computer keys and the book sold to a reputable international publisher quickly, with a 2004 publication date. I’m grateful it is still selling and that readers continue to find comfort from it.
Since then, July has been one of my most productive writing times of the year. So that’s what I’m doing in July: writing. Here’s what I’m working on:
1. I’m revisiting a novel I wrote that has lain dormant for a long time. I’m slashing and cutting and updating and salvaging and tossing.
2. I’m writing poetry. I am honored that my “Where I’m From: Seven Decades in Seven Scenes” was published last autumn in Salvation South and I plan to submit new poems to that great publication this month.
3. I’m working on several new pieces of creative nonfiction.
4. I’m creating a new course that brings together several metaphysical concepts and how they can enhance your spiritual journey. Stay tuned for its launch in September.
Many of you have asked me to again offer my Unlocking the Mysteries of Tarot course, which introduces students to Tarot as a divination tool. Watch for this course coming in August.
I’ve heard your request for my Crow Knows course, and it’s coming in August too. Recently I’ve had some new insights about our relationship with Crow, both literally and symbolically, so watch for this course too.
I’m so happy to connect with you and I’m grateful that you have taken a course with me and subscribe to this newsletter! If you missed my last newsletter, you can read it here.
Sunday Fatback, Second-to-Last Chance Ladies, & more- June 2024
The Fool’s Calling Update
I’m blown away by how many of you have enrolled in this self-paced course and it’s never too late for you to join if you haven’t! The feedback I’ve gotten is overwhelmingly positive and I’m honored to know that the information touches you in many ways - it is a joy to write these weekly lessons for you. In every course I teach, I promise students only one thing: I, too, will learn something new. In writing the material for this course, I am indeed gaining new insights about Tarot, and most important, about myself. If you seek to understand yourself and the world around you in new ways from ancient esoteric knowledge, this course is for you!
The Fool's Calling:
Your Personal Myths and Archetypes in Arcane Symbols
A Self-Paced Tarot Course About YOU and Archetypes!
THIS is the in-depth, self-paced Tarot course you requested me to create!
It’s not too late to enroll! You can join this course anytime you like. The first lesson is sent to you on the Monday after you register. I hope YOU will join us on this quest! DEEP gratitude to the many of you who are already enrolled!
https://debbowen.com/product/the-fools-calling-your-personal-myths-and-archetypes-in-arcane-symbols/
Do you seek new ways to learn about yourself and the world around you? For hundreds of years, Tarot symbols have been a gathering place for world beliefs and a source through which we can discover common ground among us and within aspects of ourselves. Tarot offers an exploration of myths and legends, and of cultures and beliefs, that are as old as time and as modern as this moment. For many years, the symbols of Tarot have guided my travel to the world around me, and to myself. Tarot can guide you too on your journey to self.
Venture deeply with me into the myths, legends, beliefs, and cultures of Tarot in this exciting self-paced 38-week course! Tarot wisdom guides your path to your deepest self, while this esoteric knowledge hides in plain sight on the 78 keys of traditional Tarot.
NEW to Tarot? No problem! This course lays the foundation for a deep exploration of the knowledge that supports the meaning of Tarot. This course is not a course in divination or using intuitive skills but rather grounds you in the underpinnings of the time-honored meanings of the keys.
Here are some questions this course answers:
Why on some keys do we see Christian, Jewish, Hindu, Egyptian, Greek, and Roman symbols? How do they work together?
How does learning the mythology related to the keys enhance my understanding of symbols on the keys?
Why do some symbols, such as flowers, pillars, and feathers, repeat on various keys?
What do landscapes and buildings tell us about our journey through Tarot?
What do the symbols teach me about myself?
AND SO MUCH MORE!
Details and registration on my website: https://debbowen.com/product/the-fools-calling-your-personal-myths-and-archetypes-in-arcane-symbols/
Book Suggestion
The Comfort of Crows: A Backyard Year by Margaret Renkl
I lost several friends this year. My friend Janet died in January after lingering illnesses, but we waited until her birthday in June to celebrate her incredible life. On the afternoon I attended our celebration of Janet’s life, my friend Kat died suddenly. She had lung cancer and was very public about it on her The Original Tarot on Point Facebook page, but her death came unexpectedly. My friend Ralph died on June 19 from prostate cancer. For more than fifty years, Ralph and Janet have been my friends, and Kat and I have known each other for more than twenty-five years.
I know I am getting old, and that dying friends will become the norm of my days more frequently. Knowing this does not make losing people I love easier. Even after having written a book about grief, the emotions of grief still race through me.
The Comfort of Crows, Margaret Renkl’s lovely, gentle follow-up work to her Late Migrations takes me exactly where I need to go to assuage my grief: to nature and an understanding of my place in nature. As Renkl moves me through the 52 weeks of a year, my grief is both mirrored and soothed by the changing of the seasons. Renkl mourns the loss of life and habitat of those she loves – two-legged, four-legged, flying, swimming, crawling, and standing people, and Mother Earth herself.
Renkl writes of the concept of home, and how the notion of home has so many connotations for us all. If you’ve subscribed to this newsletter for a while, or know me in any way, you know the word “home” means the beach, the sea, the marshes to me. Renkl suggests I may want to broaden my idea of “home.” She says, “I took myself to the woods. Because sometimes the only cure for homesickness is to enlarge the definition of home.”
She writes of crows in her yard: “I love the crows not because they are exotic, but because they are kindred creatures. I see in them my own kind.” This gentle, kind book, offers us a new way to live with our grief and a new way to see our connection to the beings in the world around us.
I can’t stop re-reading it.
Writing Update
Click on the links below to read my most recent works in Salvation South:
“Sunday Fatback”
https://www.salvationsouth.com/sunday-fatback-essay-deb-bowen/
“The Coyote’s Journey”
https://www.salvationsouth.com/the-coyotes-journey-nature-essay-deb-bowen/
“Takin’ Up a Poundin’”
https://www.salvationsouth.com/takin-up-a-poundin-christmas-story-deb-bowen/
“Tidal Wave Terror”
https://www.salvationsouth.com/ground-truth-from-the-climate-reckoning-janisse-ray/
“Where I’m From: Seven Decades in Seven Scenes”
https://www.salvationsouth.com/where-im-from-seven-decades-in-seven-scenes-deb-bowen-poem/
“Mending Nets”
https://www.salvationsouth.com/mending-nets-north-carolina-barrier-island/?mc_cid=c4bb217ffc&mc_eid=fae2a9a622
“A Talisman for Poseidon”
https://www.salvationsouth.com/a-talisman-from-poseidon-hurricane-donna-1960/
Podcast
Deb’s Facebook Pages
Another way you and I can connect is through my Facebook pages. I’d be honored if you’d follow my pages. They are a great way to see up-to-the-minute news! I so hope you’ll LIKE and FOLLOW and feel free to comment and share posts!
Deb Bowen, Author
PsychicTeachers
Please note: I will never send friend requests or offer services through Facebook comments on any of my Facebook pages. If you have any questions regarding our communications, please contact me through my email. deb.bowen.crone@gmail.com
Just One More Thing Before You Go
“To my child’s eyes, we are walking in a gigantic aquarium, and my shuffling feet warn flounder of our approach. What life beneath the water! Seahorses dance among algae fronds attached to dock pilings. Blue crabs scurry with claws extended like swords. Hermit crabs inside elegant tulip shells edge through the mud. Shrimp float by unaware of our presence. Minnows dart.” -from “Sunday Fatback” by Deb Bowen
published in Salvation South
Thank you!
Deb, my heart grieves for your losses. I recently read your grief book and learned some profound things about myself and the way my family handled dying and loss in the past. It's been so good to see you with Janisse the past couple Sundays. Y'all both emanate a calming presence that is multiplied when you work together. Thank you!
Since reading this post I read your grief book. Thank you!