Man Who Made Predictions on TV Now on Saudi Death Row for ‘Witchcraft’
I’m glad I live in the United States. A man has been sentenced to death in Saudi Arabia for witchcraft because he makes predictions on television. Ali Sibat is not even a Saudi national. The Lebanese citizen was only visiting Saudi Arabia on pilgrimage when he was arrested in Medina last year. A court in the city condemned him as a witch on Nov. 9. The only evidence presented in court was reportedly the claim he appeared regularly on Lebanese satellite issuing general advice on life and making predictions about the future. The case is causing outrage among human rights campaigners but has made little news elsew

Aces High
Barbara Moore talks about the abundance of the Aces on her Llewellyn tarot blog: My  local Tarot Meet Up group convenes tonight. In the spirit of the season, we are going to talk about the abundance cards in tarot. Our faithful organizer, Corrine Kenner, gave us a few suggestions to think about ahead of time. Some abundance-themed cards are: all of the aces, 3 and 9 of Cups, and 6 and 10 of Pentacles. I always thought of the aces as the promise or possibility of abundance but not as abundance itself and as spring rather than fall, as I wrote in this ar

Straight from the Source’s Mouth
I’m working on my next book, a collection of scary stories called The Ghosts of Devils Lake. One of the thing that makes them really scary is the fact that they’re all based on true events, and I have sources to back everything up. But that’s led me into a geeky technical conundrum, too.  I’m writing the book in Microsoft Word, which has built-in tools for automatic endnotes, footnotes, citations, and bibliographies. That means I have a lot of options when it comes to referring readers to my sources. There are so many options, in fact, that I’m a little overwhelmed. So, lovely readers, riddle me this: D

Will you write my term paper for me?
Every now and then, I get emails from students who want to interview me for a research paper. For some reason, they just make me feel snarky. Here’s one that landed in my mailbox yesterday, in the form of a Facebook friend request. I’m going to change the student’s name, but the rest of the email is verbatim. “Hi my name is Suzy Student and I am writing a paper for my psychology class. I would really like to interview you via email as my expert. The paper is concerning Tarot card readings, it will be just a quick ten questions and I’d be so grateful.” I’m sorry, but that just set o

Friday the 13th: Day of fear or fun?
Happy Friday the 13th! And look — my writing friend Chanah is quoted in this article! Some people today isn’t a good day to cross the path of a black cat or launch a new venture. Friday the 13th is 24 hours of bad luck, the darkest day, some think, and they have folkloric tradition to back them up. But it’s not bad luck for everyone. Some movie moguls, for example, have made hay out of the phobia and fear. Producers have chosen that day t