From Alpha to Omega

One of the most beautiful things in the universe, is the universe itself. It's a dynamic thing, a body in motion, at the same time silent, volatile, vibrant and peaceful. For the twelfth time, Ricca Lipski woke from stasis to regard the silent burning gases that were stars and nebulae, and bask in their cool irradiation while waiting for his body to come up to the right temperature. He wouldn't be able to make this journey more than another two times; he was getting too old and heavy. Using Greene's String-Slice Travel, the trip was shortened to a phenomenal 5 gigaparsecs each way, from one end of the "coiled spine" of the universe to the other, and he had been making it ever since he had been old enough to finally leave the university with his own fellowship. His mission in life was to measure the rates and directions of the expansion of the universe. The continual trips from one end of the "spine" to the other were to re-measure these points over time, which allowed him to make corrections to his calculations, so that he could painstakingly piece together a map the universe in four dimensions. He was hoping that he could extrapolate from his data, the position of all mass in the universe at time zero, essentially providing the final evidence that the "Big Bang" theory was either true or a pile of bunk. It probably wouldn't earn him a Nobel Laureate, but it might get him published in Science. The concept of the universe having a coiled spine was his own, and his theory essentially stated that either one end of the spine or the other, called the Alpha and Omega points, respectively, had to be the centre of the universe, the initial position of the primordial bolus of matter that had exploded in the Big Bang, as these were the only two non-moving regions in all of existence. Once he had completed collecting his data between these two points, he could finalize his map and present his model of the origin of the universe. The initial concept had gotten him his doctorate, but Omnus was the only journal willing to accept the speculative manuscript without the completed model. Not bad for a start, but it wasn't really his idea of a serious publication.

His body hit 35°C and he began shivering. This was the unpleasant part, but it only lasted as long as it took for the freighter to dock momentarily with the hotel port and eject his stasis pod into the waiting arms of the concierge.

The hotel staff were exceedingly friendly and saw him to his room with an excess of inappropriate patting and smiling. It was funny, he mused, when he was young and gawky, the ladies wouldn't come near him, and now that he was growing portly . . . well, perhaps now they saw him as harmless. Or a complete quack. He had been interviewed by the National Enquirer just before he had gone into stasis, and forgetting himself once they got him going on his subject, had given one of the best lectures of his life. He had earned a standing ovation from the reporter, and regretted not having delivered that speech to the Discovery Channel instead.

It was when he was dressing for supper that he first noticed the cracks. Branching upwards from his waist, he saw a deep red fissure running up his right side and towards his back. He was completely shocked. He hadn't felt a thing, and it didn't hurt now. Not convinced that it was actually there, he ran his fingers over it, and was dismayed when the edge of the crack erupted into a series of blebs that protruded from under the skin.

"I need a doctor!" he called, and began to curse the freighter captain for not having frozen him properly.

Forty-five minutes later, in the infirmary, the fissure was still in his side, but the blebs had retracted. The doctor tried again to seal the rupture in his skin, and finally, at her wits end, used an old fashioned needle and thread to sew it shut. Ricca lay there on his good side, with one arm lifted over his head, listening to the doctor mutter over and over again, "I don't understand why it doesn't bleed!" That, thought Ricca, was completely irrelevant. The doctor should be putting her efforts into understanding how it had happened in the first place, so that she'd make a good expert witness at the freighter captain's trial.

The stitches pulled a bit, but otherwise were not uncomfortable and did not stop Ricca from enjoying his dinner. It turned out that the concierge was his great-great grand nephew, who had planned a surprise 250th birthday party for him (he had been frozen for 185 of those years), and sprung it on him once he had escaped from the doctor. There were many bottles of champagne, many balloons, and many polite people who seemed truly appreciative of the series of mini-lectures he delivered between refills of his glass. It was nice to still have family around, especially at the Alpha end of the spine, since he would most likely finish his travels at this end and settle here to write up his findings.

"So tell me, uncle," said the concierge, whose name was also Ricca, "which way is the universe expanding? Towards the Alpha end, or the Omega end?"

"I really don't know just yet. And it may be that the universe is not expanding infinitely, but expands and contracts rhythmically in a sine wave pattern, not moving continuously in one direction. This was difficult to measure for the longest time until cryogenics and light speed travel became a practical reality. But now, I think I'm really close. You know, it seems strange, but either this contraction cycle is approximately 13 years, or the universe really is expanding in only one direction, and just swirling by the Omega point. Each time I am here, the universe seems to be expanding. Each time I am at Omega, the universe seems to be contracting. Or perhaps my perception is biased, and what I'm really witnessing is the universe flowing around the Omega point, which perhaps creates an eddy, like a motionless rock in a stream. It just looks like a contraction. Oh! Once I have this model put together, it will be so much clearer."

Young Ricca grinned appreciatively, genuinely enjoying himself. "Perhaps, uncle, you have named the endpoints of the spine more aptly than you intended. Perhaps Alpha is the beginning of the universe, and Omega is the end. All matter is flowing from one to the other."

Ricca was momentarily flabbergasted. "How can that be?" he asked finally. "We'd see an increase in the mass of New Portugal, as it sits right next to the Omega point. Or it would be showered constantly with incoming meteorites, or something. It hasn't been observed!"

Young Ricca smiled and nodded considerately. "Of course. I'm only a poet, not a scientist. I think of things differently."

At the end of the party, Ricca returned to his rooms and was feeling quite tired, even after having slept for the last 13 years. He went straight to bed without giving much thought to his evening routine, rationalizing that he could take care of it in the morning. His dreams were filled with accolades and brown nosing as he presented his completed model to the Intergalactic Coalition for the Study of Quantum Mechanics (ICSQM). And then he saw it. In his dream, he held up the holoimage of the 4 dimensional model, turned it in his hands, played it back and forth through time, and watched, fascinated, as the flow of the universe moved past the limits of his data, showing him the origin of the universe . . . and then the end of it. And then he was distracted, as the butt-kissing president of ICSQM came to shake his hand in front of all the news media, and handed him a book.

"What is it?" Ricca asked in his dream.

"Your biography," was the answer. On the cover of the book was Ricca's name, and the exact date of his birth, followed by the exact date of his death.

He woke and sat up in a cold sweat.

In the dark of the hotel room, Ricca counted on his fingers the number of years of life his dream predicted he had left and came up with the number 13.

"Oh, you're being silly," he told himself. There were more important images in the dream, and he prodded his memory for the model he had seen ever so clearly. He replayed it in his mind, moving backwards in time, and then suddenly, when it reached the end of his data, he forgot what he had dreamt. Annoyed at the lapse and his own morbid fascination, he replayed the dream the other way, almost terrified that he would remember how he had seen the universe end. He reached the end of his data . . . and forgot. What had he seen?? It had been almost like a convoluted funnel, turning inwards on itself, folding inside out, but then what???

"Ah well," he sighed, and lay down again. Two more trips and then he would find out the proper way, with real data. The stitches along his side were a bit itchy, but he supposed that meant the crack was healing. If it went away quickly enough, he might not even bother suing the freighter captain.

Then next morning, he was delighted to find that young Ricca had arranged access to the Astronet Processor, which had been improved greatly during his last stasis sleep. He uploaded all of his data to the processor and began to construct his model, based on what he had so far. Astronet had several marvelous programs, including internal extrapolation functions, that allowed him to correct several of his vectors, and predict the best points of measurement for his next journey. Finally, he plugged in the last of the predictive algorithms, and with great relish, clicked on the function that would construct a graphical representation of the universe (making certain assumptions about the missing data). It did indeed look like a convoluted funnel that turned inwards on itself at the narrowed, farmost end (the Omega point), but the actual shape was difficult to discern. He removed the 4th dimension, and the model became a "snapshot" that was no longer in motion. Then he "sliced" through the 3-D construct to have a look at a cross section. The first horrifying realisation, was that he had completely miscalculated the location of the Omega point. He had been off by fifty three parsecs. How could he have been so wrong? He irrationally hoped that the National Enquirer would accept his apologies for having given them incorrect information. Ricca corrected the location, then clicked on the "linearize" function, to straighten out the structure and allow him to see what it looked like in only two dimensions. The structure was entirely too simplified and didn't make any sense. Keeping it linearized, he re-layered the 3rd dimension, and then stared at the graphic in disbelief. The second horrifying realisation, was that the Omega point wasn't the end of the universe at all. In fact it wasn't even the end of the coiled spine. He had a sudden creepy-crawling feeling ice its way over his skin, as he thought about having to retract his thesis. Don't be silly, he told himself. It was just a prediction, and still publishable. The modification of the theory will just show that I've made progress. What was the Omega point then? From the linear image, the universe appeared to be a long tube, with regularly spaced, periodic bulges, and the Omega point was like a constriction, that in four dimensions, would force the tube to convolute and fold into another set of directions, and then it would continue on with its periodic bulging. The predictive algorithms made it seem very likely that there were more than one set of Alpha and Omega points, each set demarcating discrete portions of the universe, and acting as anchors to seemingly hold the entire universe in place. Wondering why he had never found these points before, and where they might lie in the universe, he marked his original Alpha and Omega points with bright green, the others in bright red, and allowed the structure to fold back into its natural convolutions. He then set the whole thing in motion. The coiled spine reappeared, and the other points were nowhere in sight. Ricca sighed in exasperation and reset the model so that it would start at the beginning of his data, and move forwards only. The universe expanded, seemingly flowing in various directions, all eventually turning towards Omega. Then the entire universe imploded at point Omega and all matter clumped into one mass.

"What?" exclaimed Ricca angrily. The model was no longer moving, and he thought that the program had crashed. He hit a few keys, and the message popped up: "Continue simulation?" He clicked "Continue" and waited. After a few moments, the mass exploded, just like the Big Bang, and the universe re-expanded into a little bubble.

"Oh, this is entirely wrong!" He ran his hands over his face, and then pulled back in a fright. Had he felt cracks on the right side of his face? "Ricca!" he called his nephew. "Ricca, what's happened to my face?" The concierge came at once and took his uncle to the doctor. Neither one of them turned to see that on the graphic simulation, the debris of the universe had moved aside to reveal a bright red dot at the point of the explosion's origin, and after a few moments, as the universe unfolded a bit further, a second red dot winked into existence, right at the proper location to form a coiled spine between itself and its partner. All matter in the predicted universe was expanding outwards from Alpha2, and through convoluted, non-linear motions, was moving towards Omega2. Then it cycled again, imploding at Omega2 and re-expanding at Alpha3. A little while later, the housekeeping staff sympathetically shut down the simulation and logged off Astronet.

In the clinic, young Ricca was trying to soothe his apoplectic uncle who was inventing several methods of freighter captain torture and dismemberment. Instead of stitching the cracks shut, the doctor had filled them in with temporary synthetic tissue (unfortunately she only had it in purple), and had ordered Ricca to stay put until she had determined the cause of his rupturing skin, and why it did not bleed.

"Please be calm, uncle. You don't know whose fault it is, if anyone's. Your health is the most important thing now. Don't think of things that make you angry."

Ricca sat up again and pushed aside his nephew's arms. "I need to make sure my probes are recording properly. I don't have time to sit around here! In a few weeks I'll have to make my next journey back to Omega."

"You're too close to your work, uncle. It's affecting you badly. Take a step back from it, and I'm sure you'll be fine."

Ricca stood tried to ignore that last statement. Of course he was close to his work. That was his whole life! That was what he was, right down to the very core of his being. He was prevented from leaving by the doctor, who had just returned from her lab.

"Dr. Lipski, you've got a very unusual condition," she said. "I've never heard or seen anything like it. The strange blistering that you described when the cracks first appeared, it hasn't disappeared at all, just internalized. Here, you can see it on your body scan." The doctor pressed a key on her wristband and a hologram of Ricca's insides shot out from projectors in the wall. Indeed, several bulges were seen across the simulated peritoneum and muscle walls of the abdomen. "They appear to be migrating from your right side to your left. I would like to try magnetic resonance to prevent this from getting worse."

"What would that do?" Ricca asked.

The doctor looked sheepish as she replied, "Well, essentially I want to try to push everything back into place. I think I can do this with magnetic forces. I know it's a bit alternative, but it's worth a shot."

After twenty minutes in the magnetic chamber, Ricca's wounds began to bleed. He called this out to the doctor, who seemed pleased.

"That's a good sign that things are no longer being pulled to the left," she called back.

After forty minutes, the temporary tissue patch had been pushed out of place, and the stitches on his side no longer pulled. It took only a few minutes more for the doctor to seal up the cracks by conventional means. She seemed both relieved and satisfied as she released him.

Three weeks later, his data and new calculations carefully stored in his media case, Ricca bade a teary farewell to his nephew. The next time they would meet the concierge would be in his late fifties, and the relationship would necessarily be different. He didn't tell his nephew this, but before getting into his stasis chamber (first class this time), he had fired off a message to his lawyer to begin proceedings against the freighter captain. Hopefully, there would be a settlement waiting for him the next time he was at the Alpha point, and he could buy his nephew some new suits.

Upon arrival at New Portugal, 13 years later, Ricca's stasis chamber was automatically re-routed to the secondary destination, Arbitan, three parsecs away. The transport captain duly logged the vital signs of his passenger before sending him off, and other than noting that the metabolic activity was a bit higher than it should be, there were no abnormalities.

Arbitan was a pacifist colony, and while they tried to keep their technology up to date, they felt a bit backwards in terms of worldliness, and thus were confused when they thawed out Ricca's stasis chamber and attempted to wake him up. The window plate was frosted up from the inside, which prevented them from seeing through it. A passenger was there all right, all the sensors said so, but there was a strange vacuum inside that made it difficult to lift the lid. Worried that he might suffocate, they pierced the gasket and equalized the pressure before manually overriding the locking mechanism. The chamber seemed empty except for a thin rod of some strange, compact material. They were about to contact the transport captain, and ask what he had meant to ship in this chamber, when the rod suddenly unfolded, and expanded from left to right into a human being: male, thin, about 25 or 26 and completely speechless. He didn't seem to know who or where he was. The documentation didn't help, it obviously had gotten switched. There was no way this boy could be Dr. R. Lipski, unfrozen age of 65. They ran the recording logs on the freezer which spat out a hologram outlined in green light, of a rather portly, older gentleman going through the freezing process. Over the course of the 13 year journey, cracks appeared along his right side, and his entire body pulled all the way to the left, the movement of pixels on the hologram seeming to flow through an invisible funnel, until they formed the thin rod they had seen on opening the casket. The simulation continued, showing that after the vacuum had been released, the pixels reappeared, and flowed outward from whatever unseen dimension they had been in, now moving towards the right until the new body had been formed.

"Well, I've never seen that before," commented the Arbitan mayor. "Must be some kind of new shipping technology that rejuvenates you as you sleep. We don't have anything like that! I expect we'll be needing to get our systems updated again."

"Orlan!" said his wife. "You've just been through an update. Remember the doctor told you not to become your work. It'll be the death of you!"

"Sweetheart," the mayor responded, "sometimes my work makes me feel like a new man."

THE END

The Best Free Software for Protecting your Computer

Annoying as it is, having the larger corporations become more and more protectionist about their products is resulting in the beefing up the open source communities, rather than having the effect of getting the consumers to open up their wallets wider. It seems that making the Nerd Community grow ever more disillusioned is a good thing for the planet, and Collective Humanity thanks them, as they offer the fruits of their labours for free, undermining the efforts of the software giants and their money generating monsters. (Yes, I am referring to Vista, and BTW, I think the new copyright protection law will have the same effect in the entertainment industry, which could turn out very nicely for us small time content producers who would like to have all the disillusioned folks come our way. PLEASE download my stuff. I won't come after you for it!)

For the longest time, I used to recommend SpyBot Search and Destroy for eliminating unwanted spyware, adware, tracking cookies, and those sorts of things. While I think the work the originator is doing will generate him tonnes of good karma, there are two major problems with SpyBot these days: (1) Look alike programs that totally bugger up your system if you install them thinking you actually got SpyBot and (2) I'm very sorry to say this, but it just doesn't work that well anymore. I ran three different programs this morning, looking for whatever crap was slowing down my machine, and unfortunately, SpyBot performed the poorest -- it reported finding nothing, while AdAware (I just get the freebie, not the "Plus") and the AVG Free version 8.0 virus scanner found a whole mess of things. After clean up, my machine boots in about 1/3 the time it took before.

I also found that AdAware and AVG ran a lot faster, and are much more aggressive with their updates. In retrospect, I'll probably just use the last two from now on.

Unrelated to malicious code, I also have to mention the Open Office productivity suite, which is completely free, and does everything you would need Microsoft Office for, AND convert files into PDF format without having to purchase the Adobe plug in. Kudos to the community which produced that beauty as well.

Need Some Extra Cash?

I don't think American Comedians need to worry about losing their jobs to Canucks:

The Perfect Nominee for Sainthood

I think Prime Minister Harper should consider some special award for Mrs. Fearnall. You go, girl! Don't let anyone stop you! You are saving lives and there are many, many more of us behind you than against you.

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2008/06/05/shaved-head.html#socialcomments

http://toronto.ctv.ca/servlet/an/local/CTVNews/20080605/cancer_fired_080605/20080605/?hub=TorontoNewHome

Adult Food Allergies

Food allergies and related irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) can be the most devastating things a person can experience in a lifetime. This is especially bad if you don't actually know what you're allergic to. Imagine being afraid to eat, yet still being tremendously hungry. Symptoms of food allergies usually include bloating and diarrhea, which can develop to such a great extent that it pervades into every aspect of your life and has a negative impact on work and social activities, as well as your health.

In my case, I thought I had lead poisoning or something. All my life, I had been able to eat just about anything without any problems. After graduating and moving to another city and buying a condo, all in the space of a year, some pretty nasty things started happening. First of all, I was chronically fatigued. Having just finished a PhD, I didn't find this unusual, attributing it to merely the effects of staying up late to read journals, and ignored it. I then began to develop IBS, but again, chalked it up to stress and figured I could live around it and that it would eventually clear up. I started paying attention when I got chest pains, frequent heart palpitations, blackouts and my hair began to fall out rapidly. That, of all things, finally made me go to the doctor, where I was diagnosed with iron deficiency anemia.

As can be seen on many anemia forums, taking iron supplements doesn't really work, and can worsen IBS. Also, elemental iron can build up in liver-damaging deposits. I wondered why this had happened to me so late in life and so suddenly, when it would have made more sense if it had been a chronic problem, or developed slowly over time.

I was determined to grow my hair back! Not to mention, kick my gut problems so that I would no longer be afraid to eat at a restaurant or go to a conference where I wasn't 100% certain of where the washrooms were. I am now a firm believer in dietary "cures" for problems such as these. Through controlling my diet, and keeping a food journal, I was able to identify which foods were making me worse, and avoid them, giving my gut time to heal. After it did heal, I'm happy to report that I can eat several of the things I had to avoid before, and the anemia is completely gone. In hindsight, here's what I think happened:

1) Incomplete digestion - This happened for two reasons. Stress can trigger the adrenergic responses of the autonomic nervous system, which is the "fight" side of the "fight or flight" response. This suppresses the "vegetative" side of things which includes digestion, specifically secretion of the enzymes needed for digestion. Secondly, because I was constantly in a rush, I would eat in a hurry and not chew properly. Chewing mechanically separates food, increasing the available surface area for digestive enzymes to work, and the motion of chewing sends signals to the pancreas, stomach and liver to begin secreting more enzymes. Prolonged time in the mouth also gives the salivary amylase time to initiate digestion of carbohydrates and starches.

2) Initial gut inflammation - I attribute this one entirely to stress. When there is something wrong with the body, the immune system kicks into high gear so that it can find the problem and repair it. This makes epithelial (skin) barriers leaky, to facilitate the movement of white blood cells through the body's tissues, as they hunt for the problem. The intestine is continuous with the outside skin, and therefore is also protected by a layer of epithelium that separates the body core (blood, bones, etc) from what is inside the gut (food, bacteria, etc).

3) Immune response to food - In order for the immune system to "see" foreign proteins, which they are programmed to destroy, the protein must either carry an archetypal pattern which the white blood cells immediately recognise (usually these proteins are bacterial in origin) or it must be presented to the white blood cells by another cell -- a process called "antigen presentation". A fully digested protein is converted into peptides that are three or four amino acids (the basic units of proteins) in length. Peptides need to be at least 7 to 12 amino acids long to fit in the presentation molecule (MHC molecules) that cells use to "show" foreign proteins to immune cells. If improper digestion is occurring, more larger peptides may be around to be "shown" to leukocytes which will subsequently react to them, leading to more gut inflammation. In an attempt to remove the offending substance, the gut will increase its contractile motions, leading to much unpleasantness and discomfort. The leakiness of the gut just makes the whole problem worse, as normally undigested food should just pass through the bowel with minor discomfort. Since there is increased permeability, there is greater opportunity for contact between the food and the immune cells.

4) Chronic gut inflammation - We have to eat, so the gut is continuously exposed to offending substances. Because the gut is continually trying to purge, absorption of nutrients goes way down, leading to problems like iron deficiency anemia.

5) The fix - Food journaling is where you write down everything you eat and how you felt afterwards. This really helps identify what to avoid. Chewing properly is also essential, and I believe the most important step in solving the problem. No alcohol, since it can strip the epithelium and make it even leakier. No working while eating. Focusing on the food also helps with your body gearing up to digest things properly. Absolutely strict adherence to a hypoallergenic diet for at least 6 months -- this gives your gut time to heal and restore the epithelial barrier, as well give your B-Cells time to settle down into memory cells, which is their less active state. Lots of fibre, which is broken down to butyric acid by bacteria in your gut. Although controversial, butyric acid is believed to force epithelial polarity, which is a state in which the barrier function is intact. Food rotation. Don't eat the same thing every day, since that would increase the probability of your immune system "seeing" it. If the food causes a little bit of inflammation, you might not notice it, but the leakiness has started, which may lead to a bigger problem.

6) The good news - Once the epithelial barrier is reestablished, it's again possible to eat foods that you reacted to previously, since they will pass through the gut without getting into the underlying tissue where the immune cells are lying in wait. If the immune cells don't see the peptides (now properly digested thanks to slower chewing and not reading scientific journals during supper time!) there is no inflammation, no diarrhea, and proper absorption of nutrients, such as iron. Yay! My hair has grown back, my resting heart rate has returned to normal -- abolishing chest pains, and I am no longer afraid to eat at restaurants or go to conferences.

7) Extra info - The trick to growing back hair after a nasty bout of anemia is to get your blood back. Iron is only one component, and if you were short of that, you were probably short of a couple other things, like vitamins B6, B7 (biotin), B12 and folic acid. I know, I know, biotin is in practically everything we eat, but if you're not absorbing it well, it's still a problem. If you have to take iron, Floradix has the least impact on the gut and doesn't taste too bad. However, if you want to avoid iron deposits in vital organs, using a cast iron skillet, eating lots of leafy greens, and combining your iron foods with a mild acid, like orange juice, works pretty good. Also, it's recommended to avoid calcium for two hours before and after eating iron containing foods, since the two elements can compete for absorption. Supplements can help in the initial stages, but like I said, I think dietary sources are best for long term management of the condition.

Adventures in Tarot

I've heard from some friends that tarot cards are evil. I really don't see how this is so, as they are simply dead tree products, the same as a phone book. I side with the explanation that they simply allow a conversation to go on between a person and whatever unseen entities might have something to say. I figure that since the entities may be there whether I can see them or not, believe in them or not, or might be entirely a figment of my imagination, it makes absolutely no difference whether I speak to them or not. Thus it doesn't make sense to me to get worked up about tarot either way. No matter what I say or do, it changes nothing. So by way of introduction, I'm presenting the idea that if you're interested in them, great, if not, that's OK but be advised that I'm going to be blathering on about it for the rest of this post.

In terms of who or what you might end up talking to when using tarot, I think that's entirely dependent on which direction you throw out your question. Several tarot users simply ask "The Universe". Others use "Angel Cards" to ensure they only speak with the Divine. There are also cards with Jesus on them, or Elvis if that's more your thing. Still others make secular use of the cards, setting them up as a focal point for their own thoughts during meditation, thus carrying on a conversation with themselves. The selection of the deck probably has a lot to do with the sort of answers that come to you. For example, if one were to select the "Harmonious" tarot, you'd have equivalent thoughts when sending out the question. Likewise for the "Necronomicon" cards.

The basic idea behind tarot is that the images, colours and symbols on each card are meant to suggest an idea to the reader. These ideas are interpreted to form an answer to a question. That alone makes the practice very loosey-goosey and open to several explanations. May as well pick the one that suits you best.

Tarot in General: A deck of tarot cards consists of 22 cards that make up the Major Arcana, which are supposed to represent the stages in or aspects of a person's life, and four sets of Minor Arcana that have fourteen cards each. These sets are called "Cups" which usually deal with emotions, "Wands" that address creativity, "Swords" which are the challenges in life, and "Pentacles" which are associated with financial matters. Traditional tarot decks are based on the classic "Rider-Waite" deck, and follow the same system of symbols, colours and suits. There are many variations to this classic deck, so if you're new to tarot, I would strongly recommend picking up a set that comes with a book written by the author of the cards to help initially with interpretation of the images, since this can change from deck to deck. Apparently, once familiar with the deck, other meanings may come to you. I find that a bit arbitrary, but to each their own.

To do a reading, the cards are shuffled with the left hand, then spread out face down in a single line on a cloth. I don't know why, but the cards are not supposed to touch bare surfaces. A certain number of cards are selected and placed out on a spread. The selection is done according to which cards the reader feels attracted to. The selection of a spread is as important as the cards themselves, as certain ones don't have sufficient content to answer certain questions. A brief review of spreads can be found here.

Manufacturers: Tarot cards are usually very pretty, and I suspect some decks were made only to promote an artist's skills, and are not very useful for performing readings, as they seem to lack much of the usually symbolic and colour-related imagery. Many people collect different decks as a hobby. The main publishers of tarot decks are Lo Scarabeo, Llewellyn and US Games. In my opinion, the Scarabeo decks are the prettiest, but they have this annoying multilingual white border common to all cards that I think takes away from their mystique, and they are printed on rather narrow and thin cardstock. The Llewellyn decks are also on rather thin card stock, but the decks are a bit larger and the themes seem to be very carefully selected. I'll review one of theirs farther down. US Games produces cards that are wider than most tarot decks, and the cards are nice and heavy. They have many decks to choose from, some more appealing than others.

Buying the first Deck: I was at one of those body and spirit expos that have everything from chiropractors to Australian holisitic practitioners that use diggery-dos to blast negative energy from your body, and got it into my head that I would like to have a deck of tarot cards. One of the booths had a wide selection of cards, and the sales lady told me that you should look at several decks, and pick the one that appealed to you visually the most. She herself could not use tarot cards (they didn't work for her), but had to use angel cards instead. I didn't buy a set then, thinking I'd like to take her advice and look around a bit more. Surprisingly, I found a huge selection at Chapters, which had at least as many as the average new age store, and I found I liked the decks a lot more. The other surprise I got, was that it wasn't the images on the cards that attracted me, but rather how they felt in my hand. Out of about twenty sets, three seemed to be candidates: The Llewellyn Tarot, the Revelations Tarot, and the Sharman-Caselli deck. The Llewellyn and Revelations decks were both visually stunning, but I hesitated because of the card thickness, and the fact that I didn't really feel anything when I picked them up. I went with the Sharman-Caselli deck, because although it was all wrapped up and I couldn't handle the cards or get a good look at them, the package felt really solid and comforting in my hand. After I bought it and opened it up, I was appalled. The cards were set into an awkward sort of holder flap attached to the book cover, the backs of the cards were bright fuchsia, and there was a copyright notice on the backs which I thought detracted from the overall tarotiness of the cards.

However -- once I started playing around with them, I concluded that this was a fantastic deck for the following reasons:
1) The artwork is very neutral and straightforward. They denote an idea or message without any sort of bias. There is nothing threatening or creepy about it. The symbols are clear, relatively consistent from card to card and easy to read.
2) The card stock is nice and thick, adding to the durability of the deck.
3) The pink for the backs of the cards was probably deliberately selected, as it seems to infuse the cards with strong positive energy.
4) When holding the deck directly in my hand, the energy feels spherical, heavy, and safe.
5) So far, they seem to read consistently and accurately.
6) Once I cut off the weird card holder flap, it quit hitting me in the hand when flipping through the book, and I ceased being annoyed by it.

The companion book is also very good. The author takes you through one suit at a time and gives sample readings at the end of each chapter. You immediately get a feel for the strengths, limitations and flavour of each type of card before moving on. It also starts to become obvious that in order to get a complete answer, you need the complete deck, and the appropriate spread for the type of question being asked. The author also makes very few judgments on how the deck is to be handled, although I've read elsewhere that rose quartz is supposed to diffuse negative energy, and the cards have to be stored in a certain order, etc, etc, so I suppose all of that is up to the individual user. I did however, once feel a sharp mental poke to say thank you after I had finished and was putting the cards away, so presumably manners are important.

Buying the second Deck: The Sharman-Caselli deck does not deal with reversals, which is when a card is drawn upside down, changing its meaning. Aside from being absolutely gorgeous cards, the Revelations Tarot is drawn so that the meaning of the upside down card is obvious. My curiosity built after using the SC deck for awhile, but feeling something was missing, so I caved in to temptation and also bought the RT deck. Using these cards is an absolute pleasure. Although I felt nothing when I held the cards in the store, once they were unwrapped and held directly in my hand, the energy felt masculine, electric and somewhat spiky. The cards also had a funny herbal smell to them, and on reading the package insert, I assumed this was sage, since it's recommended to rub the cards with it to "cleanse" them. I don't have any sage, but I do have a few bits of rose quartz, so I figured I'd just put one of those in the little storage baggie the cards come with, and call it good.

The cards have a very unique surface texture to them. They feel oily, but when you take your hand away, there is nothing on your fingers. They are quite slick when you shuffle them, and they spread out almost like they are frictionless. Despite being so different, I get pretty much the same answers to similar questions as I got with the SC deck, frequently drawing the equivalent cards. The companion book is also very good. It doesn't inundate you with tonnes of information, it just tells you what you need to know to interpret each card, and I like some of the shifts in meaning that come with this deck, as it seems to make the interpretations more flexible, depending on the question asked. You also get a lot more "information" as the content in terms of colours and symbols is pretty much doubled in comparison to every other deck out there. One thing I really liked is that the Major Arcana are numbered, so that you can easily put them in order if that's how you choose to store the deck, and it makes it really easy to find the corresponding interpretation in the book if you can't remember the order of the cards. There are also two extra reference cards included to help you lay out common spreads and determine which card is supposed to convey meaning related to which subject.

Other decks of visual interest: I think these cards are extremely pretty, but would be inclined to buy them more for art collecting rather than for doing readings, as these decks seem to be lacking in symbolic meaning:
1) The Favole Deck
2) The Lunatic Deck
3) The Fenestra Deck
4) The Palladini Deck.

Conclusions: I think it's fun, but regardless of whether or not I get my "answers", what happens to me in life would probably just go ahead and happen anyway with out my knowing what those answers would have been. And since I am a fantasy novelist, for me this counts as research. So there.

I don't know what to think.

I'm so confused. Does all this mean my little bubble has burst, or that I just need to adjust my perception of things?

Pagan Christ

Zeitgeist Movie

Bart Ehrman's Investigations

Jesus' birthday might be wrong

Maybe we're all pagans. Hmm . . .

25 May '08: More food for thought:

The Catholic View of all this.

Someone who took the time to check the details