Tag: Clive Barret

Chapter Twelve – The Hanged Man

by Jamieson Wolf, posted in A Tarot Guide

It was different living with other people.

I had chosen to cut myself off from everything I known by leaving home at sixteen and had everything taken from me a year later. I had thought I would have to do everything on my own. My brother had taught me that all you had on the streets was yourself and I had prepared myself for this. I hadn’t expected to be held up by so many others having been used to and ready to do everything for myself.

Dan and Mike didn’t say much, but they were kind to me in a detached sort of way. We would eat together in the mornings with Rainbow. I could hear the cockroaches scuttle away from us as we entered the kitchen and turned on the light in the morning.

“Scary fucking things,” Dan said as he looked at them click and clack away from us. Some mornings, it was like a small wave of them, fleeing from our step like a dark wave along the floors. “It’s like they just realized that it’s last call at the fucking bar and they don’t want to end up alone tonight.”

“It’ll be one hell of an orgy.” Mike said.

I let out a snort and Dan gave Mike a scowl. “Must you?” Dan said, making a gagging gesture. “Now I have to think about one nut Louie dancing at the bar, looking to get laid. I have to think about that often enough.”

They both seemed kind of exotic to me. It’s like they had this language between the two of them. According to Rainbow, one of them didn’t want to be out of the closet yet, but they seemed to be so comfortable with each other. Maybe that’s what it’s all about, I thought. Finding that one person that matched you, even for an instant. I looked at Mike and Dan and tried to imagine them as puzzle pieces; did they fit together? I tried to see if I could spot the lines between them, if they flowed together or if someone had forced the puzzle piece into the puzzle in the wrong place only to realize that it belonged somewhere else.

They had a cat. It was a sweet grey and white conk of a kitty, and she was a friend to everyone. I had never been able to have a cat of my own before and I loved cats. Thankfully, Squeak liked me a lot and I was so happy to have her company when Mike and Dan were around. She was like a mom to all of us boys and would help us chase away the cockroaches when she saw them.

It was hard for me to live with others. Even before I had found myself on the streets, I didn’t make friends with people very easily. I had been hurt so much in life, and I had to do everything myself anyways. I had known a few good friends, but that was it. It was easier than letting people in and I wanted to protect them from getting hurt. I was so used to thinking of others first and keeping myself away from them. It was what I had learned from my father. He had taught me to stay far away so that I could avoid a fist but to keep the peace if I could. I was taught to placate, soothe and provide calm so that I could step away and hide my wounds.

            Words were my friends. If I read and kept to myself, I didn’t get hurt. Plus, I could become friends with the characters in books and lose myself in their worlds. In these worlds, good usually won over evil or those that caused harm got their comeuppance. I have written since I was young because I had to. It was as necessary as breathing to me. As much as I lost myself in the word of others, I have always found myself in the words that I write.

Now here I was living with three other men and we got along better than just Shades and I had been able to. I was being given a different perspective of living with others that wanted to know me and didn’t want to hurt me. I didn’t need to pull myself away from them to avoid getting hurt. I wasn’t used to that. I had been taught to hide myself and what I was, that being gay and disabled was shameful thing, and yet none of these people cared that I was either. I felt the walls start that I kept around myself start to go down.

I watched the smoke from my cigarette flow out of the window pictured the wall around me slip away one brick at a time, so that I could start letting people in. It would take time, that it would be difficult, but I finally knew a truth:

If I let go of the wall, maybe I could finally be able to breathe. I had been holding my breath in fear for so long. What if I didn’t have to?

The Ancient Egyptian Tarot by Clive Barrett

by Jamieson Wolf, posted in Tarot Deck Reviews, Tarot Decks
The Ancient Egyptian Tarot, 1995

I still remember my first tarot deck.

I was a teenager and I had gone to visit my brother. I don’t remember where he was staying at the time, but I remember the gift he gave me. My brother gave me a copy of The Ancient Egyptian Tarot by Clive Barrett. He knew that I loved everything having to do with Egypt and the mysteries that it held. “This looks like something you’d enjoy,” he said.

Never having looked at a tarot deck before, I was unsure of what to do. I followed the direction in the book, shuffled the cards, pull a card for myself and read the meaning in the card. That’s it. Though I loved the artwork of the deck, I didn’t connect with the deck, and I had no idea what to with it. Eventually, I gave the deck away to a friend.

Flash forwards a few years. The Ancient Egyptian Tarot had sparked something in me. I wanted to know more about myself and the world around me. I was drawn to the occult and the tarot once more and began to learn with the Thoth Tarot. Every time that I flicked through the cards, I couldn’t help but remember The Ancient Egyptian Tarot.

I began collecting decks and with each deck, I was able to find a piece of myself that I hadn’t known that I had lost along the way. As humans, we’re all made up of facets, different pieces that make up a whole. I began to find myself in the cards and the strength to delve into the facets that I was made of.

There came a time when my brother was no longer in my life. I began to think of the deck that he had gifted me with. I thought that if I was able to hold on to that deck again, I would at least have a piece of my brother in my life, even if it was only in spirit. When I contacted the friend that I had given the deck to, it was to find that they too had parted ways with it.

The Ancient Egyptian Taro, 2022

I began to look for a copy of The Ancient Egyptian Tarot. I was disheartened to find that it had gone out of print. I thought that shouldn’t be a problem. I looked everywhere online, and I found copies of the paperback book that had come with the cards, but no deck. I did find a copy on eBay, but I wasn’t sure it was a legitimate post and I didn’t want to shell out $300 for something that may be a scam.

I kept up my search throughout the years. It was always the same, I found copies of the book, but there were no cards in sight. I don’t know why I never considered Etsy. I figured that if the original deck was published in 1995 and the cards were long gone, chances were that the original creator was no longer making cards.

Imagine my surprise when I stumbled upon Clive Barrett’s Etsy page, and my further astonishment that he had made a new edition of The Ancient Egyptian Tarot. The only thing that it wasn’t available. When I messaged him, he told me that there were issues with the Royal Mail from England and to check back. He would list the deck when it was available to be mailed out internationally.

I checked this afternoon, and the deck was there. Only one copy was listed. Of course, I ordered it. I’m thrilled that after all these years, I’m this much closer to having a copy of The Ancient Egyptian Tarot. It actually seems unreal at this point.

It won’t be the same as having the copy of The Ancient Egyptian Tarot that my brother had given me, I know that. However, with it being a new edition of the deck, it’s my hope that I can form a new relationship with the cards, a relationship that I didn’t have and wasn’t capable of all those years ago.

I know that when I get my copy of the deck, I will take a moment to say thank you to my brother for that gift all those years go.