Divine Lines

John McRae has been scouring his treasure trove, and today he brought in what he might call a "hank" of vintage postcards for us to see. He found a lot of great holiday cards that we'll be reproducing for the season. (It's only a few weeks until the holiday shopping begins, but of course we've been thinking about it and working behind the curtain for quite some time already!)

Here's a more everyday card about fortune-telling, a popular pastime at this time of year. Click on the picture to get a better peek at the prophecies. Looking at your own palm, can you divine what sort of lover you are?

Gung Hay Fat Choy!

Aside from the wonderful shops and restaurants we have for neighbors on Fourth Street, we're blessed to have regular celebrations of local culture right here on our doorstep. One such party is coming up this Saturday, as Fourth Street rings in the Chinese New Year. The full day of excitement and fun is sponsored by Teance, the elegant Chinese tea room located across the street from us, and welcomes prosperity, health, and good luck all around. The highlight will be a colorful lion dance, which is meant to scare away ill fortune, by Kei Lun Martial Arts. Even the Pasta Shop is getting in on the festivities by serving up a full menu of Chinese New Year foods for lunch, and selling freshly made Jiao Zi (Dumplings) all day.

Chinese New Year Schedule of Events

1:15 pm: Children's Story Telling & Lucky Candy Giveaway
2 pm: Traditional Lion Dance featuring Kei Lun Martial Arts
3 pm: Martial Arts demonstration by Golden Lion Kung Fu
4 pm: Classical Chinese Music from the Berkeley Buddhist Monastery
4:30 - 6 pm: Fortune-telling for the Year of the Ox upstairs in Teance's tea room

For more information on the day's events, visit the Fourth Street Shops website. We hope to see you there!

Looking Back, Looking Forward

This week we received a very special selection of Tarot cards from Magic Realist Press. Made in Prague, the decks follow the standard composition of Trumps and Suits (Wands, Cups, Swords, and Coins), but the illustrations are are adaptations of none other than those of my beloved J.J. Grandville!














Back in November, I mentioned that the French caricaturist Grandville served as a catalyst when I traded my life as a young scientist for that of an artist and shopkeeper. Artists Karen Mahony and Alex Ukolov are obviously big fans of Grandville, too. They worked with an 1847 edition of his book, The Public and Private Life of Animals, to create their "Fantastic Menagerie" Tarot deck, and the results are magnifique!

For Grandville historians, the deck is also available as part of a kit that includes a highly informative and fun book by Sophie Nussle. The Tarot represents a journey and so, after giving historical background on the cards and Grandville, Nussle takes us on not one journey but two. Each card is described as to its place in the greater story of the Tarot, and then Nussle writes a short "magic realist" story involving Grandville or the characters pictured on the card. The effect is pure immersive delight!

Mahony and Ukolov have also created a 40-card deck using Grandville's floral illustrations. It's between printings now, but rest assured we will have it at Castle in the Air when it is available again!

Peek Into the New Year

Just like Midsummer's Eve and Halloween, the holidays are a time when the veil between the world of mankind and the spirit world is a bit thinner. This has contributed to the appeal of fortune-telling traditions at New Year's Eve parties.

One of these traditions is called "the casting of tin," or molybdomancy. Party-goers are given tin charms in the shape of horseshoes, which are melted in tiny pots over a flame before being poured into cold water. The tin solidifies into a shape that can be read as a means of telling the caster's future. Some of the symbols are fortuitous (an angel foretells good news, a full moon love), while others are not so good (beans mean money trouble, an owl someone you can't trust). It is thought that this form of divination was an outgrowth of the practices of medieval alchemists.

At my family's New Year's Eve party, I'm known to disappear just before the arrival of the mysterious Madame Ghurka, a beturbaned, bare-midriffed soothsayer. She gathers the guests around a basin of water surrounding the island of Happiness, the Island of Riches, the Island of True Love, and other Islands of Good Fortune. Fortune cookie strips rest around the basin and strings run from them into the water. Each friend gets a boat, consisting of a walnut shell and a tiny candle. They take turns lighting the candle and setting their boat afloat. The boat comes to rest on an island or touches one of the strings, thus telling that person's fate. I wish I would get a chance to play, but Madame Ghurka always vanishes before I come back into the room!

The pictures seen here are some New Year's fortune-telling postcards in our collection. They're fun because they incorporate mirror writing that can only be read when held to a mirror. It's hard to do that on a computer, though, so I've put the reverse pictures below -- scroll down to read your fortune!