Hello and Happy New Year!

On this first day of 2023, we have a symbolic blank page on which to write our hopes, fears, prayers, and creative energies. All of these create our experience of this new year. Today, I hope that you celebrate possibilities and empower yourself to attract them. This is that “manifesting” buzzword you hear so much in spiritual circles.

For me, it’s been another year of neglecting regular blog entries, but let’s get real: We all have too much to read and spend too much time anyway! I only want to write if I have something worthwhile to say to you. If you want the micro-blogging stuff, check out my Twitter @jgordonbramer.

I am astounded to say that 2022 is over. And I’ve done some things! Manifesting is real! The highlights are:

• A book contract and finalizing the manuscript for Tarot Life Lessons (formerly The Tarot Diaries) with Destiny Books, a subsidiary of Inner Traditions (and a publishing home to the tarot genius Alejandro Jodorowsky! So honored to share his label!). Release date should be announced VERY SOON. The cover is beautiful!
• A book contract for The Magician’s Girl: the history and mysticism of Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes, with Inner Traditions. The title could change, and it may be on another imprint of Inner Traditions–I’ll hear soon.
• In May 2022, I became the proud owner of Sylvia Plath’s (hand-carved by her) Hermetic Caduceus with provenance papers. Additionally, I’ve acquired a November 1952 photograph of Sylvia, autographed by her mother Aurelia to friend Richard Larschan and his wife, as well as a copy of the very rare “Last Encounters” memoir of Plath by neighbor Trevor Thomas, inscribed and signed by the author.  Many thanks to Richard Larschan for all of these things, but most of all, for his friendship!
• At the end of June, I lost my dear friend, literary mentor, writing teacher, surrogate father, and friend of Plath and Hughes’, Zulfikar Ghose. I’m not over it yet. I began writing him a memoriam, but nothing can do him justice. We shall see if I ever finish it.
• I toured Sylvia Plath’s childhood home in Wellesley, Massachusetts with the Larschans; I had a blast traipsing across Cape Cod with my friend Margaret following Plath and Hughes’ footsteps (if you’re going to the Cape, stay at Margaret’s beautiful historic Bursley Manor); and I had some time visiting family in both the Boston area and Ocean City, Maryland.
• I watched one of my besties and his wife, Garrett and Stacy Enloe, put out the coolest book ever about Mississippi Nights, of which I was honored to help with and even more honored to be in (along with Tom). I’m in for Night Times magazine, which started as a Mississippi Nights publication, and Tom is in the book with his old band Radio Iodine. Our 30-year-old pictures are in it too! Garrett and his work have reunited me with so many dear friends from the St. Louis scene and I’m so proud that his efforts have made it a best-seller in St. Louis this Christmas season.
• I fully immersed myself in a return to music and saw some great shows: The Cult with Black Rebel Motorcycle Club; Jack White; The Who; Jane’s Addiction and Smashing Pumpkins; Gin Blossoms; Local H; the Eagles—and those were just my favorites, there were others!
• Finally, I am going to have my own radio show on NewsTalkSTL 101.9 and 94.1 FM! I am still figuring out some of the details: studio time, who my producer will be, sponsorships and advertisers, etc. As soon as I have a start date, I will post it here. But I can tell you it is called Mystic Fix and the show will focus on mind-body-spirit topics–everything from yoga to Qabalah to the paranormal. Should be a lot of fun! If you have a business that wants to help support this program (and of course, get lots of publicity on STL’s fastest growing station) PLUS it’ll be podcast so all those outside of the area can hear at their leisure and ads will last in perpetuity–give me a holler and we will talk!

OK. Back to manifesting! Hope you have a fab 2023! xo

The post The End of An Exciting Year; The Beginning of Even More appeared first on Julia Gordon-Bramer.

My friend Tim and I put on our jackets and walked five-plus miles, taking the longest route around Creve Coeur Lake and park, through the woods and swamp and fields, calling to the birds and frogs who filled the air with a beautiful, deafening song. “Get your sexy on!” Tim laughed.

Tim told me he is going to make a T-shirt that reads, “And then what?” It’s his new thing to question and challenge every idea. To push everything we do further and consider all repercussions. To explode everything into possibility and push it as far as it can go.

It’s been a busy couple of weeks. On March 5th, I read tarot cards on the Dave Glover Show again (St. Louis 97.1 FM radio), I think for the third time, and it looks as if I will be coming on once a month beginning April 3rd, 5:00 pm. I’m really excited to help out with the “Paranormal Wednesdays” (it used to be “Paranormal Tuesday”) and I will probably be bringing on some guests and exploring various aspects of the supernatural.

I know I’m late to the party, but I have finally discovered Amanda Palmer, coming to her music through her audiobook The Art of Asking. I loved the book so much and began to check out The Dresden Dolls and some of her solo stuff, and what do you know? She’s coming to St. Louis on May 30th and I have my tickets. One of the main “characters” if I can say that for a true story, a nonfiction kind of self-help book, kind of memoir, is her husband, the famous writer Neil Gaiman. Well, believe it or not, I had never really read him either, although I certainly knew of his reputation. Long ago I had purchased his book The Ocean at the End of the Lane, which I hadn’t gotten around to. Well, I finally began it, also on audiobook, and got obsessed. Amanda Palmer had talked so much in her book about his voice that I had to hear him read his own words. I loved to hear her read hers too. I will be reading everything Gaiman has done, I can promise you that. He is a magic writer, to be sure. And in our time, although he feels timeless. That’s exciting.

It’s been an interesting year so far. I was asked to “co-edit” a literary journal, and I accepted before fully realizing I was the only one who would be working on it and I would have to learn a whole new software program to get it published. Also, there was a lot of damage control, undoing big problems and trying to create a process. Well, I didn’t have time even to be a co-editor much less the sole one, but I am attempting to pull a team together. I can help a little, but I can’t do all of it. I have two full-time careers already with tarot and writing, and writing always seems to take a backseat. But no longer. I ended 2018 with a lot of overwhelm, unfinished projects, and strep throat. So far, 2019 is going full speed, and the writing is happening. 2019 is the year I get it done.

As a writer myself, how could I not then dig into Neil Gaiman’s “Masterclass” on video? I had to have it after Facebook kept taunting me with those cool, seductive ads. Gaiman is so classy in his dark British something (what is it? intellect and creativity, I guess). I am going through the class slowly because I have been so busy with tarot readings, post-DGS (such a lovely problem to have), and also in love with his novel. But how interesting to hear, in Neil’s Lesson 5 on Story, his question that makes a story interesting: “And then what happened?” It was an echo of what Tim had said earlier today, and I can say with absolute certainty that Tim did not steal this because he’s not much of a reader and he would have mentioned if he’d heard it, as he totally respects other artists. Tim was channeling Neil Gaiman, or else we are in a sort of critical mass with our thinking. I knew then that these words were a God-thing. A sign. Maybe just to me. Maybe to all of us.

What will happen next?

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