Outrageous_Tomato_71 was visiting the St John’s Church in Aylmerton, Norfolk, and decided to check out the parish visitor’s book. And there it is — J. K. Rowling’s autograph, Edinburgh, 18 May 2022. Tomato shared this fun find on the Cormoran Strike Running Grave Reddit page.

My first thought was, “Of course she signed the book!” In her ‘Year in the Life’ BBC video filmed in the madness surrounding the publication of Deathly Hallows, she visited the church next door to her childhood home. They filmed her looking through the parish visitor book to find where she had signed it back in the day, which she had.

So… we know that she visited Aylmerton. Has she been to Cromer? All we need now is a selfie of The Presence in the Lion’s Mouth. Hat doffed to Outrageous_Tomato_71 for this great catch!

The Two of Cups, the second or “crossing” card of the Talbot Celtic Cross tarot spread in the ‘True Book’ of Troubled Blood, is a big deal, both with respect to its placement and its stand-alone meaning. Having listed all the cards that appear in Strike5, at least in spreads, in search of any pattern in their appearances, it’s time to review what Crowley and Waite say about the Two of Cups as well as how it is most often read today, take a longish look at what the second card in a Celtic Cross spread means, before offering my conclusions about its importance.

If you need an incentive to join me for that discussion, I’ll remind you that the Two of Cups is the only card to appear three times in Troubled Blood: in the crucial point of the Celtic Cross spread and as the final card in both of Robin Ellacott’s readings. I think Rowling uses it to point simultaneously to the Whodunnit of Strike5 and to the nature of Cormoran and Robin’s relationship. Stay tuned! [Read more…]

I am neck deep in an exploration of the True Book’s Celtic Cross tarot card spread and realized I had skipped a step in this process, one necessary even to understand the cards I am learning about in their proper context. What is needed is a simple catalog of the tarot cards that appear in spreads in Troubled Blood. Two cards appear three times (Two of Cups and Lust) and two appear twice (Nine of Swords and the Hierophant).

As noted in the first post about the cards in the Celtic Cross spread, swords appear at the beginning, middle, and end of this spread; I should have mentioned then that the Nine of Swords, in addition to being the first card of Talbot’s Celtic Cross, is also the last card in the hidden spread on the ‘Babalon the Mother of Abominations’ page. They act as something of a ‘latch’ to Strike5 if you’re paying close attention to the cards

I’d note, too, that the readings with only two exceptions are trump cards (12), swords (4), or cups (5). There are no batons (‘wands’) and only two discs (‘pentacles’). We have archetypes in the trump cards, intelligence or thinking in swords, and “emotions, relationships, cleansing, and healing” with the cups. No surprises there with respect to Rowling’s themes for this series and her other work.

After the jump, then, a very brief listing with a few links to the True Book’s various tarot cards, both the clear-as-day and the hidden pictures. [Read more…]

David asked a challenging question here about Rowling’s views on abortion, a question that cannot be answered definitively by anyone but Rowling but which merits serious consideration by her serious readers:

Will we see JKR taking a moment to attend to Bethany and Ryan Bomberger’s new children’s book, She is She – and if so, in what terms? In a recent interview in the context of its release, Ryan Bomberger noted “I’m the 1% that’s used 100% of the time to justify abortion. I had a courageous birth mom who I’m forever grateful to, that even though she experienced the horror and the violence of rape, she did not make me a victim of the violence of abortion.”

This issue of rape and abortion is very much in the news in the United States, David, because Florida has a 15 week limit on legal abortions with no exemptions for rape, which scandalizes those who use the cause of less than 1% of abortions as justification for legalizing pre-natal infanticide in all cases for any reason. Florida’s legislature is considering a bill to lower that current limit to six weeks without removing the exemption. Texas is going even further in protecting the lives of the unborn. All that has infuriated the “pro-choice” contingent — and brought out the children of rape whose mothers chose not to make them the second victim of the rapist’s crime to testify for this protection of the defenseless unborn, however they were conceived. See here and here for voices like Bamberger’s.

Join me after the jump for a very brief review of Rowling’s position on this in her fiction and public statements. [Read more…]