PAUL HUSON

MASTERING WITCHCRAFT was my first book. I wrote it in 1969 as a hands-on guide for the would-be witch or warlock. It was not a "Wiccan" handbook.

The CATHOLIC HERALD originally appraised the book in its 1970 review as a "genuine vade mecum" to the craft, although I don't think this was necessarily meant as a compliment. Actually as many of the witchcraft practices it deals with date from a time long preceding Christianity, it falls under the heading of paganism rather than Satanism.

But, as various reviewers have noted, I don't pull any punches, so be warned! MASTERING WITCHCRAFT eschews the usual Wiccan ethics, although it does share some common ground with Wiccan subject matter, as I drew from many of the same sources in the Folklore Library at University College London that Gerald Gardner did.

Maybe just because of this eclecticism, MASTERING WITCHCRAFT has enjoyed a wide readership over the past 37 years.

"The year was 1970. I was 13 years old. I had picked up books on astrology and fortune telling as well as books like Zolar's "The Encyclopedia of Ancient and Forbidden Knowledge". This was the first book on witchcraft I had ever seen. I bought a copy. My parents, used to seeing me regularly buy all sorts of strange books with my allowance and newspaper route money, didn't even bat an eye. This book, more than any other, is responsible for setting me on the path I'm on today.
"Mastering Witchcraft" isn't really about Wicca. It is simply a fantastic introduction to Witchcraft as magick, with very little on the religious aspects. Unfortunately, this book has a poor reputation in some sections of the Pagan community because it teaches attack and control magick. Huson leaves the ethical decisions on whether or not to use such magick up to the reader. He usually warns of the possible dangers, but does not make the decision for the reader by leaving the material out or glossing over it as most other books seem to do.
The first two chapters introduce the reader to magick and the magickal tools of a witch. The next four chapters contain more actual magick spells than most of the rest of my Pagan library combined. Divination magick, love and lust magick, countermagick and protection, and vengeance and attack magic each receive a long and detailed chapter. The final chapter is on forming a coven.
If you are a Wiccan, you may want to avoid this book because of the many ethical problems you will have with it. If you aren't a Wiccan, have an interest in magick, and have the pocket change to buy it, I strongly suggest you pick up a copy. Even if you would never cast a love spell or an attack spell to flatten your enemies, you will probably find a good number of useful spells that you can add to your personal grimoire or book of shadows. I'm one of the people who believes that one's magickal education is not complete if you do not at least know how such things as love and attack spells work. For example, just reading the chapter on attack magick will make you better at defensive magicks as you will know far more about what you are defending against.
In summary, Paul Huson's Mastering Witchcraft is a classic and useful text on low magick. If you have a good moral sense, I think it will make an excellent addition to your library. I just wish that it was still printed in hardback."(c)

It appears some folk never give up.

For those tempted to buy "Sean Belachta's" MASTERING THE DARK ARTS: A PRACTICAL GRIMOIRE FOR WITCHES, WARLOCKS AND COVENS, don't be suprised to discover it's a word for word plagiarism of MASTERING WITCHCRAFT. This is not the first time Mr. Belachta has blatantly attempted to pirate my book (remember THE HAMMER OF TUBAL CAIN?). Once again, if you've been suckered into buying Belachta's second go at it, may I suggest you return it to the source where you purchased it and ask for your money back - for fraudulant advertising, if for no other reason.

What is it about this particular guy? Looks like he's aching for a lawsuit.

THE DEVIL'S PICTUREBOOK was my first book on the Tarot. THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK OF THE MONTH CLUB featured it as an alternate choice in Spring/Summer of 1972.

THE LIBRARY JOURNAL compared it favorably to Frazer's GOLDEN BOUGH, but wondered if it was appropriate to "devote so much attention to witchcraft and casting spells."!

Michele Jackson in her online review of PICTUREBOOK advised the Tarot enthusiast to "snatch it right up. It provides a unique glimpse into the influences on the Tarot that are rarely covered in other books."

All in all, I guess PICTUREBOOK was fairly ahead of its time. It deliberately set out to cover a lot of ground, although it concentrated on the mythical and magical elements involved and was the first book to touch on the relevance of shamanism to the deck.

My most recent book on the Tarot, MYSTICAL ORIGINS OF THE TAROT, is my most ambitious book so far and I'm very excited about it. It took me four years to write, involved a lot of research both in the States and in Europe, and is accompanied by over 200 illustrations. In it I investigate the sources of the symbolism of both the Minor and Major Arcanas, examine the earliest uses of the cards for divination, and in the process make a number of what I think are fairly startling discoveries.

If you liked PICTUREBOOK, you may not want to miss this one.

And while on the subject of my family history, Colonel John Hewson, one of my less illustrious antecedents (depending on your point of view), a sanctimonious Puritan who was liable to break into a sermon at the drop of a pin, achieved notoriety if not fame as a general in Oliver Cromwell's Republican army and earned himself the title of "Regicide" into the bargain, by becoming one of the signatories to the death warrant of King Charles I of England. Hewson received further obloquoy after he was charged with the unenviable, and almost impossible, task of finding a headsman to actually decapitate the King. Affectionately referred to in ribald Cavalier songs of the era as "One-Eyed" or "Cobbler Hewson", Hewson only escaped the dreadful death of a traitor after the restoration of the monarchy by fleeing to Holland. None of this would really have much relevance to this website however, if ironically, in view of the Puritans' disapproving attitude to playing cards ("Devil's picturebooks"), Hewson hadn't been memorialized later in, not one, but two decks of playing cards (one of them a fortune-telling deck!) as the Jack of Clubs. So, apparently an association with playing cards seems to run deep in the family...

Hello, there. At this site you can find information about me, my views and opinions, my books, links to movie and television databases with information about my work in these media; also to a variety of other sites or pieces of information that I find interesting, important, useful or fun.

If you're interested in the work of my family and friends, there are links to the British Film Institute's website of designs by Olga Lehmann, to a book by my partner William Bast, and to various others.

I've also added excerpts from some of my books - to give you a hint of where I'm coming from if you're new to them.

There's an e-mail address too, if you want to comment on my books, although the time I spend on my website is extremely limited, so I'm afraid you probably won't get a reply. However, I do enjoy getting feedback from my readers, so I thank you in advance if you do choose to send me a comment.

I'm delighted to announce that Lo Scarabeo will be publishing DAME FORTUNE'S WHEEL, my new deck of tarot cards, in 2009.

I have illustrated all 78 cards, majors and minors, using the traditional meanings for the minors first recorded by Etteilla and his School.

More later...

I have been intrigued by playing cards since I was a toddler, when I came across my first deck and laid them out around the pattern of the rug on the living room floor. I can recall my fascination at the time with these magical symbols: What did they mean? Who were all these interesting, colorfully dressed people? Who was the most important?

Then I discovered the tarot. I drew my first set of tarot trumps (the twenty-two mysterious cards that distinguish a tarot deck from a standard deck of playing cards) on file cards when I was fourteen years old, painted my next complete deck when I was twenty; a third set when I was twenty-six, and a fourth when I was thirty. I guess you could say I was obsessive. [I have since completed my fifth, DAME FORTUNE'S WHEEL TAROT, to be published by Lo Scarabeo in 2009 -- see above.]

But I am not alone in my obsession. Despite the many attempts to elucidate them, tarot cards have remained one of history's enduring puzzles. What do those enigmatic cards really mean? What mysteries, if any, do they conceal? I think I'm accurate in claiming that until the publication of this book, they have succeeded, quite literally, in concealing certain types of mysteries for around five hundred years.

The idea for this book began life as a revision and update to The Devil's Picturebook, a tarot book I wrote some years ago. But as I reread each chapter of Picturebook, I realized with somewhat mixed emotions that so much new light had been shed on the history of the subject since I wrote it that if I did write anything at all -- and there was plenty to write about -- it would have to be an entirely new venture.

Unlike Picturebook, in which I speculated broadly on the tarot's possible associations to medieval and Renaissance myth and magic, my aim here is not merely to provide another "how-to" book on cardreading. Rather, I propose to track each symbol in every card of the deck, in both so-called Major and Minor Arcanas (the trump cards and the suit sign cards) to its actual historical origin, and then explore how its meaning in divination evolved from this source, if in fact it did.

In the thirty years since I wrote Picturebook, my views on the tarot have changed. Tarot, moreover, has expanded from a subject of interest only to playing-card enthusiasts and occultists to one of worldwide appeal, having gained a considerable amount of academic attention and an enormous presence on the Internet. There you can find an amazing plethora of tarot Web sites, chat rooms, and information resources promoting lively, well-informed, and often diametrically opposed points of view: historical, psychological, Hermetic, divinatory, feminist, postmodern, you name it. Furthermore, a vast collection of books on tarot has now become available. However, although the mysterious cards have arguably become part of mainstream culture -- the art of tarot reading recognized as, at minimum, a technique of psychological exploration and the cards themselves finally anchored in an assured historicity by the books of British philosopher Michael Dummett and others -- there still remain shadowy areas from which three questions of enormous importance loom unanswered.

• First, what was the origin of the suit card symbols, and what did they stand for?

• Second, what was the source of the trumps, and what was their original import? They were not simply conjured out of thin air.

• Third and lastly, when and why did people begin using the cards for divination -- that is, as a means of acquiring spiritual guidance or discovering hidden information?

As we shall see, all the evidence available today suggests that the trumps were added to an already existing game of fifty-six playing cards during the middle of the fifteenth century, and for their subject matter drew on imagery readily recognizable by the card players of the time. However, knowledge of that symbolism was quickly lost by the average card player, which allowed for regional changes to creep into the design of the cards as their use in gaming spread throughout Europe. Nonetheless, the archaic and suggestive imagery used in the trumps and court cards resonated with that part of people's psyches from which dreams and visionary experience spring (designated by the pioneering psychologist Carl Gustav Jung as the unconscious mind). This mystical quality may have led naturally to the evolution of the cards as a divination tool, if indeed the trumps were not initially adapted from a preexisting divination device -- a notion I shall examine in due course.

Michael Dummett, who is opposed to what he regards as the misappropriation of the tarot by occultists, doubts that the images depicted on the trumps taken as a set contained any special meaning to their earliest users, inasmuch as they were standard subjects of medieval and Renaissance iconography. I, on the other hand, for the very same reason, believe the trumps to have been pregnant with meaning from the start, their symbolism drawn from the world of medieval drama, of miracle, mystery, and morality plays, with a hint of Neoplatonism evident here and there, which lent itself very readily to esoteric uses such as divination. Furthermore, we shall see that the court cards in the so-called Minor Arcana spring from a heady brew of pagan and medieval myth, also handy for the would-be diviner. Moreover, as Dummett himself has so ably demonstrated, the symbolism of the four suit signs seems to have evolved from a source even older than that of the trumps, a source that I believe can be traced to the Persian Empire before the time of the Islamic conquest in 642 C.E. Consequently, they also carry definite meanings exploitable by the diviner.

This brings me to my last great unanswered question about the cards: when, and why, were they first used for divination? Today historical opinion favors the eighteenth century because many historians equate playing-card divination with "cartomancy,"a particular form of fortune-telling with cards that was introduced in the late seventeen hundreds. However, an older method of seeking hidden wisdom from playing cards existed as much as three centuries earlier. I contend that this early practice of drawing playing cards singly as lots to answer questions -- a type of divination known as "sortilege" and an ancient and wide-spread practice -- introduced the earliest use of cards for divination. Indeed, the French verb still used today for card reading, tirer (drawing, as in drawing lots), is a strong indication that playing-card divination had its roots in sortilege. The fact that the term cartomancy was invented in the eighteenth century to refer to a newly devised system of divination that made use of extended combinations of cards does not affect my argument.

In our search for the tarot's origins, we will explore a vast and fascinating world of arcane symbolism and a diversity of cultures, and we will witness how the human love of playing games melded with the equally human desire to probe the unknown. The introduction briefly describes how playing cards first arrived in Europe from the Middle East and how tarot decks developed for game playing, then became popular throughout Europe during the sixteenth and succeeding centuries. Chapter I explores the cultural origins and symbolism of the four suit signs; chapter 2 is a similar examination of the origins of the trumps. Chapter 3 is devoted to an account of the development of the tarot's use as an instrument of divination. In chapters 4 and 5, I offer an analysis of the first documented divinatory interpretations of the trumps and suit cards. The remainder of the book is addressed to those who wish to explore the tarot in greater depth: chapter 6 presents actual methods of reading the cards. Three appendices provide the most current information available about obtaining and viewing decks: appendix I details the variety of historical tarot decks that are available in facsimile; appendix 2 lets the interested reader know where he or she can obtain them; and appendix 3 indicates where the truly devoted tarot enthusiast can see the actual decks described or illustrated in the text.

Finally, a personal note about tarot divination.

Although I received an early training in the Western esoteric tradition, I don't advocate any particular method of tarot divination today, although I am more than willing to offer suggestions. I began reading tarot cards over forty years ago while I was studying with the Society of the Inner Light and later with a group that studied the teachings of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. From the experience I gathered during that time, I ultimately came to the conclusion that Dion Fortune's more casual approach to the cards was more effective for me than the rigidly formal method advocated by the Golden Dawn. As I see it, cartomantic rules and regulations have been cobbled together from a variety of sources, and I hold to the school of thought that the secret of successful divination lies within the diviner. Actually, I believe anyone who wants to read the cards is not only free to, but must evolve a personal method for himself or herself, for reasons I will make clear. If you have the talent, it will make itself known to you soon enough. However, if you take the art of tarot reading seriously (and expect others to), it might behoove you to know something about the actual historical roots of your chosen field.

Which, in a nutshell, is what this book is all about.



Copyright © 2004 Paul Huson

Spiral Nature, July 2007 -

"MYSTICAL ORIGINS OF THE TAROT is Huson's most solid work to date, and I highly recommend it to all serious students of tarot."

Kevin Filan, Mysteries Magazine, issue #12, February-April, 2006 -

"Huson's writing is unfailingly clear and his theses easy to follow...If you already have some knowledge of the various cards and some experience in reading, you will find Huson's scholarly analysis and deconstruction of Tarot mythology invaluable."

Rachel Pollack -

"A visionary new concept for deciphering the mystery of the tarot's origins and meaning."

Robert Moss -

"MYSTICAL ORIGINS OF THE TAROT will undoubtedly be a classic in the field of tarot studies."

Diana McMahon-Collis, Tabi Quarterly, December 2004 -

"MYSTICAL ORIGINS OF THE TAROT is clearly a stand alone book...A powerfully adept handling of the general way in which spiritual meanings and divination became associated with the tarot...The history of the tarot becomes an exciting adventure!...Like a good novel, hard to put down."

Sherryl Smith -

"Solid historical research delving into tarot's origins...I highly recommend this book for anyone interested in tarot's roots...If you ever wondered where our card meanings come from, Huson's comparison of divinatory meanings from various sources is a gold mine. For people interested in traditional cartomancy, this book is the best source we have in English for pre-Golden Dawn card meanings and spreads."

Bonnie Cehovet -

"Those who have the good fortune to read MYSTICAL ORIGINS OF THE TAROT are presented with a well researched, well written resource that allows them to follow the origins and development of tarot, including the background of the symbols on the cards...A book of great benefit, with the added bonus that it reads easily and is highly enjoyable!"

Paul Hughes-Barlow -

"For the first time in years I actually read through every description of every card, its history and development in a dance through the classics, the Bible, medieval ideas, right up to the Golden Dawn and A.E.Waite. Here, Huson does the reader a real service, listing the development of the divinatory meanings in chronological order, highlighting the contradictions between authorities, and identifying original sources...The most enjoyable and fascinating history of the tarot."

Nigel Jackson -

"The definitive study of tarot symbolism...A penetrating and rigorous process of historical analysis and thematic elucidation...Ranging with great erudition from Shia, Sufi and Magian symbologies, to Neoplatonic doctrines, medieval mystery-plays, 18th century cartomancers and scholarly art history, this packed study delivers such a veritable feast of fresh information and insight on the subject of tarot that beginners and veteran tarotists alike will find it a real treat to read and an indispensable resource for reference...This is very likely the definitive study on the subject. Highly recommended."

Helen Pilinovsky -

"One of the most comprehensive overviews on the topic that I have ever encountered...Scrupulously researched...I recommend the volume highly for both scholarly enthusiasts and beginning tarot-readers."

Eric K. Lerner, Ashe Journal Vol 4, Number 1, 2005 -

"MYSTICAL ORIGINS OF THE TAROT stands out as a supremely useful reference book...The fact that Huson looks for lucid interpretations based on historical precedent goes a long way to bringing tarot down to earth...Huson by being clear eyed in his approach to tarot provides a worthy foundation from which one can begin a journey toward higher truth. Ironically, his lucid scholarship...may truly provide a mechanism for mystical levels of attainment for his readers."

Because it is fairly typical of the kind of discovery you can expect to make about your own powers, let me tell you of an experience I had at a lecture in New York.
"If you're going to take parapsychology seriously," Dr. Osis had said in his gentle Finnish accent, "then you should know how it feels to take one of Rhine's card-guessing tests."
Karlis Osis is a former pupil of J. B. Rhine, the man considered by many to be the father of modern parapsychology. Osis himself is director of research for the American Society for Psychical Research, one of the more important scientific research groups in the psychic research field today.
A groan went up from the assembled ASPR members, many of them students like myself. We all knew what lay ahead. Dr. Rhine's tests had helped gain scientific credence for the phenomena of ESP back in the 1930's and 1940's. They are of great interest to the researcher but become increasingly boring to the subject of the experiment-stultifying if pursued to any great length, which unfortunately is the only way one can obtain statistically significant results from them. As psychics Eileen Garrett and Basil Shackleton once complained, there is nothing like forced-choice tests (as they are now called) for reducing an ESP sensitive buzzing with impressions to a block of insentient wood. The one redeeming feature of the test is Rhine's famous deck of cards designed especially to test ESP: five sets of decorative, cabalistic-looking symbols-star, circle, square, cross, wavy lines-which lend a touch of imagination to a game that quickly grows dull.
But Dr. Osis insisted, so we dutifully wrote in our special ESP test forms the symbols of the cards we felt were being turned up by someone in another room. I was not sure what I was supposed to do. The best I could think of was to keep telling myself enthusiastically that I would get a good score.
Nobody was more excited than I when I did. Out of twenty-five calls I had guessed ten correctly. That may not seem very impressive to you, but to me it sounded like a lot, although my excitement dampened somewhat after Dr. Osis explained the scoring method. Out of twenty-five calls using a deck of five sets of five symbols, the chance expectation was five correct guesses. In plain English, after discounting your first five hits, you start winning. So I had chalked up five ESP hits? Maybe, said Dr. Osis, maybe not. In an abbreviated test like this, you couldn't tell. Statistics need quantity to be meaningful, and this was merely a demonstration run.
Notwithstanding the disclaimer, however, he headed in my direction when the meeting broke up. One of the things you find out about parapsychologists is that they tend to keep an eye open for potentially high-scoring ESP subjects.
So, several days later I found myself sitting in Dr. Osis's New York office with a pad of blank paper before me, a pencil in my hand and my eyes screwed shut as I gazed into inner space. Two rooms away Dr. Osis opened the first of three previously prepared envelopes, scrutinizing the picture it contained and, I presume, endeavoring to beam his impressions of it in my direction.
"You can try closing your eyes and watching the pictures that form behind your eyelids," he had suggested earlier. I stared. Finally, out of the murk, shapes did begin to emerge. I seized on one gratefully. A black square object, was it? The afterimage of my pad of paper perhaps? I couldn't be sure. I got it in my head that it was a black swimming pool-rather an odd thing, when you come to think about it. I started to sketch it.
When I signified completion of my first drawing, Dr. Osis opened the second envelope. On closing my eyes I saw a spiny blob with a smaller blob attached to it. Ah, a cactus, I thought. I scribbled a sketch of my impression. When I shut my eyes to receive the third and last telepathic volley, I observed with irritation that the cactus shape was still there behind my eyelids. I waited for it to go away, but it didn't. It melted somewhat and finally turned into a statue of some sort. My first thought was Chinese soapstone. No, I decided, it was more like a Madonna and Child statue. I drew a Madonna and Child.
"Which target pictures do you think correspond to which of your calls?" asked a smiling Dr. Osis after he checked the results.
I stared at the targets.
Envelope number one had contained a magazine clipping of a grim scene all too familiar to us then-the Kennedys' black limousine at Dallas, foreshortened and therefore roughly rectangular. I had drawn a dark square, but hardly a limousine. In any case it was probably only a complementary retinal afterimage of the yellow pad itself. But why interpret it as a black swimming pool?
Dr. Osis silently slid the contents of envelope number two toward me. It was a coffee ad. Again, it had been clipped from a magazine. A small girl perched on the rim of a giant cup of coffee, apparently about to take a dive into its black depths. A black swimming pool? That was one way of describing it. No-where, however, was there any suggestion of a cactus, or cactuslike, shape.
Envelope number three turned out to be a direct hit. It also supplied the answer to the cactus riddle. It contained a photo of my Madonna and Child statue, a colorful Mexican altarpiece surrounded by a massive aureole of spiny gold rays. I recognized the aureole as my "cactus" immediately. Somehow, like the idea of the black swimming pool, the shape of the aureole had leaked back and contaminated my previous impression.
A string of coincidences?
For me, that stretches the meaning of the word too far. Like many people, I have had experiences that seemed telepathic, even if not provably so. But here was a deliberate and careful attempt to exercise ESP that turned up provocatively accurate results, to say the least.

Her eyes widened as the priest shuffled toward her between the blood-soaked diagrams with small unsteady steps.
He stood before her, swaying; his open palm thrust out, red and glistening.
`Derecho!' he wheezed in a voice dead and parched as the graveyard grass beneath her feet. She gaped at the straining face, for it suddenly seemed in the candlelight lined and withered and skeletal as an Egyptian mummy's.
`Derecho! Offering! Quickly!' came the hoarse command again.
Jerked out of her haze of horror, she pulled the bulky envelope from her coat pocket and thrust it out, as if contaminated. It was snatched from her and dropped beside the chickens, and now he was hobbling away to the tomb again.
Back went his head and up shot his arms, his crooked claw-like fingers scrabbling to clutch the darkness. From his lips burst a harsh shrieked gabble of unintelligible syllables, hurled into the night, heedless apparently of any ritual silence now, and the drumbeats fled before them like the panic-stricken patter of a fibrillating heart. Bone-wrenching spasms wracked his body now, as if a high-voltage current passed up from the cemetery earth through his thin straddling legs, torso, out along his shaking fingertips into the darkness above the tomb, and without warning Judith's heart too suddenly began to pound great sledgehammer blows and the palms of her hands to sweat icily. Waves of numbing cold seemed to be billowing from the direction of the tomb now. Something was approaching, every atom of her being suddenly screamed, something from out of the darkness so monstrous and appalling that the horror inspired by the appearance of the old-man personality within the priest faded to mere anxiety by comparison. To Judith's eyes it seemed that the candlelit fog above the tomb was thickening, seething, twisting, boiling, as this Something, quite alien and unnatural to our world, struggled with the air itself to emerge like a vast venomous spider from its place of usual concealment.
As if also aware of the Presence, the priest broke off his chanting, and the drums fell silent.
Slowly, painfully, the man fell to his knees, first the one, then the other, cringing in abject supplication to whatever it was that loomed invisibly above the tomb.
In the heavy awful silence, Judith heard only the dreadfully magnified thumping of her heart. She fully expected to see the twisted face of Eshu leering at her out of the mist above the idol, but there was nothing, nothing but the terrible, overpowering sense of evil that paralyzed her limbs and senses.
A faint jingling sound, followed by a scuffling noise, snatched her frantic gaze to her left.
The dark-haired acolyte was back, dragging the small white goat on its chain, and the pale youth got up and swiftly moved to help him with his struggling charge. Stooping, he seized a front and rear leg while his friend grabbed the other two, and between them they carried the now helpless creature upside down to the crooked cross and pitchfork diagram.
The priest rose to his feet and hobbled forward while his two assistants silently, ritualistically, swung the goat to the four corners of the compass. A curved knife had appeared in his hand - Judith caught the gleam of its blade as the young men carefully lowered their sacrificial victim over the devil's circle, still maintaining a tight hold of its legs. She closed her eyes and stopped her ears as the priest pulled back the creature's muzzle to expose the soft white throat.

She gazed into the ashes of the dying fire. The room was full of shadows and gusts of wind buffeted the window. Maybe she was losing her memory, she thought. Maybe she had fished the stone out of the trash basket back in Dublin. She had read about split personalities (Sybil, wasn't it?), when one side of the mind didn't know what the other was doing. Maybe she was like that. Schizoid or something.
And maybe Gerry never did take it from the mantel. Frank had said his memory might remain all screwed up.
And the raccoon cage?
Mrs. Sullivan's work, perhaps.
Or had she herself done that, too?
Maybe she would never know the answer.
But one thing she did know. If she herself were somehow responsible, she was going to make damn sure this time. This time she was going to make it impossible for herself or anyone else to bring it back again.
She went and took the stone from the mantel. She stared out of the back door into the gathering gloom. The sky was heavy with storm clouds and it would soon be dark. Clutching the stone to her breast, she ran outside and down the entire length of the backyard, past the place where Feather lay buried. The sight of the little mound of dirt put added determination in her heart. She ran into the shadow of the trees. Above her, branches creaked and tossed in the rising wind, showering her with a dark confetti of dead autumn leaves. Thunder rolled and thumped, nearer now.
Now she was pushing defiantly through oak and hawthorn scrub, the branches poking and snagging her sweater and hair.
She came to the path and began to run again, squelching through banks of sodden, rotted leaves. One foot sank over the ankle, but she did not stop. As she ran, the stone in her hand seemed to grow heavier and heavier, the shadows around her darker and darker, and soon she seemed to be running in a tunnel and the light at the end was the glint of the water ahead toward which she ran. She felt the wind on her face fresh and chill as it blew off the reservoir with the smell of rain upon it. It spurred her on like a promise of help. The trees thinned. She came to the reservoir. She ran to the water's edge.
The stone was a lump of lead now.
Almost she found she could not lift it. A fog of stifling darkness seemed to lie upon her mind, weighing her arm down, blocking her senses.
She grasped the stone firmly with both hands and raised it with difficulty to the level of her eyes.
Its mouth was a silent scream of protest. She could feel its will (or was it just her own reluctance?) beating upon her like huge waves crashing against the hull of a foundering ship.
"Leave us alone," she whispered. "Do you hear me?"
Now she heard Fiona laughing and joking at her wedding, and suddenly found herself screaming at the stone, "Leave us alone! We don't want you! Do you understand? You're not wanted! Leave us alone!"
Then she swung back her arm and hurled it. With all the strength she could muster, she threw it far, far into the center of the reservoir.
A splash. And it was gone.
In that same instant, dusk turned to day as the clouds reached down and touched the earth with a crooked line of intolerable light.
Ear-shattering was the blast of' thunder that followed; rending the air, slamming into the hills, its rocketing echos chasing each other away and away, volleying off distant mountaintops till they were finally lost to hearing.
Momentarily stunned, blinded, deafened, Angela stood frozen, her fists clenched, staring blankly at the spot where the stone had vanished; at the rings of ripples still expanding, larger and larger, all that was left to show it had ever existed.
Then slow, fat drops of rain began to fall, obliterating even the ripples, and suddenly Angela realized the strange darkness that had blanketed her mind had vanished as mysteriously as it had arisen. She could see and think clearly now. But now instead of the lethargy, a profound weariness pervaded her limbs. She ached in every bone, every muscle from head-to-toe, as if she had engaged in a day-long hike to the top of a mountain.

A talented screenwriter, Bast has drawn a vivid portrait of his gifted, driven friend who was willing to do – and did – whatever it took to achieve fame… Bast’s portrait of Dean and the gay underground of New York and Hollywood in the early 1950s will be one of the most talked about books of the year.” – AMERICAN LEGENDS.

Any who would understand Dean – including elements of his personality – will want to read this eye-opening analysis.” – MIDWEST BOOK REVIEW.

Dean's troubled life is well documented, and Bast isn't interested in repeating his previous James Dean, a Biography, written in 1956. He now hopes to make up for his "youthful shortcomings and omissions."…This simple, heartfelt book records Bast's coming out and the long-term impact Dean had on his life. – PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

Bast deserves credit for his sense of restraint in the post–James Frey age; his divulgement is not at all disrespectful, vulgar, or shocking, but simply written as one of many traits in an extraordinarily complicated human being… you close the book glad at having read someone with integrity. – LIBRARY JOURNAL.

Bast has at last done us the service of bringing the truth about Dean to light. Those who prefer their truth untinted by rose-colored spectacles will cherish this book… Dean now fascinates even more, warts and all. – A DIFFERENT LIGHT.