Someone once asked me if I was a spiritual person, and I really wasn't sure what they meant. I shrugged and said "yeah I guess". What one person might mean by "spiritual" could be very different to the next, and I'm not even sure what it means to me. At first, I start to think about ghosts and spiritual mediums who claim to communicate with the deceased. Does being spiritual mean that you believe in ghosts? Spiritualism is a religion in the UK which seems to be based around communication with the deceased, but I'm not sure what else their beliefs entail. I often pass the local Spiritualist church on the bus. It's a very humble little building, and I imagine seances being held every week where people imagine conversations with their dead grandparents. I don't give them much credence myself, but if that's how they want to spend their weekends then that's their decision. Who knows, maybe there is some way to reach those who are no lon...

The original purpose of tarot cards was for playing games, the first basic rules appearing in the manuscript of Martiano da Tortona before 1425, and the next from the year 1637. The game of tarot has many cultural variations. Divination using playing cards is in evidence as early as 1540 in a book entitled The Oracles of Francesco Marcolino da Forlì which allows a simple method of divination, though the cards are used only to select a random oracle and have no meaning in themselves. Manuscripts from 1735 ( The Square of Sevens ) and 1750 ( Pratesi Cartomancer ) document rudimentary divinatory meanings for the cards of the tarot as well as a system for laying out the cards. Giacomo Casanova wrote in his diary that in 1765 his Russian mistress frequently used a deck of playing cards for divination. The name "tarot" may come from the River Taro in northern Italy, near Parma. The Val di Taro was of strategic importance during the Middle Ages, as it was traversed by th...

Five point stars, or pentagrams, were first found scratched into Stone Age caves. In ancient Babylonia, the five points represented the five visible planets in the sky. In ancient Greece, the mathematician and philosopher Pythagoras wrote that the number five represented the human, due to the fivefold division of the body, and the pentagram was used as a symbol of health. He also wrote that the five points of the pentagram represented the classical elements, the initials of which spelt out the name of the Greek goddess of health, HYGEA. Medieval Christians wore the pentagram as a symbol of Christ's five wounds, as it was believed to ward off evil. The pentagram was also believed to represent the five senses of touch, taste, sound, sight, and smell. According to the Kabbalah, the five points represent the five upper sephiroth of the Tree of Life, which are known as Justice, Mercy, Wisdom, Understanding, and Transcendence. The pentagram can be found in the stone work of Gothic ...

Hello everybody I suppose I better start blogging again! I was blogging over at wordpress for a little while but I just couldn't get to grips with the format. I like that this blog is easily linked to my other accounts, it gets automatically shared with my twitter and facebook, so that makes life easier. So what is this blog all about? Basically, this is my online diary where I can write about the stuff I'm doing. I often share pictures and things on my facebook page, but my blog enables me to go into more detail and write several paragraphs, if you're interested in reading more about what I do. What is the purpose of my art? When I was a little kid, I wanted to become an artist so that I could communicate the lovely things in my imagination with the rest of the world. I wanted to bring the imaginary to life. This is why I do what I do, because I believe in the importance of imagination. What you have in your head is not insignificant. The thoughts and images that po...