This morning I broke out the tarot cards. I had not done so in a long time for various reasons. I read the cards for myself. It is a special deck of tarot I have though I also have two other tarots- the Rider-Waite and the Sybilla oracle [the latter is not a tarot perse]. I chose this morning to use > Songs For The Journey Home /a>

Then I looked up the website to find that a friend of mine who had made the tarot with her friend, Catherine Cook, had died three years ago. Dwariko taught me I could change my name without a deed pole- I changed it in my, as yet unpublished, novel. The first time I saw her at a psychic fair she asked me my dreams. I told her that I wanted to play the harp and go to Ireland. Thanks to her loaning me her Harrison harp [a New Zealand one] I was able to accomplish the former relatively quickly. I am still waiting for the opportunity to go to Ireland.

Dwar and I kept in touch over the years seeing each other occasionally. For my 21st birthday she gave me the tarot she had co-created and helped me to label the cards in braille. We recorded the sessions on tape.

Dwariko was very ill towards the end of her life. I wondered why I hadn’t heard anything from her and was shocked to learn of her death today.

So I felt compelled to write this blog as tribute to one who was so very clever — a great teacher and friend. A renaissance woman but so good at hiding it.