Here is our latest project. Around 1970 Fred Adams designed a series of symbols to be used in the magic circle and for divination. The symbols are correlated with the Tarot, the Celtic Ogham, the I Ching, astrology, and, more than thing else, the Tree Alphabet Calendar. He called his system the Axerian Hieroglyphs. That name takes a lot of explaining, so we have been calling them The Green Pulse Oracle. (Briefly, the term Axerian refers to the gigantic thesis of Dechend and di Santillana in their book "Hamlet's Mill" about myths related to the stars, the precession of the Equinoxes, and how the circling polar stars are "grinding out" existence - the metaphor is a millstone.)

Below are some of the original design and definition sheets Fred wrote up, with our notes on the left.

My friend Macha Nightmare pointed out that the symbols, together with Fred's interpretations and some explanatory material, could be a whole book by itself. I thought that was a great idea and got started right away. Fortunately John was willing to undertake turning the symbols into three-dimensional markers. The idea is that they can be consulted, like the Tarot, the Ogham, or the I Ching, to help people get a sense of the forces and influences at play in their situation.

Below is the first, simple set of cards we made to try using them as an oracle system.

We decided we liked the idea of calling the markers "Leaves," since the system is based on the Tree Alphabet Calendar. On the left below is an early wax version of Ailm, from back when we were thinking of using ceramic markers. Ailm correlates with the Water element, the Moon Tarot card, with the Silver Fir, Palm or Elm tree, with birth and cosmic stimulus, with the number one, the vowel A, Winter Solstice and Yule, and with the ocean deeps.

The Leaf marker next to it is on wood, which is what we decided to go with. The symbols to the right of that are test versions of the Feraferia Phytala design for the back of all the Leaves.

I have a first draft of the book; it is running about 130 pages, and is loaded with Fred's wonderful art. We're really excited about it and will post more updates soon.