Folk Magic

You draw your own card now. The daily card used to be dealt to you. Now the day deals the deck and you take the card: the whole deck face down, run along under your thumb until one of them is the one. It ticks as they pass. Where you stopped is where it opens next time. And there are spreads to lay, not only to read about. Each one is walked through a step at a time and kept in the journal with the question, the cards in their places and what you made of them. Three cards. The Celtic Cross. A reading for the new moon that comes back at the full. A reading for a situation you cannot see the shape of. A review of the season just gone, which reads your own journal back to you first. And the year ahead, laid once and returned to as each month arrives. The journal has been rebuilt. One writing space instead of a row of boxes. The sky is stamped on every entry, the moon and the season and the day, as it was when you wrote it. Entries are gathered by month. A moon after you write, the app asks how it went. And there is a wheel of your own year, with every entry set where it falls. Gentle reminders, for appointments you made. Only for things you set up yourself: a new moon reading that returns at the full, a question the journal promised to ask, the months of a year spread. Nothing else arrives. The wheel of the year is finished. Every festival is written out properly now, an article each, at the length they deserve. Imbolc and the ewes in milk. Lady Day and the old New Year. Beltane between two fires. Midsummer on the eve. Lammas and the first loaf. Michaelmas and the hiring fair. Samhain and a place set at the table. Yule and the light kept going. Each one has its own painting. The moon moves now. Open the night screen and she runs her whole month, from dark to full and round again, settling on tonight’s real phase. Tap her to watch it again. Two more things to work with: a coin, and the cup. The coin toss has a real coin now, drawn for the app, a sun on one face and a moon on the other and your own words round the rim. Tap it, or shake the phone, and it turns over. The cup and the wax is new as well: read what the leaves leave behind, or what a candle poured into water sets into, with the old meanings to hand and every reading kept. The Year has been rebuilt around the calendar. Today at the top, the month itself underneath with the moon on every night, and the day you tap opening properly. The smaller days have a real write-up now rather than a line. Holy Rood Day and the nutting, Distaff Day and the little it rests on, St Agnes’ Eve and the dreaming. Home tells you when today is one of them. And the app knows where you are. Sunrise and sunset are worked out for your own place, from your phone’s time zone, with no permission to grant. South of the equator it asks whether you would rather keep the recorded dates or turn the wheel to your own seasons, and the whole year moves with you if you choose the second. The doctor and the emergency number it points you to are the ones where you live. The tarot has been rewritten from the ground up, with a deck drawn for this app. Both home screens have been rebuilt, so the day face and the night face hold the same shape and nothing jumps about when the light changes. The article at the foot of the day screen follows the card you drew. And a good many articles have gained a line saying plainly where the practice actually comes from.