“Bevan is doing with the tarot what
Sue Grafton did with the alphabet.”

Why the Shakespeare Quotes?

In each of The Tarot Mysteries Xana Bard or Thorne Ardall quotes Shakespeare. In The Fool Card the quote is from Hamlet: “The readiness is all.” In The Magician Card it’s “I will be the pattern of all patience; I will say nothing,” from King Lear. A new quote, relevant to the new story, appears […]

In The Beginning…

People ask me where the idea for The Tarot Mysteries series came from. Here’s the scoop. A long-time friend of mine in Santa Barbara passed away and I drove down from San Francisco to attend the funeral. As I passed the Earl Warren Showgrounds driving home afterward I thought of Sue Grafton and her wonderful […]

How Do Tarot Cards Work?

Tarot cards are just a collection of colored images on pieces of thick paper. How can pieces of colored paper possibly give someone information about the future? The short answer is: they don’t. But they do, when you’re trained to use them, trigger something valid but inexplicable, something that every tarot reader will tell you […]

The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn

In the late 1800s a trio of British Rosicrucians/Masons formed a society devoted to occult studies. The three men, Woodman, Westcott and Mathers, named their secret society The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. The influence of this society drove an ever-expanding interest throughout Western civilization in pursuing spiritual paths that were not aligned with […]

Starting a New Tarot Mystery

I get asked — a lot — how I come up with a new story. The answer is pretty simple: I do research and the research tells me the story. Some years ago I was inspired to write a screenplay. I’d been an instructional designer and trainer for decades, during which time I’d written training […]

The Magician Card

Inspiration strikes. Our mind focuses on how to accomplish this new and challenging goal that has besieged our consciousness and won’t let us ignore it. We marshal our resources and put into practice those techniques that we have learned over time will assist us in achieving our new objective. We take the first few steps, […]

The Fool Card

The Fool Card is the great mystery of the Major Arcana. Its number is Zero, the all-encompassing circle, the whole, as well as the cipher. The Fool is a conundrum, a summary of opposites. He is the only Major Arcana card to survive into our modern playing cards, where he’s the Joker, and the Joker […]

The Queen of Swords Card

The 56 Minor Arcana in the 78-card tarot deck are the precursors of our modern playing cards. The four suits in the Tarot (Wands, Cups, Swords, and Pentacles) are now called Clubs, Hearts, Spades and Diamonds, respectively. There are four face cards in each suit of the Tarot, and in the modern playing deck one […]

Bevan Radio Appearance Saturday, July 15

  This Saturday, July 15, at 11:00 p.m. PDT host Afrikahn Jamal Dayvs, the inspiration for the DeLeon Davies character in The Tarot Mysteries series, will interview Bevan Atkinson on his KPFA Radio B.A.J.A.B.A. on JaZzLine weekly show. If only because Afrikahn is indeed the world’s coolest human, stay up late and listen to some […]

The Book Club Experience

As a kindness to my mother, Barbara, who had been a long-time and well-loved member of the Junior League of Monterey, California, her Junior League Book Club elected to read “The Fool Card” for its June book. They invited me to join them for a luncheon at a gorgeous chateau-like home on the ocean in […]