Authors Interviewing Characters: Susan Wands

May 2, 2023 | By Women Writers Women Books | Reply More

Susan Wands Interviews Pamela Colman Smith from Magician and Fool, Book One, Arcana Oracle Series

About the book: MAGICIAN AND FOOL

Pamela Colman Smith, newly arrived from New York to her birthplace of London, is received as an oddball in Victorian society. Her second sight helps her in her new job: illustrating tarot cards for the Golden Dawn, a newly formed occult group. But when Pamela refuses to share her creations with Aleister Crowley, a controversial magician, he issues a threat: give up the cards’ power, or he’ll harm her muses.

In the midst of this battle, two of Pamela’s idols, the actors Henry Irving and William Terriss, take her under their wing. Henry, who tutors her as the leader of the Lyceum Theatre, becomes the muse for her Magician card. William Terriss, teaching her by examples of instinct and courage, becomes the muse for her Fool card. As Pamela begins to create the tarot deck, she is almost overwhelmed by the race to possess the magical power of her cards. In order to defeat Aleister, Henry and William will have to transform into living incarnations of the Magician and the Fool—and Pamela will have to learn how to conjure her own magic.

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Susan: Pamela, congratulations! I understand you’ve been commissioned to create a deck of tarot cards!

Pamela: It’s a big job for very little money. I was hired by A.E. Waite, a former member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn in London, to create this deck, but it looks like my name isn’t even going to be printed on them.

Susan: Sorry to hear that. Why were you recruited to design this deck? Do you read tarot cards for people?

Pamela: What? No! I’m an artist! A painter! A designer! A publisher! Well, yes, I’ve also been a performer, reciting Jamaican folktales to crowds in New York and London at my art gallery openings when Stieglitz showed my artwork. At the Lyceum Theatre when I do perform, I am brilliant even if it is a small, odd role.

Susan: Yes, I’ve read that you are.

Pamela: What? Small and odd?

Susan: No, brilliant. That your work has flashes of psychic connection to other worlds. With a dash of synesthesia thrown in.

Pamela: I don’t know what that is. Perhaps you’re talking about my cross-hatching of the senses. I do sense other worlds, especially when I have the right musical promptings.

Susan: What sorts of things do you see?

Pamela: Fairies, ghosts, creatures that flew, and visions of people and gods — only to certain music.

Susan: You’re visionary? Is that why the Golden Dawn Group hired you?

Pamela: Yes and no. Both Waite and I want to create something new out of something old. And I was the least expensive artist with the most psychic ability.

Susan: What is the Golden Dawn’s plan for your tarot deck?

Pamela: I would say world domination if Golden Dawn magicians weren’t so dysfunctional but there is a lot of in-fighting and sabotage over the magic that they claim to be developing. I don’t see world domination happening anytime soon for them.

Susan: The Golden Dawn is developing magic?

Pamela: Some of them claim to be developing magical spells and astral traveling, especially one magician who hates me and my drawings.

Susan: Who would that be?

Pamela: Aleister Crowley.

Susan: The wickedest man in the world? Beast 666?

Pamela: Yes, that’s him. He wants to develop his own tarot deck. And religion. He’s going to call his deck the “Thoth Deck.” But he can’t draw, so there it is.

Susan: Why does Aleister Crowley hate you?

Pamela: Maybe because I can draw. And paint. And design. And I don’t have to work at having visions.

Susan: He’s not jealous of the fact that you work with some of the most famous actors of the day, Sir Henry Irving and Dame Ellen Terry?

Pamela: He’s probably more upset that I work with W.B. Yeats from the Golden Dawn. Or that I’m a suffragist.

Susan: Excellent! Let’s get that vote for women! What are you working on with Yeats?

Pamela: We are talking about my designing the set for his play, Where There is Nothing.

Susan: Not a very promising title.

Pamela: True. W.B. is a rummy critter with his ermine collared debutante fan club fawning all over his poetry. But when you get him to talking about Irish Folktales, which he recites, he’s splendid.

Susan: So, like you, William Butler Yeats performs poetry and folktales?

Pamela: Yeats has more of a sing-song aspect to his performances. The folktales I tell I learned as a child growing up in Jamaica. Both Ellen Terry and Henry Irving have commended my performances when I tell my Annancy stories at my monthly soiree, Bohemian Nights in Chelsea.

Susan: So, you love stories and story tellers. Do you think there is much of a future in that?

Pamela: Ellen is the highest paid actress in London and Henry hires 350 people to work at the Lyceum Theatre, so I would say that their future is looking bright. True, I have to hire myself out occasionally as “Gelukiezanger,” that’s ‘happy singer’ in Dutch, but it’s a living. Barely, but it’s a living.

Susan: So, you are a performer!

Pamela: I would say raconteur.

Susan: I have one last question for you: if you could be remembered for one thing —designer, suffragist, costume designer, painter, tarot deck creator, illustrator, publisher—what would it be?

Pamela: That I was an artist unafraid to try everything.

–BUY HERE

Susan Wands is an actor, tarot reader, and writer. A graduate from the University of Washington, she has acted professionally across the United States and on Broadway and has written plays, screenplays and theatrical sketches. As a co-chair with the NYC Chapter of the Historical Novel Society, she helps produce monthly online book launches and author panels. In London, she has lectured at Watkins Books for their Recorded Authors series, and at Atlantis Books, and has presented at the Occulture Berlin Festival. Ms. Wands’ writings have appeared in Art in Fiction, Kindred Spirits magazine, and The Irving Society journal, FIRST KNIGHT. She lives in NYC with her husband, actor Robert Petkoff, and two cats, Flora and Flynn. Her first book in a series, Magician and Fool, Book One, Arcana Oracle Series will be published by SparkPress in May 2023. High Priestess and Empress, is the second in the series will come out in 2024, and Emperor and Hierophant, the third book in the series, is in final edits.