Davezilla has been reading tarot for about forty years. His first deck was the Aleister Crowley deck. Probably not the best choice for a beginner, but try telling him that.
Although raised a Baptist, by age 12 his doubts and questions about talking snakes in trees and where exactly was Hell caused him to leave the religion. He has since undergone initiations as an eclectic Gardnerian witch, Discordianism, an Ngangalero in Palo Mayombe, and is a practicing Olocha (Santero) in Lucumí.
He has spent an inordinate amount of time researching the occult, but also Fortean phenomena and loves discussing high weirdness.
Davezilla lives just north of Detroit in Royal Oak, Michigan with his brilliant, grounded wife, two precocious daughters, and a menagerie of pets.
Tarot of the Unexplained was his first deck and book. He regrets admitting he has never met Bigfoot.
The Magical AI Grimoire is his first non-tarot book
The world went through a paradigm shift recently.
AI invaded everything, including magic.
The blend of magic and tech has long existed, but most occult writers only hint at it. Indeed, some of the first computer programs ever written were astrology apps.
This book deep dives into that intersection and shows how everyone from Santeras to sole practitioners are integrating technology into their magical practices. This is not a theoretical work, but a true practicum for today’s magical worker.
This book is cross-cultural. It includes workings from Wicca, hedge and traditional witchcraft, Santería, Chaos and Discordian magic—even some left-hand path workings.
A lot of thought went into considerations for people who don’t live near an occult shop; something many witchcraft books take for granted. City and apartment dwellers often can’t do spells involving growing plants, and may have no ocean or woods to walk to. How can you use what they have around you? You need some hex support.
I call it, The Magical AI Grimoire and it’s the first book to teach you how to use large language model AI using spellcraft from different traditions to produce magical results.
This is not another ”Let’s write our resumes with ChatGPT” book. This is magic reimagined for the Age of Assistants. It is a full grimoire showing you how to use incorporate AI in your magical practice today.
Available from Red Wheel / Weiser Books in Winter, 2024
Tired of tarot decks about hot vampires, angel-faeries, and Celtic soul journeys? How do they help us understand UFO and cryptid sightings? Lost time or walking into dimensional portals? Weird times call for weird tools.
This is the deck Fox Mulder would have used on the X-Files. A complete 78-card tarot deck featuring all your favorite cryptids, ghosts, UFOs, and other urban oddities. This is a modern approach to divining and reading the randomness of reality.
Maybe that sound in your attic wasn’t mice, after all.
Every major arcana card is unique to this deck. Even the court cards aren’t your typical page, knight, queen, and king. They are fans, hunters, advocates, and skeptics. The expected suits of wands, cups, swords, and pentacles are now Sasquatch knocking sticks, dimensional portals, ghosts, and flying saucers, respectively.
Other decks focus on relationships and jobs, and that’s fine. I didn’t. I wanted a deck to help people deal with the fear of encountering a phantasm, or of being contacted by something. These experiences are hard to process, deeply disturbing, and surprisingly common.
No one else seemed to want to make a deck to deal with it. So I did. Few people ask to see these things. When you have a legitimate experience, there is often a weird guilt feeling like, “Why is this happening to me?” If my deck helps, or even gives you a laugh, I’ve done my job.
Available from Red Wheel / Weiser Books and anywhere tarot decks are sold.
ISBN: 978-1-57863-795-9