I am the One Who...

II. THE HIGH PRIESTESS

2010-09-12T16:17:00.005-07:00

I am the One who holds women's secrets out in the open.

I was in Michele Manos’ introductory SoulCollage(R) course last fall. She had spread a bunch of images on the floor and has asked us to take one and journal with it. I saw this across the room and couldn’t wait to get my hands on it. I couldn’t believe others wouldn’t beat me to it first.

Immediately the image told me she was the High Priestess, but it took me a little while to see the correspondences between this image and the traditional Rider-Waite imagery.

Fist she's masked. Her upraised arms stand in for the pillars. (We will see this detail again when we get to the Heirphant.) The red scarf subs for the pomegranate magic curtain (where Carol Merrill is now standing....)

A significant difference is she seems to be out in the open, which is an interesting take on what is supposed to be shrouded in mystery. Hidden right in the open. At the beach yet, in broad daylight.

(And yet, Rachel Pollack points out there's a scene with water and land behind the Rider-Waite curtain, if you look closely enough.)

This National Geographic image is from Iran, I believe. I remember a student film from my college days by a Middle Eastern student (male) called "Women's Secrets." Being not particularly sensitive to cultural difference at that time in my life, I couldn't figure out what the big deal was for him.

And yet, there he is, the guy in the back looking on at the untouchable and ineffable. I couldn't cut him out. One of these days he'll have something to say to me.

The High Priestess is associated with the cult of Isis, the concept of the Shekinah in Kabbalah and the introduction of duality into the world. She represents potential, passivity and intuition so deep as to be unnameable.

Psychologically if the Magician is the energy of Yes, the High Priestess is the energy of No. Think of toddlers learning these two different concepts. Next we will meet the earthly parents of the Fool.

I. THE MAGICIAN: Shakespeare

2010-09-08T15:08:00.004-07:00

I am the quintessential actor, the quintessential playwright.

I distill. I synthesize the pieces into a masterpiece.

I do have magician images in my stash. I am fascinated by the traditional adept imagery of the Magician. I particularly am drawn to the turn-of-the-century magicians (so beautifully captured in movies like The Prestige and The Illusionist), and that combination of occultism and mass entertainment. Which brings me to this Community card for William Shakespeare. Whether you think he was a man or a committee, he earns this placement for his knowledge of alchemy and use of alchemical language, while keeping the groundlings amused with spectacle and broad comedy. Scholars love to see magician Prospero in The Tempest as Shakespeare's stand-in. At the end of this, Shakespeare’s last play, Prospero throws his grimoire into the ocean, and that is supposed to symbolize the playwright giving up the theatre. I always thought that bit was a little too pat and opportunistic. I seem to remember that literary criticism is similar to tarot, about pattern making and association :)

Rachel Pollack in 78 Degrees of Wisdom sees the Magician as a channel or conduit, drawing power from above to below. Which also is a good way of looking at Shakespeare. None of the stories he told were new, he was just really good at taking popular culture and transforming it into something deep, and vice versa. Highly mysterious, a genius in his socioeconomic class, he defied all the expectations of his education. There are plenty of people who think he couldn’t possibly be one person or that brilliant, that the canon is the work of several people, or a pseudonym for some upper-class twit. Possibly it’s a case of educated people not giving credit to genius when it strikes without prejudice in a generation.

I have invoked the Magician in my theatre directing, particularly. Directing is kind of like juggling, which is another name for this card.

THE FOOL: The Traveler

2010-09-05T14:19:00.007-07:00

I am the One Who travels light. I am the one who enjoys the view.

I am a perfectionist or at nature lazy, I'm not sure which. I seem to exhibit both extremes of Virgoness. The first cards I made--in fact the cards I love best to make--are usually single images that turn out to be perfect. Either that, or I tend to spend hours moving tiny elements around with a toothpick. But this one, The Traveler, is a single-image one.

In the traditional SoulCollage(R) suits, the Council cards are archetypes active in your life. Seena Frost suggests that there are Council archetypes that everyone possesses. The Fool is one.

I wouldn't have called this my Fool card, but it certainly fits. It reminds me of a wonderful cartomancy deck The Desert Oracle, which employs a similar desert background for the entire deck. I thought about using this image in a similar fashion. The figure reminds me of Ginger, my friend who taught me to read Tarot over twenty years ago on Nantucket. Once we were reading on a bluff near the ocean, a pretty steep bluff as I recall, twenty or thirty feet. As we read, a young man, an acquaintance of ours, ran up to us and through our space. "Hmm. Nowhere to go but down. Guess I'll have to do that." He ran deftly down the bluff and continued his jog on the beach below us. It's not always that you get a timely visit from the Fool.

This card is also unique in that it's currently my only horizontal image.

The Fool is the Zero card, related to the Joker in playing decks. The Fool represents us at the beginning of any endeavor, ignorant of danger with only our intuition to guide us. The Major Arcana is considered the Fool's Journey. As the Fool travels, he passes through various trials, gaining experiences on the way to becoming The Wise Fool.

The Fool surveys the path below, but looks ready to step into the precipice. She travels light. All she is missing is her dog.

The Fool's Journey, a personal odyssey in SoulCollage(R)

2010-09-04T15:08:00.003-07:00

I spent the last couple of weeks in July “on a tear” assembling ten new SoulCollage® cards. TrueNorthArt's blog party turned out to be a good excuse. I put together four Community cards, one character card, two Council, two Committee, and my first Companion card.

When I told my husband I had 22 paper cards, he said, “Good, now you have a Major Arcana.” That set me to thinking. That, and Kathryn Antyr's use of collage for the Hero's Journey.

How might I fit my existing cards into a Major Arcana pattern?

I tossed and turned for a couple of nights running through how I might move things around. Then I got up and did it. Then the cat sat on my cards. Then the monsoon rains on the only humid day of the year caused the cards to swell, so I had to press them back into shape with the help of a couple of thick phone books. (Phone books are still good for something. You can't press stuff using Google.)

I'd done something similar once before. I’d heard a writer using tarot suggest collaging a set of Majors for your writing project in an afternoon. I'm not nearly that brave, but upon discovering my in-progress 50's noir had 22 characters...I once spent forty-five minutes in Starbucks moving them around into a Major Arcana pattern. And guess what, it worked. Very well, in fact.

Writing coach Steve Barnes says if you internalize the Hero's Journey as a writer, you're golden. Your subconscious will make the story for you. I've been a tarot reader for 22 years. (There's that number again!) I wondered if I'd internalized the Fool's Journey enough for it to affect what cards I created first.

The following is a very subjective trip through the Fool's Journey using what's on hand, including Community cards as well as Council. Some are very obviously archetypes. Others fit into the sequence through design elements.

I hope you enjoy this syncronicitious journey.

New Cards! SoulCollage(R) Blog Party

2010-07-30T16:27:00.004-07:00

Hello, Blog Partygoers! Welcome to my SoulCollage(R)Blog...Thanks to Kathryn Antyr of TrueNorthArts.com for hosting the party and encouraging us to get to work...Here's an eclectic group of goodies from my "current" folder that were only waiting for a deadline and a glue stick :) Enjoy!!

Update: Go here for a slideshow featuring my old cards. And here to see cards and commentary from a SoulCollage(R) workshop I took last fall. Thanks for stopping by!

Picture slideshow made with Smilebox

Old Cards...

2010-07-30T16:22:00.001-07:00

This free picture slideshow created with Smilebox

Cards from a SoulCollage(R) workshop...

2010-07-30T15:44:00.004-07:00

...led by Michele Manos, October 2009, Amado, AZ

Ancestral Gifts

...We have been warriors and peacemakers, mothers and fathers, mystics and simple people. We have been priests and rabbis, priestesses and witches....You are so much more than the limits of your body. You can tap your strength and also your legacy. You can heal your DNA.

High Priestess

I am the One who is the High Priestess.
I am the One who is aware of the sacred in the profane.
I am the One who bears the pain of my tribe.
I am the Woman of Mystery.
I am the One who holds women's secrets out in the open.

Fire Mummy (Death)

I am the One who is a dessicated shell, purified by transformative fire.

Make a Noise!

I am the one who expresses my self with the freedom of a child.
I am the one who is willing to make a fool of myself.
The guidance I offer is:
Open your mouth.
Communicate.
Don't care what the judges think.
Keep your eye on the prize.
Embarrassment is for sissies.

Soul Collage Blog Party!

2010-07-18T18:46:00.005-07:00

From True North Arts:

You are invited to explore SoulCollage(R) during the month of July and to share your cards in a Blog Party on July 31st, 2010. This party is open to EVERYONE! Go to this page: http://bit.ly/soulcollageblogparty for full details!

(Now to figure out how to transfer the pictures from the new camera onto the computer....)

Anne Marie Bennett interviewed at Writer Apprentice

2009-10-20T09:15:00.006-07:00

Today at my other blog I'm interviewing Kaleidosoul founder and SoulCollage(R) facilitator Anne Marie Bennett about the release of her new book, Bright Side of the Road: A Spiritual Journey Through Breast Cancer. Anne Marie talks about her journey and shares about her writing process. I'm honored to interview her. She's a delightful lady. Stop by!

The Writer Apprentice

New Year, looking for a new card...

2009-01-03T11:56:00.004-07:00

It's a new year, and I thought I'd make a new commitment to SoulCollage.

To begin I have an "I am the One Who" without a card! But I will obviously have to make one. This just kind of bubbled up while I was writing the first draft of my Holocaust novel in November:

I am the confusion. I am the appeal to unity. I am the need for stability in chaos. I am the spirit of the monolith that is afraid of change. I am the spirit of the Reich.

I am the one who was cheated. I am the anger. I am the one who is mad as hell. I am the scrambling for scraps. I am the one who is paying a million marks for a loaf of bread. I am the one who was tricked by the lies of the military who said the Great War was a cakewalk, and we were winning it. I am the one who was cheated by the Treaty of Versailles and the concessions of the statesmen. I was the one who was blamed and sanctioned by the rest of Europe when I was simply a participant. I am the one who is sure that the communists, Social Democrats and in particular the Jews are to blame.

I want to tell you that fear is not your friend. I want to tell you that disinformation and propaganda are a real threat. I want to tell you not to give in to archetypal "good vs evil" forces that would put your human impulses to sleep. I want to tell you that any time someone says "you're for us or you're against us," fight it with every inch of your being. I want to tell you there is more color and nuance to the world than black, white and shades of red. There are more solutions than a Final solution, and if you kill what you project as your shadow you will never have any integration.

I am the ultimate proof that the Saboteur exists, and can take a whole people down with it.

Robert: I Am the One Who...

2007-08-19T14:24:00.000-07:00

I am the Boy with the Blue Eyes.
I am the One who has haunted you for twenty years.
I am the One who inspired you to write long fiction and attempt a novel.
I am the One who like Prometheus brought fire to the human race and paid for it.
I am the One who made you read all of Proust.
I am the One who opened again your multifaceted intellect.
I am the One who was raised to do great things in my society.
I am the One who nearly committed suicide at twenty-one, from the sheer pain of becoming.
I am the One who learned to see individual genius in a group and became a great administrator.
I am the One you fell in love with, despite my deadly legacy, which I could not control.

What do you have to give me?

I give you confidence in your intellect, that you are smart enough to write about physics.
I give you the joy of mastering things, disciplines, art forms for their own sake.
I give you the joy of eternal learning and knowledge.
I give you knowledge of your contribution as an individual.

What do you want from me?

I want you to tell the multifacetness of my story.
I want you to remind others that what we think of as evil sometimes has a genesis in great humanity and care for humanity.
I want you to remind others of the greatness of the Manhattan Project story, and how we can use our intellect and technology to enhance mankind, to overcome greed, anger, war and deadness.
I want you to remind others of the importance more than ever of an open society of ideas for the betterment of all life.
I want you to finish my story.

Is there anything else you want to tell me?

Remember that the Atomic Age was ushered in on sacred ground.
Remember to ground yourself in horses and the mountains and the sea…
Remember to pick flowers to make it an occasion.
Remember to love your younger siblings and meet people where they are.
Remember to guard against the seduction of power and intellectual arrogance.
Remember humility, which politicians easily forget. It is not a weakness.
Remember there are scientists and people out there who look for the truth, who love life and are trying to preserve it.
Remember death, the dark silent companion, has always been present; live life while you can.

How will I remember?

When you see the mountains and sacred places, when you smell pinon and hear the sea.
When you see “thunderstorms and sunsets comparison the sky.”
When you hear the distinctive cadence of my voice in your head.
When you read Baudelaire and the Bhagavad Gita.
Don’t worry. You will know.

Character/Community Suit: Robert

2007-08-18T13:17:00.000-07:00

There are four card suits for SoulCollage--Committee, Companion, Council and Community. These roughly correspond to inner personas, animal totems, archetypes and significant people in your life. Hope I have that right. In addition you can make your own suits. I started gathering images for what I call my Character suit--these are people from my fiction. If you write a work of some length, your characters have a tendency to take over part of your psyche. I was initially confused where to put them. Are they parts of my personality? Are they embodiments of archetypes? Are they as real as any people I've known? Yes to all three. Hence a new suit.

This is Robert Oppenheimer, father of the atomic bomb, as a young man, and the subject of my first novel.

This is My New Blog...

2007-08-18T13:06:00.000-07:00

...dedicated to the process of SoulCollage(R) an inner work collage process developed by Seena Frost.

Here I will post my cards and the results of the very important "I am the One Who..." exercise.

More to be found at the excellent site of Anne Marie Bennett, who really makes the process accessible.