A Birthday

Turned 57 yesterday. (Doesn't sound too bad does it? It was a good year for Chevy's...)

Did my birthday Tarot reading for the year ahead with a new deck of cards that I purchased to go in my new pouch sent to me from my sister, Sweet Sue, in CA. My card for the year ahead is the Nine of Cups. A traditional meaning for this card is, "You'll get your wish." Nice. I'll take that...

Then, what I most need to look at, is The Sun. (Boy, I couldn't agree more, after this long Maine winter! I am vitamin D deprived!) But, not so literally, The Sun speaks about Jung's Bright Shadow - our unrealized potentials. So, yes I will look at this.

And the challenge in what lies ahead is, the Knight of Cups. Hmmmm....how I read this is, to keep using my feelings and intuition, especially in my art, and keep carrying them forward - and stay on that horse and don't fall off!

Next, what will help, is the Three of Swords. Three. My triptychs. The best vehicle to express these emotions, the painful and the sweet.

And the last card, what I might be overlooking, is the Ten of Pentacles. This is a card of abundance, contentment, achievment, and a happy home. A reminder, perhaps, to count my blessings, and not take these things for granted!

Happy Saint Patty's Day, All!

On the Table: Matisse and Miller

Matisse

Miller

Matisse

Miller

Matisse

Miller

Matisse

Miller

(and when I say Miller, I mean three of us: Martha, Kaitlyn, and Lisbeth!)

Half the fun of creating these new table linens for Lisbeth's Etsy shop is setting up the still life for the photo shoot! I ordered several more yards of quilting cotton from Spoonflower yesterday, with plans to make (among other things) a patchwork quilt using Lisbeth's colorful mandalas! Stay tuned!

Mandorla

I received The World card in my Tarot reading this morning, using my Golden Tarot deck. There is a beautiful example of a mandorla in this image.


From http://www.kyrie.com/:

Mandorla is the Italian word for "almond." It is also another word for the Vesica Piscis, the Yoni of the Goddess. As the almond-shaped overlapping of two circles, it represents the union of opposites.

"To step into the Mandorla is to move beyond "either-or" thinking - even beyond ideas of common ground or compromise - and stand in the tension of opposites long enough for something new to emerge. In the realm of the Mandorla, the whole truly yields something greater than the sum of its parts, opening doors of possibility, discovery, and creativity.

Although the (mandorla) has its origins before the Christian era, the early Christians used the symbol as a method to describe the coming together of heaven and earth, between the divine and human.The circles symbolise interacting but complementary opposites. The space within the overlap is the place in which we are called to "remain", the "liminal space."

This is the place where you arrive after you leave one room and have not yet entered another.


In this place, you are living on the threshold and this requires faith. All transformation takes place in liminal space.

Anna Korver

Mandorla I, II, III

If we deny one of the opposites (eg. our shadow, death, ..), the circles may only touch; they do not intersect. In this situation, we are polarised, out of balance. Perhaps too when we become wholly integrated, the overlap is total and there appears to be only one circle (for awhile anyway).The Mandorla, known in both East and West, expresses the standpoint of the mystic. It symbolises for us the tensions of life, the tension of complementary opposites:

Heaven <--------> Earth
Natural <--------> Supernatural
Divine <--------> Human
Life <--------> Death
The Inner world <--------> the Outer world
Esotericism <--------> Exotericism
Apophatic spirituality <--------> Katophatic spirituality
The Self <--------> the Shadow
The rational "calculative" mind <--------> the contemplative mind

and/or,

DOG: shivering Outside on the Cold Porch<--------> CAT: purring Inside the Warm Kitchen

(nyah, nyah!)

Cut the Deck

Last night I shuffled my Golden Tarot deck and pulled cards to see who I am in this new collaboration with my daughter, Lisbeth, and who she is. The tarot never ceases to amaze me with its story telling power. In my reading, Lisbeth turned out to be the card pictured here, the Two of Swords. I like to look at the tarot card and first interpret what I see, before shuffling through books of traditional meanings. And when I look at this card, the first thing I see is those crossed swords. SCISSORS! And the figure is a bit slumped, and sad. She has a halo, so she seems to be a sort of martyr figure. She is outdoors by the sea, alone, and it is night. But the ground beneath her feet is glowing gold, and there is a moon in the dark sky. There is light!

Off the top of my head I do know that the Two of Swords can be about working with intuition (in the Rider Waite deck, the figure in the Two of Swords is blindfolded, and I read it as giving a feel the Force, Luke! message...). This is befitting for Lisbeth, considering what she is able to do despite her "blindfold;" her disabilities. I did then take a peek at the little book that comes with the Golden Tarot, and one line that popped out at me in the description of the Two of Swords, was this: You have the ability to make the best of a bad situation.
As Lis would say, Mmmmmm Hmmmmm. Mmmmmm Hmmmmm. True...

And this is the card that came up to represent me in this endeavor with Lisbeth. The Queen of Wands. Again, I first interpreted the card by myself. A queen - a mother figure...and then the RED - heart, passion, fire, blood, hell. These all describe my love for my daughter, and yes, this includes the hell that she and I have been through together. (I have written here about the heartbreak and pain of having a child with chronic illness, and some of the art that I created to deal with this pain...). I also saw the crossed hands echoing the crossed hands and swords in Lisbeth's card. Like daughter, like mother. And the bits that stand out in the Golden Tarot description about this Queen: She is flanked by red angels glowing in the darkness. Passionate and creative. Mmmmmm Hmmmmm. True.

After the tarot reading I went on-line and googled paper cutting. WOW! What a world of gorgeous art is out there! This dress looks like it could be worn by the Queen of Wands...

And so does this skirt!!!

And then I found this artist. Wow, wow, wow. Her work is enchanting. Scroll down and see for yourself...

!!!!!!

AMAZING!!!

(One of Lisbeth's perseverative phrases is, Oooooooooh, little monkey, monkey! :*)
Have a great weekend, folks!

Empressed

The Empress card from Kat Black's Golden Tarot . (I received this deck for my birthday a couple of years ago. It's sumptuous...)

Yesterday I did a tarot reading for the first time in weeks, and I asked about my new project, my daughter Lisbeth's new etsy site. The card that appeared in the "what I most need to look at" spot was The Empress. I was delighted to see this - The Empress represents promise, femininity, abundance, creativity and assurance. And that she is a mother is also relevant to my situation. I took care of my daughter for 14 years before she was transitioned to her her own assisted living home, and I really burned out. I went back to school at that time to get my soul back. I've wanted to help Lisbeth develop a business for a long time now but needed to take care of myself first. (A former therapist of mine likened this process to putting the oxygen mask on oneself first in an airplane emergency so that one can then tend to the waiting child...)

So I finally feel ready.

And when I snuggled up with my husband on the couch last night and waited out the last few minutes of his Ultimate Fighting match (ugh) before switching the channel to TCM, lo and behold! the 8:00 film was The Scarlet Empress, starring Marlene Dietrich. I took this as a good sign. (The Scarlet Empress tells the story of 18th century Russian Empress Catherine the Great's rise to power. What a visual feast! The costumes, and the sets! Wow!! So over the top and fabulous! You get a glimpse of it all here in these film stills. I loved it.)

The Empress is a creator, be it creation of life, of romance, of art or business. While the Magician is the primal spark, the idea made real, and the High Priestess is the one who gives the idea a form, the Empress is the womb where it gestates and grows till it is ready to be born. This is why her symbol is Venus, goddess of beautiful things as well as love. Even so, the Empress is more Demeter, goddess of abundance, then sensual Venus. She is the giver of Earthly gifts.

The Moon The Sun and Sweet Synchronicity

a mail art masterpiece! lucky me!

the full moon at 4:59 this morning...

my Bright Shadow spread...

first card of the spread! no fooling!!! love the Tarot...

Majo playing Music, by Ramon Bayeu Subias...

Two packages arrived late yesterday afternoon, just before the rise of a brilliant full moon: a CD of comic Mozart rarities that I ordered last week, and this stupendous piece of mail art created by the funny, sweet, and talented Dean Grey. Wow! Isn't this drawing a stunner?? I took it straight away to my backyard where there was a remaining smidge of sunlight and placed it on the ground to photograph. Looks like this white beauty stopped to rest in the grass after his long journey from Chicago! This morning I knew that I would post about receiving Dean's mail art, so I put on my new CD and began processing my digital images. (I've meant to buy this CD for years. When I did my Monhegan residency, there was a shelf full of old Mozart records that I played daily while I was there, and this particular record was my favorite. It made me feel so HAPPY! I had forgotten the name of the record until last week when I saw the title scribbled on a slip of paper in an old journal found during my recent cleaning spree: The Comic Mozart. I went immediately on-line and found two CD's; The Lighter Mozart, which has many of the tunes from The Comic Mozart, and the original, The Comic Mozart, which hasn't arrived yet - it's coming long distance from Australia...)

So back to Dean's drawing. The white horse/unicorn reminds me of a piece I worked on a couple of years ago as part of the collaborative doll project I was involved in with 17 other artists. The doll is named Kiki Jung (daughter of Carl) created by my close friend (who happens to be the woman whose portrait I burned recently). Just before her doll arrived in the mail, I had a dream about a white horse, so I was determined to include this horse in the project somehow, even though I knew nothing of the doll. When Kiki arrived, I decided that I would make her a white horse. I researched the symbolic meanings of the white horse, and while looking at images, I researched the meaning of the white horse in The Sun card from the Rider-Waite Tarot deck, and learned about Jung's concept of the Bright Shadow. I knew about our Dark Shadow, and the importance of acknowledging our dark side, so this notion of a bright shadow , and our unrealized potential, really intrigued me. I named the horse Bright Shadow.

All of this was running through my mind while looking at Dean's beautiful white horse. And the backside of his envelope reads, Run free Run free Run free, Tears blowing in the wind. Run free Run free Run free Shine brightly and run free! Dean writes openly on his blog about his great struggle with depression and suicidal ideation, so his image of a tearful but determined white unicorn, charging, with glowing horn cutting through black ink, is moving indeed. Here is a potent symbol of Dean's fierce will and the courage required to face his darkness!

This morning I returned to the site where I had read up about Bright Shadow work a couple of years ago, and decided right then, in the middle of writing this post, to pull out my Tarot cards and do the Bright Shadow spread. I shuffled the deck, and made my 4 piles, and I kid you not, the very first card I turned over was The Sun (having The Sun card show up in this first stack of cards means my untapped potentials lie in the physical realm - I won't go into all that this means to me, this post is rambling and "Phoebe from Friends" flakey enough as it is. Suffice it to say that syncronicity is afoot!). Then I thought, Hmmm, perhaps the music I'm listening to has something to do with this flow of events, and decided to scan the CD cover. Now, can you see the similarity to my spread, and the images from the CD cover? A naked golden haired cherub with a red plumed feather, a gent wearing red, and two robed women...

So many connections, so much grist for the mail art mill...

Look out, Dean! I feel another piece of mail art brewing! This may very well turn into a volley! :^)

Love

While I was visiting my daughter Kaitlyn out on Little Cranberry Island last month, I had my Tarot cards read by this pretty woman at the annual Islesford Fair. The message from her reading has stayed with me for weeks. She asked me to think of a question and then she shuffled and laid out three cards: The Lovers, The Four of Cups, and The Knight of Cups. I also read Tarot cards, so I was interested in hearing someone else's interpretation. I've always thought of the cups as feelings and intuition. This young woman described them in my reading as "love." (Probably because The Lovers showed up in this spread - this influences the meanings of the adjoining cards...). But her reading for me was right on that day. I was visiting the island, feeling a bit like an outsider, sort of like the hungry little kid on the street looking wistfully in the sweet shop window, you know? The community is so tight out there. Well, that is what the four of cups is about. Look at how that person sits with arms crossed, closed off, lost in thought, not noticing the heavenly cup being offered. She said, "You are perhaps too wrapped up in introspection - you are surrounded by love - it is being offered to you. You just need to open up to it!" Wow. For two bucks I got this profound message. So often I am my own prisoner. From that moment on, I dropped my "less than, not a member" feelings and fully engaged with the people on the island and felt welcomed as a part of that loving community. We can attract what we need. And the next day I did my own Tarot cards on the guest bed in Kaitlyn's house, and guess what? I pulled two of those same cards - The Lovers and The Four of Cups. I called Kaitlyn in to be a witness so I'd be believed (!) and then took a picture of the spread. I love the synchronicity of the Tarot.