picture by me...all rights therefor reserved...
I love my world, with all my airy fairy nonsense in full preen and presentation. I’ve been looking for “a sign” these past few days…well, probably more like weeks, but, consciously, now, today, I’ve been asking for some sort of sign, some sort of relevance to these things swarming through my brain, for a couple days…and I tumbled over this post by Bonita Summers. Bingo, bazinga and everything in between.
Bonita says, “Our minds are constantly looking for patterns of synchronicity. It’s how we find meaning in our world and a connection between what is without and what is within.”
If that is not what I need to have in order to get my attention, I don’t know what to tell you.
I’ve been working through the weirdness that is my brain. I have Oracle cards. I have Tarot cards. I have Self-care cards. I have Soul Collage ® cards. I have Yoga cards, for the love of peace. None of them really ‘do it’ for me, although the Soul Collage ® cards come the nearest and the dearest to my heart.
I think the reason the Soul Collage ® cards don’t quite hit the mark w me, or for me, is because I made them following someone else’s premise…as in, I needed to have an idea in the back of my head of which archetype with whom I was working, which suit which card could fall into at which time. There is a great deal of freedom in these cards, but even small restrictions can rub me the wrong way and keep me from heading out in certain directions. It is always those certain directions that hold the most value for me. I simply have to be able to reach them.
I also think, at this point in my life, the fact that those cards are collaged is causing me some inner turmoil. Over a year ago, I saw a deck of cards on etsy, I am so not going to see if they are still there, but they were. The artist had created a deck of playing cards…and the images on the front and back of the cards were of sea creatures. It was the octopus that drew me to the deck in the first place, of course. The artist—I am so sorry I cannot name her and/or link back to her—used card stock and drew everything herself. I always kicked myself for not just buying the deck. I didn’t buy it because…I was planning to make my own deck…just not of playing cards.
I’ve had the idea in my head for years to make my own “Tarot/Oracle deck”. Probably since I made my own rune coins in the mid-90s. (No, I do not still have them…I gave them to someone, long long ago. I never used them that much anyway.) But I evolved. I continue to evolve. The whole concept of Tarot/Oracle cards does not always bode well with me these days. I am not against them…I use them for my own personal edification often enough. When I saw the deck of playing cards, my ideas began to revolve once more. I don’t want playing cards. I don’t want Tarot/Oracle cards. I do want something more along the lines of Soul Collage ® cards, but more of my own thing, more in-depth, more meaningful to me specifically. I also want something that when I look at it, there is no subterfuge. There are not 100 different things this piece could mean at any given time. I want to look at the card and see—ahh—it says the bush is burning and the Voice of God is bearing down upon me…rather than Father Issues, make peace with your father, or your brother, or your cousin who is male, or maybe your male boss, or maybe a male co-worker, or maybe the guy who brews your coffee every morning…of course, my card would be better if it said something along the lines of, “God is saying THIS to you.”
I do love Bonita’s idea of quotes. R’s ex, the bag of hammers, used to have an Oracle Book. In fact, I think it was THIS one. You ask a question, then open the book. Whatever the quote is there is the answer to your question. I prefer to use the Bible myself, if I am going to do things that way. I know; some people about fell over when I said that, given my …distaste for Christianity. I can “hate the players, but appreciate the game…”, if you want to put it into more easily digestible terms… my other general distaste is for the rest of the bible still ‘untranslated’ and still not given to the general public by the Church…but I am not about to enter into a religious debate here today. My real problem w using the Bible …or the Oracle Book…or any other book (I did have a friend who used ‘The Lord of the Rings’ in this capacity, a long long time ago…) is …entering the world of the koan…if I am accessing something like cards, of any sort, or books of any sort, then my subconscious and intuition are already ignoring me—or, more likely, I am ignoring them, and I want an answer, not another puzzle.
I think there is a balance in there somewhere, between the fact that I want to draw my own cards…and adding quotes to help…engage the mind. So I can put my heart and my mind into the pieces. Add into that a knitted bag in which to carry them…and I think I can be golden. Plus, as I change and need different answers or different quotes, I can add to what I have, remove what is unnecessary, rearrange the entire platter.
I think this is a marvelous idea. I am grateful for Bonita for putting it out there. Thank you!
