04/06/24
listening to: young folks - peter, bjorn and john
art is at a standstill recently. i did however manage to add backs to my "candyfloss" tarot deck. annoyingly every step of the pattern made it progressively worse, until i painted over everything with gesso (beloved) and arrived at the perfect look. unfortunately that meant recreating the shitshow on every single card. but i managed to get it done within one day, so that's a relief - not having to look at the ugly stage for long.
i do seem to be more in a tarot/spirituality phase at the moment. looking for interesting tarot materials. maybe i'll get another one of Pollack's books. here's a talk from her about gender in tarot, i've already linked it on masto:
transgender magic and the tarot
and here's a little spread i've been toying with. it's kind of a "diagnostic" landscape of any situation, but you could use it in a more "active"/prescriptive way - like what needs to be in place in order to achieve x? either way, it looks at the interior/exterior - particular/universal - separate/united aspects of a situation. here are the positions:
1. the external material world, one of the ways everything is connected. except here we're looking at it as it being "out there"
2. you/the querent in the material world, how you navigate the circumstances, what your connection to it is. your physicality
3. your/the querent's internal world, the thoughts and feelings, the soul
4. the spiritual world, the other way everything is connected. spirit. what's happening in that "out there" right now (which would make the 3 how you're navigating /that/).
as you can see they form interesting combinations. 1 and 4 are the greater forces in your life, 2 and 3 is your whole self. the 2 is kind of a result of the 3 and 1 taken together etc.
usually i lay it out in a line, but i tried laying it out in a square as well, so that the two Greater Aspects can sit next to each other:
2 - 3
1 - 4
and that's just asking for an additional card at the top and bottom - to summarize and transcend the internal binary, and the external binary. and then maybe one more card to unify /those/. like above 2 and 3 will be the Whole you, under the 1 and 4 will be the Whole... wholeness. and then those two cards can be summarized/harmonized by one final card, in the middle or off to the side? if you're feeling expansive. i think you can get plenty from just the four, but why not play and experiment.
