Moving into the Emperor

I dabble in tarot, and upon performing a series of searches into my recent lethargy towards artwork, I was presented with a new direction that I did not expect.

The phrasing was that in order to break my block, I had to move into head space of the Emperor.

Now the Emperor is a bright old soul, usually stubborn, sometimes childish, but always, always full of wisdom, and stability. I am moving away from a Reversed Seven of Swords, towards this, and the two can reflect on each other - Reversed 7 of swords is immature, guileless and full of talk (without much meaning). Moving from a place of chatter and careless words, I am to move from that to a place of farseeing strength and power - perhaps more silently than before.

Mentally, though, this is irksome - I like my place of chatter and uselessness - but appearently, this is my block. The cards warned me (Reverse Knight of Staves) that moving towards the Emperor would take a certain sacrifice. I would be tearing myself from my old path of chattering and flattery and gossip.

Now let's be serious - we're talking about a chatty woman who loves to talk big and dream big and impress people with her words being told to sit down and shut up and 'wise up'. I've always viewed the Emperor as a little bit useless - he is under the Empress, who is pregnant with ideas, subserviant to her in most ways, and in his stubbornness, and worse, his continual lack of motion, how could he be a place where I could be creative from?

Well the Emperor is not just defined by his subservience to the Empress. While she looks to the stars, he looks to the earth - his kingdom - and while he can be a tyrant, he has the foresight to move forward, knowing which paths are best because he spends time pondering the future (instead of merely reacting to it). He is not just a monkey on the throne (like the King of Hearts in Alice in Wonderland) but handles the earthly matters with wisdom and understanding. He is Solomon, a man who is able to see through the petty arguments and is able to maintain a level head despite the many voices that call for his attention.

But I still need to achieve the activation for the Emperor-sense within myself, and thus, must ask the cards which steps I must follow to better push myself from idle chatter and press forward into a new realm of wisdom.

If you wish, perform an Emperor's Celtic Cross spread for yourself as well. As he is a controller of earthly things, he is a safe place to leave your worries about money, your future, your career and your relationships. He may not be able to bring about change, but he is very good with balance and will have no trouble helping you think things through.

Using the Emperor as your base card, place your hand above him and state your earthly concerns for him to measure. (cut and shuffle three times) Place a card above him for him to carry (your significator for yourself or your immediate concern), cross that card with your "worries", then ask him to weigh the cards - Above him is your hope, below him is your capability, to his left, what you need to stop, to his right, what you need to start.

The final four cards are as follows: Your current emotions, an unexpected source of help, the worst that could happen (your fears), a resolution.

I'm turning to my cards now - and hope that I can come upon a resolution as well.

Blog Define - Go!

As I glance to see if THIS blog has a spell check (you may thank the universe - Blogger does provide means to escape my inability to type things correctly), I am trying to be confident about what this blog will be for.

It will by no means be a way of me showing you my old art or talking about my past creative projects or dealing with material that is not new - unless I am fully revisiting it from a completely new direction.

This may not seem significant at first, but let me explain: places where you post your art or your music or your stories or your other creative endeavours tend to get bogged down in the past. You can't escape the inevitable "and this is what I was thinking at the time", which makes you mentally go back to that time. The trouble with dwelling on the past and your life's story (unless you're writing an autobiography) is that your creative endeavours never seem to want to leave the past. You stop being creative. You start being contemplative.

It's okay to meditate on the past, it is place where you store up information to pull things from - but it's not okay to rely on the past for your creative drive - the past does NOT move forward. Creation can only happen in the moment.

I'm not talking about "well I had an idea for an art project last week...I guess I shouldn't think about that any more, because I never moved on it!". By all means, visit an idea you've never moved on before - but you shouldn't go "I had an idea about an art project last week, but the last time I did anything good was when I was at my old house or when I lived with so-and-so, or when I was being motivated by some force. I obviously need to recapture that, in order to bring this new project to life!" - THAT is my protest.

Recapturing the past is a trap that I feel many artists can fall into. They stop moving forward because they begin to assume that the magic can only occur because of something (a place or an emotion or a person), instead of realizing they don't need that token "whatever" to keep creating new work.

Creativity happens in the moment, and cannot be brought about by trying to recreate the past, or even halting the present. Artists who move into "the perfect place" and then never change anything end up with repetitive, derivitive works. Perhaps they can be satisfied with that, but I refuse to be that way any longer.

I'm going to let my creativity guide me!

Oh - and if you're curious about the things I dabble in - here's a short list:  Fine Art, Novel Writing, Cartoons, Comics, Homebrew DnD and a plethora of other things.