The Veils Part
over 1 year ago – Tue, Nov 01, 2022 at 02:02:24 PM

We are at that turning-time of the year that so many cultures recognize: when the veils are thin.

What does that mean?

The veils between the known and the unknown (or forgotten) worlds, between the visible and the invisible, the living and the dead are penetrable.  There is the potential of access and exchange. Rituals of honoring, ceremonies that open our subtle senses, and social customs of protection all mark this time.

But this is not the only time when the veils part.  There is so much more going on than we are regularly aware of or that is culturally sanctioned.

Becoming comfortable and adept at the wonder of the veils parting is powerful.  

When we attune our Sensitivity, connect with Guidance and Listen beyond the known, we can access the other worlds as part of a practice of deeper knowing—and healing.

Happy Halloween, Dios de los Muertos and Samhain everyone!

"Let the Endless Tears Flow"
over 1 year ago – Sun, Oct 30, 2022 at 03:28:54 AM

As we leave behind the light and shining of summer and move into the dark, Yin time of year (in the Northern hemisphere), we encounter grief. 

The apparent dying of the trees and plants, the shortened days that ask that we sleep longer—we are touching the experience of loss and death.  

This is natural.  And necessary.  This is part of the cycle of love.  

And though it can feel like a sinking so heavy that you are not sure how you will ever emerge again, you are actually strengthening your beautiful heart's capacity for love.  

It is this process of descent that will allow your spring-time of emergence to be fresh and glorious!

But springtime can't be forced; for now you must trust the drawing in and the mourning time.

So this card, Grief invites you:  "Pour out your whole heart.  Let your endless tears flow."

The Shadow Time
over 1 year ago – Sat, Oct 29, 2022 at 06:25:13 AM

 In the Chinese 5-Element seasonal cycle, autumn is the time of turning inward and shining the light of consciousness on our shadow places.

It is a time of reckoning and self-examination.  And though turning to our shadow parts can be painful and even excruciating, it is ultimately an act of self-love—you are embracing the whole of you, the shadow and the shining.

Your shadow parts are not just places of shame and humiliation, transgressions and regrets. They are also parts of your "unsung beauty, that which you keep hidden from the world."

What beautiful, brilliant parts of yourself have you kept hidden away, that long to come out and be seen in the light?  

Can you get grounded, and gently invite them out to be seen—first and foremost by you?  

And then maybe even the rest of the world?

The Invisible World: The Creation Process, Part 2
over 1 year ago – Fri, Oct 28, 2022 at 10:08:38 AM

"How I love painting these!  Give me a trio of colors to blend, a Beethoven piano sonata, some Spanish guitar or sweet violin, and I'm happy." 

This is the second of a 2-part series, written by Power of the Yin Oracle Deck creator D. Yael Bernhard, describing her process, and our collaboration, in creating the card The Invisible World.

These are Yael's words.

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The Amazon woman in the photo had a certain twinkle in her eye.  Her quizzical, childlike gaze was full of mirth.  She knows the invisible world, I thought.  This gaze has something to teach us.

So the mysterious jungle woman took her place in the image, her face transformed into a mask, with pinwheeling space around her in gradients ranging from white to blue to black.  

How I love painting these!  Give me a trio of colors to blend, a Beethoven piano sonata, some Spanish guitar or sweet violin, and I'm happy.  

When the gradients were done, I chose a smaller brush and embedded the clay-colored face in the dark, careening space – she turns with it, emerges from it, relaxes into it.  As if illustrating a concept of physics, I felt this simple architecture was sufficient to suggest something beyond.  Its lines are unevenly spaced, irregular, organic – as if moving.  Yielding to this irregularity is freeing.  

I allow myself to take chances in this project, risking small failures by breaking patterns – putting myself deliberately up against an edge, loosening control, trusting, following an intuited path.  These small risks reflect ideas in the cards themselves.  

Here the unknown is symbolized by the unexpected spirals Intersecting the emanations of dark and light.  I didn't preplan that.  They also mirror the small spirals in the woman's cheeks.  What is exterior to her is also within her. 

Bit by bit, the woman's face harmonized with its surroundings, and a sense of balance emerged between subject and background.

None of this would have happened had Daven not made her suggestion and sent the photos.  That she left it up to me to decide which face to use was no accident.  Sometimes she lets me take the lead, developing the images according to my own initiative.  Other times she requests specific elements – a white rabbit in the snow, a woman howling like a wolf.  Either way, it works.  

Ten months into this collaboration, we've learned to trust each other – and the project itself, which has truly taken on a life of its own . . . a life guided by a feminine sort of power, a felt sense, a shared trust.  And a lot of volleying of ideas back and forth across the Atlantic Ocean.

Grateful am I, for all of it.

The Invisible World: The Creation Process, Part 1
over 1 year ago – Thu, Oct 27, 2022 at 08:20:52 AM

"How do you show the invisible?  How do you depict a parallel world apprehended by some other means than vision?"

In this series of two posts, I'm sharing Power of the Yin Oracle Deck illustrator D. Yael Bernhard's process—our collaborative process—in creating the most recent card image, The Invisible World.

These are Yael's words.

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"I'd like to take this opportunity to show a really interesting face." 

That's what Daven, author of The Power of the Yin Oracle Deck that I'm illustrating, wrote in her comments on my sketch.  This was one out of 56 cards.  She provided me with three photos for inspiration: an African girl staring from behind a curtain; an Amazonian elder with a wizened and wrinkled face; and an Armenian woman dressed in traditional festive garb.  All were wearing different styles of beads around their necks.  I pondered the faces: why had Daven chosen these three?  Certainly they were intriguing.
 

I decided not to ask, and let the seed germinate.  She had planted it for a reason; let the reason reveal itself.

Up until now, the face in the illustration hadn't been my main concern.  It was the background – or rather, the concept and title of the card I was grappling with: "The Invisible World."  

How do you show the invisible?  How do you depict a parallel world apprehended by some other means than vision?  Shamans and prophets, patients emerging from comas and survivors of near death experiences all attest to this non-material plane of existence.  Then there's the whole realm of the imagination.  Whatever we envision arises from the invisible.

I left the photos out on a table, pondering them in my peripheral vision as I went about my day.  An image came to me of a night sky, radiating outward from the face.  She free falls through it, trusting the unseen, the unknown.  The text on the back of the card reads:  Trust your other-than five senses . . . collaborate with mystery . . . 

  We are doing just that in creating this whole deck.

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Watch for part 2 of Yael's creation process for The Invisible World tomorrow!