Originally posted on Toney Brooks blog August 25, 2012.
Destiny's Child
As Holly Sierra and I near the completion of Chrysalis Tarot, a project we've been hard at work on for more than 2-years, we will utilize this blog from time to time to feature glimpses into the deck and the Chrysalis philosophy.
Originally posted on Toney Brooks blog August 25, 2012.
Destiny's Child
As Holly Sierra and I near the completion of Chrysalis Tarot, a project we've been hard at work on for more than 2-years, we will utilize this blog from time to time to feature glimpses into the deck and the Chrysalis philosophy.
Holly's art on the left is titled, Divine Child (click image for greater detail). He or she (the child is androgynous) symbolizes the rich yet unfulfilled potential of Self, i.e. a person's destiny. Psychologist C.G. Jung termed the fulfillment process individuation. He taught that every individual soul is, at birth, analogous to a pencil sketch on a painter's canvass.
The journey of transformation from birth to destiny, and to destiny's full-color, wall-sized portrait, is the storied Hero's Journey of mythology. Examples of the Hero's Journey are the Quest for the Holy Grail, The Odyssey and, as I was delighted to discover online this morning, Shrek. The journey itself supplies the artistry needed to fulfill the canvass' potential.
All tarot decks, in one form or fashion, portray the Hero's Journey and are tools for the artistry of self-discovery.
Our Divine Child, then, is a symbol of the transformational process of Self becoming fully individuated Hero. This process progresses from black and white to brilliant color as we ascend to higher consciousness and greater spiritual awareness. During the black and white, pre-destiny, fumbling around state of ego-dominated being, a person will project an incomplete, imperfect image of Self onto gods and saviors, or others they deem worthy of hero worship.
Chrysalis Tarot, which we call "transformational technology for everyone," is designed to increase awareness of the adventurous Hero's Journey and make it compelling. Many stuck in the black and white stage think they've already arrived when, in fact, they've never left the station. And that's okay. Religion, it's said, is often the entropy of spirituality.
Other souls are restless, questioning, and intuitively sense a higher calling and purpose in life. Even so, destiny presents a zigzagging, co-creative, moving target, never a fixed absolute.
This is where the journey gets intriguing. "Co-creative with whom," you might ask? Well, first let's dismiss saccharine platitudes like, "The Lord has a plan," or even worse, "If it's God's will." A grief-stricken mother, for example, striving to prevent her starving infant from dying in her arms has little need for such sanctimonious eloquence.
Glib sayings like those presuppose a fatalistic universe, a universe in which people are mere puppets dependent upon an officious puppetmaster in the sky pulling billions of strings simultaneously.
Or even more unlikely, the random universe of a detached cosmic clockmaker who wound up creation 14-billion years ago and then scurried off to attend to other cosmic duties, thus dooming the world to the mechanistic fortunes and misfortunes of ticking gears and classical physics.
In the middle ground, we find reason, free will, moral responsibility, personal accountability, quantum physics and a cerebrum under the hood we're expected to use. Still, we realize we do not travel alone; that there's a guiding light we perceive to be both transcendent (exterior) and immanent (interior). And then we move beyond the fantasy of dualism and realize we are One with the guiding light and that everything is connected.
A person's soul sketch is inherited from the collective unconscious of all humanity, thought Jung. He defined the collective unconscious as a memory bank serving the human species: "a collective, universal and impersonal nature that is identical in all human beings." Our conscious mind isn't aware of Jung's collective unconscious, but our unconscious mind decidedly is not only aware of it, but in continuous interplay with it -- if consciousness is a flower, the collective unconscious are the roots.
Since the discovery of quantum physics, there are other hypotheses, in addition to inheritance, providing plausible explanations for interconnectedness with the collective unconscious. One is termed quantum entanglement. Another is Gaia Theory.
Chrysalis Tarot is a tool, like many other tools used for personal growth, whose primary goal is to integrate the personal, conscious mind with the unconscious mind, thereby lifting it into consciousness.
Chrysalis accomplishes this through the inspiration of art and archetypes (psychological instincts) to help our users explore the depths of the collective unconscious. This leads to a fuller understanding of our own Self and more useful discernment of the myriad choices and crossroads leading to personal destiny.
Discernment is aided by synchronicity, the topic of our next blog featuring The Pilgrim (pictured left).
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Oh wow! This is simply sublime - Art as medicine for the soul. This deck is a 'must have' for me. Thanks for sharing. I found Holly's Facebook Page which I added to my own page's favourites. I can't follow the one you linked to in the article since I don't have a personal FB account. Here's the FB page with lots of pictures of Holly's divinely inspired art: http://www.facebook.com/HollySierra
Posted by: Lisa | 09/16/2012 at 05:47 AM
Looks beautiful - can't wait for it's release!
Posted by: James Joss | 09/26/2012 at 05:07 AM
I'm so looking forward to the publication of this deck. I hope it will be soon! ;)
Posted by: Christiane | 10/01/2012 at 12:17 PM
It amazes me how much time is needed to complete the artwork for Tarot cards. More than 2 years for this deck. Another deck I collaborated with took 3 years for completion. I am inspired.
Posted by: Tarot Lovers App | 11/07/2012 at 10:15 AM