“It will be as if you took a kaleidoscope full of all the bits and pieces of your life and held it up to the light and there, even as you look, falling into place are the unique patterns and the amazing beauties of your Story.”
In my new memoir No Letter in Your Pocket (Guernica Editions, 2023), I reveal how empowering and transformative the making of SoulCollage(R) cards can be. This creative process, which honours all aspects of ourselves, was instrumental in my healing. This four-minute promo video for the book includes some of the hundreds of cards I made and how I used them to help me find compassion and forgiveness. To view the video and find out more, see https://www.heatherconn.com/memoir/.
DISCOVER YOUR WISDOM, CHANGE YOUR WORLD™
About SoulCollage®
SoulCollage® is a fun, intuitive form of self-discovery, founded by Seena Frost in California. It is a creative way to celebrate all aspects of yourself, beyond any concept of positive or negative.
Incorporating archetypes and basic concepts from Jungian psychology, SoulCollage honours your whole, divine self or spiritual essence in a visual way.
Hence, alongside my cards for Bliss and Grace, I have one that represents She Who Likes Confrontation. Another one depicts my powerful Source, yet another my Witness Self, the deep part of me that can view events and actions with detachment and great wisdom.
SoulCollage® is a non-denominational practice that honours any and all respectful spiritual traditions — and those without any particular faith.
“By tapping your creative source, your ability to express yourself through images, you come to know yourself more fully and deeply, access the intuitive powers within you to heal, and naturally nurture the soul.”
— Cathy A. Malchiodi, The Soul’s Palette
Seena Frost describes Soul Collage® this way:
“It is a system for creating a deck of cards which is a visual journal, your own living journal to which you can add over years. Your deck of SoulCollage® cards will help you identify and image your diverse inner parts, the beautiful ones and shadowy ones, the easy-to-like ones, and the harder-to-like ones. You will also reflect on the external guides and allies in your life, visible and invisible, human and archetypal, and make cards for them.
“A SoulCollage® deck is the Story of You. It is a tangible way to know yourself in your diversity and depth, and also to show yourself to others. You can consult them intuitively and discover wisdom within yourself which will amaze you. Besides all this, creating them is just plain fun! You will love your deck — a multi-card Mirror of your Self and your Soul — whether it consists of three cards or a hundred.”
How does SoulCollage differ from regular collage?
- The card-making process is designed to access your subconscious, inviting memories, emotions or insights to the surface
- The emphasis is on self-exploration and self-discovery, rather than creating art
- The cards promote personal transformation and integration of our many aspects of self
- The cards and their images create an ongoing narrative of our lives, connecting the personal and the universal
- The collages contain no words
- The cards are not copied, traded or sold; each one is honoured as a unique representation of someone’s self, inner and outer
- The four suits of SoulCollage honour the concept of the “One and the Many” and draw on Jungian psychology and the power of archetypes
- Once created, the collages are meant to be consulted through Gestalt-like exercises; rather than be hung up and admired, they invite interaction through an ongoing relationship
- As a trademarked creative process, SoulCollage is part of a global community of trained facilitators, conferences, and workshops
Two cards from the Council suit: the mandala (top) and sacred spiral (bottom)
What do you need to do SoulCollage?
No art experience is necessary for the SoulCollage practice. All you need are 5 x 8 matte cards, magazines, glue, and scissors. (I provide all supplies and images in my workshops.) The process comes from Frost’s background of psychology, theology, and work with Jean Houston, one of the founders of the Human Potential Movement. It involves the creation of cards in four suits, each representing the psychological, communal, energetic, and archetypal dimensions, respectively. You can use four separate colors of matte board to represent the different suits.
— Alan Katowitz photo
Here is a brief description of the suits:
- Committee suit: Our many inner personality parts, our ego, our character. Some examples: The Writer; The Worrier; The Teacher; The Activist; Inner Critic; Playful Inner Child
- Community suit: Our loved ones, teachers, pets, guides and mentors — anyone or anything that represents “community” to you. Besides your friends or family, this can include people, dead or alive, who have inspired or challenged you as thinkers, artists, or spiritual leaders. Some examples: Gandhi; the Dalai Lama; Desmond Tutu; Georgia O’Keeffe
- Companion suit: Animal guides visualized in our body’s energy centres, a different one associated with each of our seven chakras
- Council suit: The archetypes who (that) guide and challenge us personally, and who are active in the collective consciousness of the planet. Some examples: Fear; Death: Bliss; Grace; Shame; The Warrior
There can be overlap between some of the suits. For instance, The Warrior can appear in the Committee Suit and/or the Council suit.
Three Transpersonal Cards stand alone, apart from any of the suits:
- Source Card: It represents our Divine Source, the Unmanifest, the Mystery, Foundation of Being
- Soul Essence: Each person’s unique spark of Source, our divine potential, how we manifest our Source energy (Jean Houston describes her Essence as “a construct that provides order, meaning, and direction to apparent chaos”
- Witness Self: Our Observer Self that observes all that is with detachment and nonjudgmental consciousness
Council card: Artemis
What is the process of SoulCollage
In simple terms, SoulCollage involves choosing images that you feel drawn to or that evoke a strong reaction in you, whether you understand why or not. You can make a collage card without knowing what it signifies at first; the meaning can become clear later. No words are included in the collages; this is meant to bypass the linear, logical brain and celebrate spontaneity instead. Each card has a single focus or energy.
A SoulCollage workshop combines both individual and group exploration; making at least three cards; guided visualization; and a variety of verbal or written exercises, depending on the time and desire of the group.
Discover and share the value of SoulCollage
Making SoulCollage cards can have great therapeutic value, especially creating a card for universal aspects of our lives such as Fear and Death. You can make a card to represent your Playful Inner Child and one that shows your Wounded Child.
How do you use SoulCollage?
As a form of symbolic story-telling, SoulCollage is a great way to create community and healing and have fun. People both shy and hesitant have opened up using this intuitive process.
I have used the cards in an informal sharing/healing circle that I facilitated for my family to honour my father and his life while he was in a hospice. Since then, I have introduced SoulCollage and my cards to a group of hospital volunteers.
Besides my regular SoulCollage workshops, I have used this process with some of my writing students (adults with mental illness), who have conveyed parts of themselves with pictures that they couldn’t articulate in words.
Used alone or in groups, SoulCollage cards can serve as a catalyst for journaling, poetry, solo or group rituals, or creating affirmations. You can pick one a day for inspiration, self-enquiry or to accompany an intention. Create one of your hero, mentor, friend or loved one and display it for inspiration. Use the cards as a form of wise counsel, like visiting the all-knowing Oracle within you.
Try many fun and insightful ways to use SoulCollage with Heather as facilitator:
- Creative writing workshops
- Dream groups
- Storytelling sessions
- Birthdays and wedding showers
- Job transition and workplace change management
- Employee morale-building workshops
- Healing, trauma, and addiction recovery work
- Spiritual guidance and self-expression
- Family healing/sharing circle for grief, celebration of life, honouring a friend/relative in hospice (roughly two-hour session)
The following questions & answers appear on the website of SoulCollage® founder Seena Frost:
Why do SoulCollage®? What do people get out of making and using SoulCollage® cards?
People give lots of answers to this question. Many people share their answers via YouTube videos (see, the SoulCollage® YouTube channel. Often people say they love the invitation to be creative. They say they find out more about all the parts of themselves, and they get to keep, use, and share the cards and continue to deepen their relationship to those parts. Some people use their cards to deal with grief, illness and recovery issues. Many say it is just plain fun and it gives them self-care and special time for themselves. In these unsettling, changing times, SoulCollage® provides an inexpensive, accessible way to find direction within oneself and, at the same time, experience supportive community.
What do you do with the cards after you’ve made them?
One of the SoulCollage® Trainers has said that making SoulCollage® cards without reading them and working with them is like making a fabulous meal and not eating it! So the second part of the process is very important — working with the cards using the SoulCollage® “I Am One Who…” You draw a card, hold it up, say this phrase, “I Am One Who…”, and it allows you to step into the role of the image on that card. You speak from the image, with the image’s own voice and let it tell you quite spontaneously who it is and what it has to say to your questions.
Some people have a daily practice of drawing one or two cards and letting the messages from their cards accompany them more consciously through their day. Helpful Link: “Reading your SoulCollage® Cards”. To see examples and experience a personal reading with four cards from our gallery, randomly generated in your moment, go to Your Personal Reading. Pretend they are your own cards and figure out your own meaning from their images! If you want more info on Doing Readings with Your SoulCollage® Cards, Seena has a whole CD about it by that name.
For more info about Heather’s workshops, call 1-800-601-5611 (in Canada) or 604-886-6520
See Workshops for more details
“I Am One Who. . .”: a significant SoulCollage phrase
The “I am One Who” exercise is a powerful way to interact with a SoulCollage card. Using this phrase either verbally or in writing, the card creator imagines entering the image(s) on the card and viewing the world from the perspective of that person, animal, or object. Allowing words to flow spontaneously, the card creator repeats the “I am One Who” phrase to describe sensations, thoughts or feelings associated with the card images. This process can feel scary or strained at first, but it accesses a deeper part of ourselves, offering insights about our inner being that might otherwise have remained dormant or ignored.
This technique is similar to the timed writing and oral timed writing exercises that I use in my writing classes, inspired by Natalie Goldberg and her “wild mind” process. Such exercises offer a way to bypass our controlling mind and let a deeper, more vulnerable part of ourselves gain a voice and achieve recognition.
Two committee cards: The Yoga Practitioner; The One Who Meditates
About SoulCollage® Facilitator Heather Conn
“Every production of an artist should be the expression of an adventure of his [or her] soul.”
— W. Somerset Maugham
Thank you to the many artists and photographers whose work appears on SoulCollage cards. Your images have inspired us to recreate and discover our inner and outer worlds. As a writer and photographer who honors and supports the role of artists and their work, I strive to be respectful of your rights.
SoulCollage cards are not bought, sold, or traded; they are created solely for a card maker’s own inner exploration. When observed within a workshop, these cards serve to demonstrate the SoulCollage process or someone’s inner realization.
Thank you, Seena
SoulCollage is a trademarked process created by Seena Frost. Thank you, Seena, for introducing such a fun, fulfilling, and enriching creative tool. For more information about Seena and her work, please visit her website.
“Kill the imagination and you kill the soul. Kill the soul and you’re left with a listless, apathetic creature who can become hopeless or brutal or both.”
— Marion Woodman, Bone: Dying into Life
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