Committee card: The Writer

I AM ONE WHO find my greatest passion and inspiration in writing, who writes for a living, who feels a deep creative and Soul connection with the act of writing.

This card is one of my Community Suit cards, which includes my many inner personality parts and my ego self. Some other examples include The Worrier; The Teacher;  The Activist; Inner Critic; and the Playful Inner Child.

Find out about my encounter with Alice Walker and her connection to this card

Find out more about the other card suits used in SoulCollage

The Companion Suit is one of four card suits used in SoulCollage. It represents the animal energies or guides associated with each of the seven chakras or energy centres in the human body.

During a SoulCollage visualization exercise, a dragonfly appeared to me when I focused on my sixth chakra or third-eye centre. In the U.S. southwest tradition of the Hopi, a dragonfly can symbolize breaking through illusion.

Find out more about SoulCollage and the Companion Suit

In Hindu and Buddhist traditions, the third-eye centre is known as the inner eye or power centre, a portal to higher consciousness, clairvoyance, and visions. I chose this card image as the visual motif for my business card.   

I AM ONE WHO breaks through the bondage and illusions of the ego and finds freedom and expansion in the Greater Self.  

After I heard Alice Walker in San Francisco read from her children’s book Why War is Never a Good Idea, I showed her my SoulCollage card The Writer. I started to explain the SoulCollage process to her. She said: “Oh, I love that,” took my card, and signed it. This is the image of her autograph on the back of my Writer card.

My Writer card is one of my Committee cards, one of the four card suits used in SoulCollage.

Find out more about the suits and SoulCollage.

Committee Suit: The Historian

The Committee suit is one of our card suits in SoulCollage. It represents the many aspects of our inner personality, our ego, and the roles we play. It is based on Carl Jung’s concept of sub-personalities. I have made dozens of SoulCollage cards to symbolize many parts of my life, including The Teacher, The Writer, and The Artist.

Find out more about the Committee Suit and SoulCollage.

With a degree in history, I have worked as an oral historian in northern Ontario and Nova Scotia and wrote historical articles for The Vancouver Book. I also co-wrote a photo history book on turn-of-the-century Vancouver, British Columbia.

Find out more about my book and published history articles.

Read history articles on my blog.

 The Source Card is one of three Transpersonal Cards used in SoulCollage. It represents our Divine Source, the Unmanifest, the Mystery, Foundation of Being. I consider my Source Card the most powerful and special card of my personal deck.

When I took the SoulCollage Facilitators’ Workshop with Seena Frost in California, it fascinated me to see how different each Source Card was for the 25 or so participants. We lay our cards on the floor in a circle and walked around them, admiring each other’s visions. Some people used a flower to represent their Divine Source, others a galaxy of stars or a field or mountain landscape. Most had simple but evocative images.

My Source Card

I felt drawn to the notion that I am connected to the cosmos, that my tiny being is part of a vast, undefinable space, that everything shares the same Divine Essence. That’s why I included the image of a small person within the realm of stars and meteors.

I loved the image of a flaming orb, the fiery power that fuels my call to action. It also made me think of the Big Bang and my link to the universe.

The small cluster of white is an ice crystal, I believe. Since I chose the image intuitively, it didn’t really matter what it was. I felt drawn to it because it made me think of all of the tiny particles that clump together to form such a shape, the sense of the One and the Many.

The white circle of light made me think of auras and spiritual light or energy. The photo is actually an image of a backlit dandelion head. I liked the notion of something unwanted (I have far too many dandelions in my yard and garden!) appearing as an object of beauty. Dandelions send a multitude of tiny seeds out into the world, and that symbolism appealed to me.

Find out more about SoulCollage and the card suits.

My Labyrinth card is one of my Council Suit or archetypal cards. A labyrinth is a symbol of inner questing and renewal. Archetypes are universal patterns in the psyche built into all humans, according to Carl Jung, who called them “patterns of instinctual behaviors.”

The images on the card are from my wedding day, when my husband Frank and I got married in a friend’s labyrinth. We called the event our Cycle of Life Celebration and used the labyrinth symbol as a theme and motif for the day, even for our wedding cake.

Find out more about the Council Suit and SoulCollage.

The Witness Self is one of three Transpersonal Cards used in SoulCollage. It represents our wise self that observes all that is with detachment and nonjudgmental consciousness.

Find out more about SoulCollage, Transpersonal Cards and the four card suits.