Creative Thoughts

Did you ever stop to think about how amazing certain aspects of evolution came to be? Have you thought about how or why it might matter to you right now?

Imagine the early days of history when the first people thought of making holes in a reed to make the first flutes. Or when the first people thought to make a drum. Imagine the progress, or process they went through making the first music with their inventions. From all indications, these instruments first had ritual uses, and making music just for fun came later. Who was the first person to make this transition? No one knows the answer to that, of course, but try and imagine what that process might have been like.

Seems like we might need to reimagine how various aspects of our evolution happened. Why? For one, it is interesting to think that we did not evolve all that slowly from people who could just manage to kill a wild animal with a spear and roast it over a fire to being people who could create complex architecture and understood complex concepts, or at least approached them if they did not understand them.

Consider, for example that Newgrange in Ireland, which was build thousands of years before the pyramids, is made from stones fitted together, and the roof of the inner chamber, which is vaulted, and has no mortar, has never had a roof leak. Can any builder today claim such success? Another feature that was built in was an opening over the front entry that allows the inner chamber to be illuminated by the rising sun only and exactly on the Winter Solstice every year.

Or how about all the various ancient people, all the way back to caveman days, who somehow just knew that when a person dies that the invisible part of them that kept them alive has left the body that the person was going on to some other level of reality, and so they developed rituals to recognize the death and somehow through their symbolic acts help the person transition into whatever is next. Imagine the thought processes of the first people who began to grasp this.

If we can begin to grasp these concepts, among others, it may offer us other ways to see our own evolution. It is often the far out thoughts that can create results close to home.

The Quiet in the MIddle of the Noise

During the holidays what I enjoy most is to sleep late, go dancing or work out in the evenings, and in between, just read, watch movies, listen to music and be able to enjoy a cup of tea without worrying about having to finish it and rush off.

A perfect time for cleaning out closets and doing a deep cleaning. Maybe try cooking something differently today.

Little things prompt reflection for me, like the fact that the busy street now only has a car on it every once in a while. It is so quiet, compared to normal.

I like the way lights twinkle from quite a distance over the snow and fog against the mountains. The lights give it the sense of the skyline being personally painted for you as shimmering lights continue to define the profile of the buildings and mountains.

Where the quiet settles in, you can see the audience sitting down waiting for the next story. These are the invisible audience that is always waiting to see what you do next. They are just as ready to applaud for us as someone else.

Capture the essence of the lights, capture the inspiration and hope they transmit. A quiet moment provides time for a new idea to germinate, then for dreams to come into sharper focus.

Every touch now is a memory. Every touch now is a light. It is the light in the middle of winter, soft, distant, creative and sweet. Like the embers that glow and have enough power to get the fire roaring. The quiet in the middle.

Magic in Action

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" said Arthur C. Clarke.

It is easy to see how that refers to cell phones, computers, ipods, TVs, and other things that represent a quantum leap forward to an older generation, although less amazing to a younger generation.

People can easily agree on this.

Yet, when we look at less physical aspects of our lives, it seems more magical. For example, have you ever noticed how when you are thinking of things, they just seem to manifest? You think about a subject, and here is a book on it, found in an unexpected way, and unexpected place.

Many people have had the experience of thinking of someone, then suddenly they call. How about thinking that you would like to do something, and here is an opportunity to do it?

Yet, when it comes to bigger things, like creating a more satisfying way of getting income, our belief is often that the results are in someone else's hands.

How funny. One person imagines a new product, creates it and makes money from it, and we do not see that as magic. It is simply hard work. Another person imagines a piece of writing, or a picture, or sculpture and creates it, and it seems amazing that someone could have created music or art that beautiful, a product of imagination, rather than hard work. Why is it different?

Maybe we should quit thinking of it as work. Think of it as something we would like to do that we could make money from. Our income would grow simply from doing something we would enjoy doing anyway.

I don't mean just the obvious easy choices like mattress tester or marijuana taster.

I mean someone has fun walking dogs for other people. Someone else has fun by doing custom woodwork. Someone has fun by tuning up cars. Someone has fun by doing psychic readings or energy healing. Someone has fun by designing computer programs. Someone has fun being a landscaper or a farmer. Someone has fun cooking.

How many times have you come across a new product or service and thought, "I wish I would have thought of that." Maybe you did think of it, but you didn't do it.

So let the magic play out. Think of what you can do or would like to do and focus on it and see how much support the universe provides. All magic starts with imagination, then the rest flows from there.

Stir the Energy Up

When our energy gets stuck, we have to get up and stir things up in order to draw new energy to us and magnetize ourselves for good things to come.

If you are wishing that you had an opening, that events were moving in your favor more, keep focused on your intention and do anything to stir things up.

Funny how it works. I am looking for ways to keep my business expanding. So I spend more time dancing and swimming and walking. Then I go home and find new business in my email.

What is the connection? I just keep putting my energy out there in the aethers, projecting, attracting, magnetizing.

Bodies in motion create vibrations. We are the greatest tools of magic. Focus and project. Then open to receive.


Of course, there are some evenings when I just stay home and kick back. And there are also lots of days when I send out emails, make calls, go to events to meet new people and take other actions to generate business.

That's right, just fire up the engines, put those ingredients in the cauldron and stir until ready to drink.

And then sometimes, I just have to step away from it and go knock back a few scotches and dance or better yet........

I will let your imagination complete that last thought. And if you have a good imagination, you know how to reach me and tell me how you would end that sentence.

All Dreams Are Fragile

All dreams are fragile until they are strengthened. Dreams begin as visions that dance in our imaginations.

It is not until we act on them that they begin to take on a heavier consistency. After we have helped to shape our dreams through action, results start to coalesce.

The picture in our minds grows brighter, stronger.

If we do not handle this dream carefully at first, it may escape our grasp, fall and break into a million little pieces.

We have to treat it more gently when it is smaller, to nurture it into its full size. All dreams are fragile until they have time for us to breathe life into them. Until then, they are just visions.

All dreams are fragile at first, so handle them gently.

Once they have been molded by experience and strengthened with our efforts, they are strong enough to stand alongside all our other accomplishments.

That is why the visions that come to us in dreams seem ephemeral at first. Everything starts with a vision. And when they are in that visionary state, they are fragile at first.

So treat them kindly and sweetly and then you will be able to influence which ones grow and become the next stage of your life.

All dreams are fragile at first, so handle them gently.

Cosmic, Curious, Connected

One of the reasons that many people feel so dislocated in adapting to new realities is that we just look back at our parents generation and they had one job or worked for one company for their whole working life. Then that shifted during our lifetime.

How many jobs have you had? I know that I have had many. Some I tried just out of pure curiosity. That cat characteristic keeps surfacing as part of my cat (Leo) personality. I got interested in tarot, reiki, past lives, dowsing and so much more just out of curiosity. And that took me in unexpected directions.

My career path has not been linear for the same reasons. Oh, yes, for periods of time it was linear, but overall, not.

I remember when Grandpa retired, that was just sort of the end stage. Just relaxing, nothing special to be done. No more goals to achieve. Just a state of rest and a very easy going pace until death.

Today, however, we look around and see people in their 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s taking up new challenges and starting new careers.

Part of what I think now is that after 40 years of farm or construction work they were just worn out. Those were the kinds of work my family did. Oh eventually they branched out into other things, but still it was many years of hard work whether they worked in factories, offices, as teachers or salesmen. And the women got worn out from having and raising 4,5 or a dozen kids. Back then, family planning meant figuring out where all the kids would sleep.

Today, lots of jobs consist of sitting in front of computers and using phones to do our work which not only doesn't wear us out in the same way, it also leaves the opportunity to get up and do something else physically.

In some ways, all these changes seem chaotic. I am working on creating a transition into my next full time career, and when I look back, it had absolutely nothing to do with the career I was involved in 20 or 30 years ago, although you could see it as a tangent branching out from what I was doing 10 or 15 years ago.

Focusing on what is next is plenty to do for now. I am not even extending my vision forward another 10 or 20 years. Curiosity and surprises have led me inexorably forward until now, and no doubt they still will, for as long as I live.

Coyote as Chupacabra

It turns out that the animal reported to be a chupacabra killed in Texas this week was really a coyote deformed by mites and parasites, not a mythical creature.

However, there is an interesting life lesson to this story.

For one, that animal must have gone through an extreme amount of agony before it was shot. Perhaps it was shunned by other coyotes. Without fur for protection, perhaps even walking around outside in sunlight would have been painful. Perhaps it had to struggle to even scavenge or digest what it ate. It must have had a distorted life as well as a distorted appearance.

If we think about coyotes in general, they are survivors. People in suburbs of Los Angeles and Las Vegas and other cities now routinely site them in their neighborhoods, and these are not animals you normally see in urban areas. But you see, once we extended our neighborhoods out into what had been their neighborhood for eons, they learned to adapt and scavenge.

That survival instinct led them to follow the path of highways east, until now they are thriving in eastern and southern parts of the U.S. where they had never been seen before. They have changed the geography and environment wherever they go. For example, the wolves are natural adversaries of coyotes, so when people have tried to kill all the wolves, what they got in return was more coyotes.

Native lore attributes a dual intensity to the coyote, as both a creator character, and a dangerous destructive character. In the tales he can be both funny and vicious, and in both aspects, an important player in the fabric of life.

I don't know if these are reasons why people who help people cross the border from Mexico are called coyotes, but it would make sense. They are resourceful and cunning, but can also have the reputation for being ruthless. No matter what others think of them, they perform a necessary role in society. They exist as long as there is a demand for their services.

The animal coyotes find a way to survive in the world at all costs. There are elements of this trait all around the world. For example, the character Loki in the Norse mythology contains many of the same elements. They are not exactly equal, but they contain that blend of humor and danger when pushed to the boundaries of the world, at which point the boundary is expanded. Then coyotes, and Loki, are no longer outside, but inside of the boundaries and part of our world that will always be part of our world.

You see, if we did not have these scary characters at the boundaries of our world, we would invent them. Have we invented the chupacabra or Bigfoot? Would the Norse stories be much more pallid without Loki? Can we have a world without something strange at the periphery? Consider this. In both the native coyote stories and the Norse Loki stories, we find humor. What would life be without humor?

If we perceive a sick coyote to be a supernatural monster, what does that say about the way our minds work? And for as much havoc as he wreaks in the stories, the only stories in the Norse myths that contain any humor are the ones where Loki is a central character. Perhaps the inseparable twins of danger and humor are part of the essence of survival strategies.

The Pop in Popular

There was a time in my life when I read tons of non-fiction, history, biographies, how to books, self help books and for fun, some mainstream fiction. I knew that millions of other people were busy reading mysteries and romances, but I just never got around to that. There were so many subjects I wanted to know more about that reading for fun usually got squeezed out, except for perennially irresistible writers like Tom Robbins and Kurt Vonnegut. But they were the exception rather than the usual fare.

Then one day several years ago, I felt like it was time to read some popular fiction just for fun. I was wanting to relax with an intriguing story populated with interesting characters.

The change started when I used to have long commutes to and from work and I wanted something else to listen to besides what was on the radio. You can only tolerate so many traffic updates while you are sitting in it, or hearing the same few bits of news and music repeated over and over. I went to the library and the bookstores and started listening to books on tape and CD while I was driving. I enjoy a well told story, and some of the authors who write popular fiction are good storytellers. You are not going to learn a lot of facts from them or get tips on how to improve your life, but you can get a story with interesting characters who make you want to know what happens next.

I liked listening to their stories so much that I started picking up more of the books in print by those authors. When I found an author I liked, I kept reading them, then looked for others who also had a style that appealed to me.

Now I know why some authors are popular. Of course, you can only read so much, so it is natural to gravitate to storytellers who really click with you.

Interesting to observe how we change over time.

Infinite Variations

The tarot has proven to be a very durable set of symbols that countless artists have been able to add their own ideas and style to, sometimes expressing the same ideas with different models and symbols, other times changing symbols to fit a philosophical concept. Even though there are infinite variations on the themes found in the flow of the cards, the essential ideas remain intact.

For example, the Sun card in one deck may show a child riding a horse in the foreground, another artist shows two children playing, either a boy and a girl, or two children of different races, while a third depicts an adult couple couple, perhaps a more mature version of the Lovers. Each artist has a point they are making by choosing to picture it this way, yet the essence of the Sun remains the same, that of wholeness, health, happiness and joy.

The Tower card is depicted as being struck by a lightning bolt, people falling out, headed for a crash landing. Another designer isolates the image 0f a person falling, while another shows a beautiful building illuminated, but not struck by, lightning. in all cases, the essence is about a sudden fall, perhaps a downfall from an ego that is too inflated, an awakening or flash of insight that comes with a sudden change.

The Hierophant has traditionally been pictured as a pope, although early versions had a popess, a female pope. Another artist changes this into a Buddha, while someone else makes the card into a sort of humble looking spiritual person who is in a contemplative or prayerful pose. The essence of these is the arising of spirit and the contrast or struggle between official religions, dogma, heartfelt spirituality and how it influences us.

There are decks where the Lovers are depicted as bi-racial or gay, which is a way of being more inclusive. It is also a way for the artist to make the point that love comes in lots of different flavors.

The Devil has been changed to temptation, materialism, restraint or a number of other keywords. The concept always was the things we allow to hold us back, not some weird creature outside of ourselves that makes us do things.

Death has been depicted as a skeleton riding a horse through a field of the dead, as a funeral pyre with a phoenix rising out of it, as the close, showing a cycle of life from slain soldier to baby accentuated with butterflies, as transition, with a gateway, all of which point to the essential meaning as a major evolution, not necessarily death.

One of the most famously changed cards is the Magician, who has been depicted in the early decks as a juggler or sleight of hand showman, a ceremonial magician, a shaman, a witch and other things. Essentially, this character is about living by his wits, making things happen, exerting his will to create an outcome.

Judgement also works quite well when changed to karma, ascension or reconciliation. Essentially, we move up to different levels of existence based on our choices and behaviors.

These artistic and philosophical changes are aspects that make collecting decks such a pleasure. Some of these variations resonate with users as much as they did with the artist, and so a person might choose to use one deck today and another tomorrow, or one for a long while and then switch to another. It is also why a person may buy one deck because they have seen some images they really like, but when they look through the whole deck, there are some characters or cards they really can't stand, which might prompt them to get rid of a deck and look for a different one to work with.

Yes, a picture is worth a thousand words, and every picture does tell a story. Some of these pictures which contain overlaid symbology could prompt way more than a thousand words and many stories.

Tarot Symbols and Their Uses

The design of the Rider Waite Smith Tarot deck expressed such a powerful vision that it changed both the way of reading cards and influenced the design of new decks for 100 years now.

Perhaps the most revolutionary aspect of it was that it put a picture on every card in the deck, and every picture unleashes ideas, taps into the subconscious and participates in the telling of a story to the person who is requesting the reading, or through the reader to the person requesting the reading.

In the original design, the author, Arthur Edward Waite, and the artist, Pamela Colman Smith, incorporated many metaphysical symbols to add layers of meaning to the use of the cards. These provide guidance and advice of a spiritual nature and address the essence of issues portrayed in the images. They form part, not the whole of the meanings behind the pictures. Usually the central image will bring some insight or understanding to light all by itself, and it is not always necessary to understand all of the reasons behind various details. That is part of the genius of the design; there are plenty of clues there, and intuition guides us in picking up on them and making a whole and useful narrative.

Many artists, authors and designers have followed the patterns created by Waite and Smith, and so when people are learning about tarot, this deck is still a jumping off point for understanding a deck and how to work with it, providing a valuable frame of reference that aids in understanding the process.

However, in recent years, many excellent artists and designers have proven that a great deck can be made from all kinds of images, from abstract or representational paintings to black and white drawings to photographs to computer enhanced images to reproductions of great art to fantasy stories to great literature. And these can be effective even without incorporating the metaphysical symbology included in the RWS because the choice of imagery can cover a tremendous amount of territory on its own.

Other types of symbols such as numbers and colors are more universal and accessible, and these two elements are found in nearly every deck, except, for example, decks designed in black and white or without numbers.

Even though some concepts may be changed by design, the essence usually remains. Changing Judgment to Karma, Devil to Temptation, Death to Transformation, Fool to Seeker, World to Universe and so on, simply makes the concept more gentle or more palatable to some people.

Any collection of images can make a good deck to read with, including some non-tarot oracle decks, such as the Soul Cards, Psy Cards, Medicine Cards, Angel Cards, Faery Cards, Titania's Fortune Cards or Madame Endora's Fortune Cards, which do not use suits, major and minor arcana, court cards or numbers as methods of organization. Randomness characterizes their design as well as their use.

Tarot is special because there is a progression in the story lines, an organization of the images, a flow between both intuition and logic, or as many people might say, between the right and left hemispheres of the brain, the creativity and chaos and the order and principles.

Images are a rich and nuanced way of addressing consciousness at multiple levels simultaneously. A person can have one of these experiences looking through a bunch of old family photos, or a book of art or photography, although the family photos might be too limiting because there are too many personal references, whereas the universal symbology of a tarot deck is open to everyone, and a book will always present things in the same order, where shuffling a deck can present virtually unlimited juxtapositions of images together, which varies the messages and their impact.

The creation of the tarot deck is one of the most powerful tools we can use, not simply as a fortune telling device, but as a self teaching tool or meditational device in the same way a mandala works.

One old tarot reader always maintained that if a person did not have any other books, and if they were simply locked in a room for a month with nothing to read or look at but a tarot deck, that at the end of that month, they would have keys to all the important life lessons in their hands, and the cards could help them unlock the mysteries of the universe.

True, it takes most people far longer than a month to learn to use a deck of cards, and even those of us who have been using them for years are never done learning from them, as layer after layer reveals new secrets to us. It is amazing how you can look at a picture hundreds of times or thousands of times and still find something you never realized before or never noticed before. They were designed that way, and that is the genius of the deck.

Imagination's Importance

What would our life be without our imagination? A lot less, that's for sure. Think about the simple function that novels, and by extension, movies, play in our lives. It is our imagination that lets us travel to places where we have not been physically. It helps us experience what it must have been like to live in different times, as different people.

Imagination plays a vital role in providing stress relief. When we come home from work, and we set aside our personal business for a while, we enter into a more peaceful state of consciousness as we read a book or watch a movie, and imagine for a little while what it might be like to be someone else, be somewhere else and do something else. It is our waking dream state.

It is more than just entertainment. Think what our life would be like without our imagination? Probably at a much lower subsistence level, for one.

Many people tout the importance of positive thinking and creative visualization. These are simply other terms for using your imagination.

Our imagination can pave the pathway for the physical acts to follow. Cavemen imagined the hunt before they went on the hunt. Inventors imagined the bow and arrow, the wheel, the observatory, the vase and the sailboat before they invented them. Inventors still work this way, whether they are working on new aircraft, new computers or new phones.

Our imagination is also our gateway to psychic ability. The ability to see beyond the ordinary physical reality is how we open our second sight.

Our imagination has aided and enhanced our survival instincts and it has also contributed to our enjoyment of life and the development of everything from music and art to literature and games.

Exercise your imagination frequently to keep it fluid. It is a key to success in every aspect of life.

Hunting Magic

Primitive people discovered something that we still use. When they were making their cave paintings, they were visualizing themselves having a successful hunt, by performing the ritual of drawing pictures and getting themselves into the feeling of being successful before they went. We call this self hypnosis.

They knew that their mind could prepare the way for their physical success. Who knows if they discovered this by feeling, by visualization, by dreaming or some other method, but they did, and we have known it ever since. Sometimes we just forget to use it.

When we are undergoing a career change, we are extending an aspect of hunting magic. Whatever it is we have been doing successfully has been on automatic pilot. Just as we can ride a bicycle or swim robotically, without thinking through every movement, we learn to do things mechanically at first, through applied conscious effort. Then we go into automatic.

The same thing happens with what we do at work. Whether it is some aspect of using a computer, giving speeches, fixing cars, cooking meals, whatever our tasks are, a great portion of them we learn to do automatically.

So it is when we have to stretch beyond those boundaries and learn new things, to use abilities that we do not always use in picturing ourselves doing a new job in a new place, with new people. Our instinct for hunting magic is needed for this.

This is one of the reasons why people often disbelieve in their own or other people's powers at the higher end of the spectrum. We often live our lives on automatic, and when we go beyond that, we find that we can do things we don't usually do. Hunting magic is one of the powers we have had since caveman days, but we don't always use it, so we often amaze ourselves with the results when we do.

It feels extraordinary when we reach beyond what we usually do. Just remember, those powers out there are not supernatural. They are always there, always within our reach. It is just that we have become accustomed to not using them.

Today, how will you use your hunting magic?

Imagine Your Future

Taking advantage of this natural cycle of expansion, it is important to be able to imagine our own future.

If we are having difficulty doing that, an adjustment in our plans, or a change of direction may be indicated.

Yes, of course, there may be developments down the road that we are not aware of at this time, but we still can imagine what we would like our life to be like and how things would work.

Our imagination lays out the path that our conscious actions can follow. If we cannot envision ourselves becoming more successful in our chosen field of endeavor, then it may be time to choose a different field.

If we can see ourselves moving toward success, but not seeing how it will be done, then try imagining it from different perspectives and see which way allows a clearer vision of our path.

Our imagination is the blueprint for what we want to build. If we cannot form a picture of it in our mind, how can we possibly go about building it?

When our ancient ancestors painted those pictures of the hunt on the walls of their caves, they were picturing themselves having a successful hunt before going on the hunt. They communicated their desires to spirit and then acted as if their spirits and their bodies were on the same path to a successful hunt.

Way back then, they saw the importance of positive thinking and imagination foreshadowing successful accomplishments. We continue in the same vein as our ancestors. Let us do our hunting magic tonight. What is it you want? What will you do to get it?

Living Tarot

Here is an exercise that you can use when you are drawing one card at a time to use as a self teaching technique. As you draw a card, ask yourself, how would you feel if this were you in the picture? How would things look from your vantage point? Do you hear anything? Do you smell anything? What happens in the scene following this one?

If you could talk to the character in this picture, what would you say? What would they say? What kind of tone do they use to address you? Are they stern? Humorous? Loving? Duplicitous? Are they shy? Arrogant? Insightful? Encouraging?

If these were people in your life, who would they be? Do certain characters remain constant in who they represent, or do they change according to the day, or the question?

What changes when you draw more than one card?

How do the stories read, when you place three or more together? Are there infinite varieties of stories? Or do the recurring characters seem to act the same and speak the same every time you see them?

Working It

Here is a different perspective on the challenges we face relative to work. What if the things we have done in the past were simply a sort of initiatory phase for the next phase of evolution?

For example, the US invented the auto industry, and for generations, that was a major force in driving our economy. Those manufacturers required a lot of skilled employees who made good wages. It will not be easy for those people who are out of work to adjust, and it will take a long time for new industries to replace the old industries. However, some manufacturers who are making parts for the aerospace and alternative energy industries are creating some new employment because they need the skills that the auto industry used to develop like machinists, engineers, electricians, mechanics and so on. These new industries will probably never totally replace the old factories, but it does show creative thinking and new strategies on the part of some companies and some employees.

A hundred years ago, coal fired power plants were the modern technology. Today, wind and solar are the modern technologies. It will take a lot of manufacturing and construction to bring these new power sources on line. So we get less pollution than building coal fired plants and new jobs are created, but there is still a period of adjustment needed to make all this come true.

Of course, this is just one industry. There are many others. The challenge is similar in other fields. How can we use skills we have developed in other jobs or careers to create new opportunities?

Obviously, the answer for some of us will be to develop new skills and learn to do different things, but creative thinking could also lead to developing new opportunities using the old skills.

Right now, I am using the Internet far more than I ever thought I would. I had to learn more about it. There is still a ton I do not know, but it certainly has helped develop more business. One of my skills I use differently is that I used to write for publications. Now I write on this blog. It is part of developing my new direction.

Is any of this easy? No. But if we look at the things that we know how to do and think of other ways to use these skills and abilities, we can at least see new options, new possibilities. After doing this, we may just want or need to do something dramatically different anyway.

We are in a period of radical transition. The way to success will require a different vision than what we had before. Different feelings are involved if we cannot continue on our old track than if we simply choose not to continue on the old track. We really are entering the realm of the imagination, aren't we?

Tarot Stories

Among the many varieties of tarot sets, there are those which accompany a strong narrative text. For example, in the Tarot of the Cat People, Karen Kuykendall created a whole world of planets where different tribes of cats lived. In the Legacy of the Divine, Ciro Marchetti imagines a world that survives a cataclysm. Luis Royo is the author of a book of the Third Millennium and a Tarot of the Third Millennium. There is a Decameron Tarot by Giacinto Gaudenzi inspired by the medieval tale of the same name by Giovanni Boccaccio, a Dante Tarot inspired by Dante's Inferno, A Wonderland Tarot inspired by the book Alice in Wonderland and the Fairytale Tarot by Karen Mahony, Alex Ukolov, and Irena Triskova, The Inner Child Tarot by Mark & Isha Lerner and Christopher Guilfoil.

Then there are the sets based on mythology. There is an Arthurian Tarot, Druid Animal Oracle, Medicine Cards, the Mythic Tarot, based on the Greek Myths, Llewelllyn Tarot, based on the Mabinogian of Welsh Myths, Babylonian Tarot, Ancient Egyptian Tarot, Norse Tarot, Kalevala Tarot (Finnish, the Voodoo Tarot, and a variety of Celtic inspired tarot sets.

In each of these cases, plus many more that might be named, We get an opportunity to correlate things that are going on in our own life with other well known stories, and sometimes it is easy to garner wisdom from the well told tales, which in these sets all have dynamic art.

In standard tarot decks without an overriding narrative structure like these, there are sets of symbols and pictures on cards that the reader can fashion into a story. The framework of the standard decks gives the reader much more freedom to improvise, although the structure can also suggest a powerful context and font of wisdom to draw from.

It is your choice how you prefer to work or how you prefer to use them as a meditative device or teaching tool.

In the cases where a deck was created to go along with an existing text, the artists have enlarged the scope of the book by creating a parallel illustrated book to go along with the text to form the equivalent of a text with 78 illustrations.

In standard decks and oracle decks where everything can mix and match randomly and make sense, the storyteller, the reader, is the one who forms order out of chaos.

It is an interesting dynamic either way. We simply have to choose what method we prefer to work with, and some of us switch around for the challenge presented by variety, the chance of the shuffle challenging complacency.

The Well of Creativity

The death of J.D. Salinger today prompts a fascinating question. After writing one of the most popular American novels of the 20th century, Catcher in the Rye plus a couple of books of short stories, he quit writing and lived a very reclusive life. He guarded his privacy to such an extreme extent, he tried to prevent other authors from writing biographies of him.

On the other end of the spectrum of creative productivity, we find popular authors who seem to produce a new book every six months, with some of them writing under pen names because they are afraid that they could water down their brand name if they produce too many books.

One of my writing teachers used to say that the world might be better off if more authors accepted the fact that they only have one good book in them.

Between these two extremes, another author, Joseph Heller wrote Catch 22, which is another of the most popular American novels, whose title itself became a popular catch phrase. He did write other books, but nothing ever came close to the impact of Catch 22. It must be a sort of weight on a person to always have that question hovering over them that wonders if he will ever again produce anything as great as his most famous work, even though he has produced other books.

It is a fascinating question to contemplate. Why or how do we hit our limit of creativity?

Ray Bradbury, author of many great titles, including Fahrenheit 451, The Martian Chronicles, Something Wicked This Way Comes, The Illustrated Man, Zen and the Art of Writing, and many other titles, insists that he has never had writer's block. He says that he has always loved writing and that's what he has always wanted to do.

How many times can a person go to the well of creativity?

I cannot answer that question, but I can observe that some of the writers who have produced a great many titles have created many great works, while some prolific authors keep rehashing and warming over something they did well once or twice.

Perhaps it is as simple as getting out of our own way to be able to go to the well. Perhaps those who have huge blocks are simply unable to open their mind and go farther. Sometimes people get overwhlemed and shocked by their early success are never quite able to comprehend or come to grips with it. And there just may be those who have written one or a few excellent books for which they will be remembered and they have nothing else to write.

It is a fascinating question. How many times can we go to the well?

Avatar's Failure of Imagination

Avatar is now the highest grossing film ever, and this fact is sure to add to the pressure to name it best film of the year. Although an entertaining movie, I would never agree that it is the best thing I have seen in a year.

Question this. Plot development? Why is it that the imagination that could come up with fantastic flora and fauna and luminous special effects could not imagine this magical world playing out in some way other than two armed forces trying to destroy each other? If the creative people behind this movie could imagine a world very different than our own, then why not elevate possibility thinking to a new level where solutions to problems can be found?

Question this. Character development? Is it possible to view the military commander or the corporate guy as anything other than one dimensional cretins? Compare them to some other good movies. Have you ever seen a film where even the bad guy had some complexity, some positive aspect, some appealing qualities or characteristics, making them at least an interesting character?

These two flaws are so large that Avatar will never stand as a great movie, unless you want to judge greatness based solely on special effects or box office receipts.

Avatar Anomalies

As a movie experience, Avatar is a constant stream of stunning images, so if you just want to kick back and be dazzled by computer generated images, then this is definitely the ticket.

Much has been made of the fact that it cost about a half billion dollars to make. But such figures are difficult to comprehend. Not so long ago a million dollars was considered a lot of money. When they say that it cost a half a billion dollars to basically make an adult cartoon, it really makes it seem like play money. Most of us live on a total annual budget that would be totally lost in that figure. There are probably some countries in the world that don't have a half billion dollar annual operating budget or an economy that produces that much. Some numbers are hard to comprehend.

I guess for some people the mere fact that the movie cost so much to make was reason enough to see it. I rarely go to movie theatres any more since I am so happy with the way Netflix works, and the price is a bargain. I like the idea of being able to watch what I want when it fits my schedule. But the idea of a huge spectacle in 3-D is something that would not come across as well on a regular, smaller sized screen, so I decided to see it that way, on the big screen.

What about the story? I heard someone else say that it was a lot like an old Disney cartoon called Ferngully: The Last Rainforest and that Avatar was nothing more than a half billion dollar Ferngully. Not having seen Ferngully myself, I can't say. But I can say that it reminded me of a very well made cartoon. Yes, a cartoon that is light years ahead of what we used to call cartoons in terms of animation and special effects.

What I can say is that in what I consider a well made movie, you have intriguing plot developments and strong characters.

What really is contained in Avatar besides stunning visuals? Well let's see. You have the corporate guy who takes the attitude that "it doesn't matter what the natives want. The minerals under the land where they live are worth a lot. Our wheels do not stop. We have a lot of money to make here, and that is all that is important. They need to get out of our way." He reminds me a lot of some of the corporate guys I work for on my day job.

Then you have the mercenary enforcers, the military kind of guys who think that the best way of resolving different points of view is by destroying the people who have other points of view. Obviously a reference to some current events. Most people can probably pick up on this. Sound like a war where a group of mercenaries named Blackwater has been helping to secure black water (oil)?

The natives in Avatar people have a metaphysical world view of how everything is connected and how healing, visions, interspecies communication, connection to the ancestors and all kinds of marvelous things happen as a result of these connections, which appear to give the people magical abilities. They are a very spiritually oriented people. Yes, our world would be a better place if we were all so attuned.

Much like Dances With Wolves, the native viewpoint really resonates with one of the military guys who decides to go native. He has allies among a few other sympathetic military people and scientists who appreciate the unfairness of it all, who get a sense of the metaphysical connections, and join the revolt against the brute force. This is the part that is kind of like Matrix, where the clash between cultures is really a clash between alternate realities and there is a catalyst who travels between the two. The scenes at the Tree of Souls certainly calls to mind the huge party scene from Matrix. I like these metaphyiscal aspects, and that part is alluring. But we still have stale plot points and stock characters where the only reason for visiting other planets is to exploit their resources, and the only kind of interaction with others is violent, and the people in power are toxic jerks.

You could even dip back a bit further and find a number of ways that this resembles Star Wars with the ex Marine in the robot standing in for Darth Vader, the droids attacking the critters, the muppets replaced by animated graphics of plants, animals and humanoids, and the underdogs are still the only ones really connected to spirit.

But to my taste, some of the best movies I have seen are not these huge eye candies, but rather some of the smaller movies with strong characters and plots that are not predictable from the first frame. Sometimes they win big awards and make big money, sometimes not. There are things in a great movie that are more fascinating than flying dinosaurs and iridescent jungles.

Avatar comes to a conclusion with a lot of stuff getting blown up, burned and shot. Hollywood loves to do that, because it makes for spectacular visuals. As entertainment, I find other things much more interesting, although I readily admit to watching some action, adventure and mystery movies.

Right now, the buzz is such that Avatar will no doubt be nominated as the best movie of the year. But in my opinion, that is more a result of the marketing buzz it has generated and the colorful special effects created than because of the great script and great acting. Sorry, but I am not on the bandwagon. All this movie has going for it is great visuals.

Then again, we have to look at the context to see why it is popular.

I guess it helps to have visual virtual enemies because it at least gives audiences a target for venting anger, compared to nameless faceless brokers who can amass fortunes selling stocks they don't own, those who sold people mortgages they knew that they cannot afford, and those who make profits by offshoring the jobs and selling off the parts and giving themselves massive bonuses while dumping employees and dumping on the ones who are left.

When politicians are trying to convince us that forcing us to give more of our money to the insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies that have been ripping us off for years is a "reform" it is kind of like living in a cartoon or slapstick comedy. The lobbyists write diabolically funny plays, only they call them laws.

In the real world, we have unobtanium too. The script writers didn't really stretch their minds too far to get to unobtanium from unobtainable. Asking some of these politicians to do what we elected them to do and fix what needs to be fixed for us is like opening Pandora's box. Look up Pandora in Greek mythology. Those ancient story tellers could spin fantastic tales that have given roots and wings to our culture and civilization for millennia.

It is not surprising that with all the craziness going on in the world, some people would rather watch a cartoon and forget what is going on. Sometimes it is impossible for comedies and cartoons to one up real life.

So is this giant cartoon the greatest movie of the year? No, but it will help many people find some temprary relief from real problems, and that is what we pay movies to do.

Cooking, Wine and Spoons

How many times do we make things more complicated than we need to make them? I was watching the recent movie about Julia Child and no, her recipes were not simple, but I found myself reflecting on the fact that we eat every day, of course, to keep our body alive and well. What Julia was doing was celebrating life every day by cooking and sharing the meals.

We will not all want to take the time to cook complex, and in some instances, very costly meals, but we have many opportunities to spend an evening cooking a meal and sharing it, then letting the evening extend its way into other simple pleasures, like good conversation and passionate lovemaking.

Yes, it is fun to go out for dinner and go to the theatre or a concert, and those nights are a pleasure. But we serve ourselves well by remembering that a magnificent evening can begin with a simple home cooked meal.

It is interesting to experiment with exotic ingredients and unusual preparations, and that is just another way of putting more love into the meal, which becomes part of the shared experience.

A little wine and an evening that ends with spoons. What do you mean, ends with spoons? I hear some of you asking. I will let you think about that for a while. It does have to do with dessert, and I leave it to you to contemplate the many flavors of dessert.