How did I get here?

Come along with me this week as I explore a Tarot Card Reading and how my inner psyche relates to it! Yes very personal, but also political, environmental and even somewhat humorous.

There's a card placement called "the things that have gone before."

For this reading, the Strength card came up. So there is a history of sorts when dealing with my basic question of aging and changes...of having a strength to help me.

That's a bit reassuring.This card lets me know that in the past I've been able to stay grounded/centered and connected to others. It reminds me to continue to listen to and observe what the animal and natural kingdoms have to tell me. After all, they've been through this before...whatever challenges are coming are just part of a continuing cycle of changes, birth, life, death, birth...

What is given to me from above?

Come along with me this week as I explore a Tarot Card Reading and how my inner psyche relates to it! Yes very personal, but also political, environmental and even somewhat humorous.

What other people might call their angels...the inspiring energies that the universe give me to consider.

Tarot Card Nine of Swords...a nightmare card!

OK, this negative stuff keeps turning up in this spread, asking about aging and changes.  I wish I had just flowery kitten energy coming my way, but no, I've got some serious stuff to deal with.

Swords are the suit (could be diamonds in playing cards) of intellect.  So things move very swiftly, like an idea here and gone.  I think of my dark shadow self...she who exhibits the fears that might be a nightmare...a childlike persona who has nobody to comfort her.  But she is with the part of my  bright shadow, a loving nurturing, wise aspect that I can find to give myself comfort.  I own both aspects of myself.

My friend Byron Ballard frequently talks about a Tarot card which didn't appear in my spread today.  The Tower Card.  It even has been her root for calling our era of life as Tower Time.  We are living through scary times.

Now the card in the Motherpeace deck actually reminds me that I must fight the demons of my unconscious with a conscious intent. The swords offer strength in that fight against the negative fears and anger that I sleep with/live with daily.  What are my swords? I choose words. I choose goddesses who have many myths of strength. My intent then is to confront my own negative impulses with calling upon goddesses like Athena the warrior goddess, Artemus the hunter, Sofia of wisdom, and of course Boudicca the British queen warrior who defeated Romans.  We are ready whenever the demons of greed and environmental degredation come into my sleep, whenever demons of illness and want rear their ugly heads in my psyche.

Ground and connect to earth energies

What is the root of the question? That which comes to me from the earth, welling up to connect with my quest and keep me firmly standing on the earth.

The two of Discs, a young woman is depicted on the card, who is raising twin babies.  I think of my twin aspects - the dark vs. light shadows.  Can she tell me more about them? She reminds me that as I'm juggling a busy life as she does, it's important to stay grounded or centered.  Since the placement in the spread is that which is connected to earth energies, it's a twin energy of being doubly important to keep my feet firmly on the ground....in considering my question.

Being grounded. What does that mean to me? Standing firm in what I believe is right and true. Standing up to those who hurt others, and knowing that I have a source within me that is the same source as all earth energies.

What energies come to counteract the basic question I'm asking?

Come along with me this week as I explore a Tarot Card Reading and how my inner psyche relates to it! Yes very personal, but also political, environmental and even somewhat humorous.

The crossing card in the Celtic Cross spread of Tarot cards was the Son of wands (aka Jack of clubs)

After considering the primary card of the spread, there's a card that crosses it...which says the energies of that primary card need to be aware that there's another current pushing it in a different direction than perhaps it intended.

This card reminds us Pagans of the Horned God, or Pan, an entertainer, a male who is comfortable in a female society.  Here life is celebrated in an untamed way...play is part of everyday existence.

How would Pan go against the Devil? Well, we see his energies in cartoons about Trump all the time.  Just this week Ivanka has been painted into several old gatherings (including a last supper painting) as she was so inappropriately part of the G20 photograph with her father!

The Devil represents an opposite kind of energy, straight laced, rigid, where the Son of wands wants to have everyone feel better about life.  It doesn't approach the misuse of power so much as tickle us as we try to find alternatives.

When I consider my basic question about aging and changes, a Pan type energy gives me the chance to sit back and relax for a moment, to consider that I have a sense of humor in the face of everything that I fear and am angry about.

A card of significance - pay attention/beware!

Come along with me this week as I explore a Tarot Card Reading and how my inner psyche relates to it! Yes very personal, but also political, environmental and even somewhat humorous.

My questions to the universe, to ask my unconscious self (a shadow of the dark or light parts of myself) brings a card that unsettles me.

The Devil.
This is the significator of the spread. I'm reminded of a state of greed/selfishness. Remember that the Inquisition was the most public demonstration of the use by the Church of Rome to kill people by calling them instruments of the devil. The devil is an invention of Christianity. There have always been dark forces in Pagan theory, but not as personified as this devil.

The government and established religion can represents the devil in a way...something to be feared, and something that subjugates it's followers. The use of Power Over, rather than gathering of power with others...there is misuse of this power everywhere these days.

The True Power of the earth, mother nature, is the source that most Pagans look to for guidance, and we are feeling a lot of fear and anger towards the people who are harming the earth with unimaginable laws and intrusions into the earth's well being.

I look at the image of the card. I consider what part of myself might be one of the depicted individuals there.  I think probably a potter, who is offering the jug of life-giving water to those of higher level than I am.  I hope I'm related to the individual who is breaking his chains of slavery. I will need to keep this card of ultimate hierarchy in mind for a while.

Looking for inspiration

I sometimes look within for inspiration...to take me to new ideas, and to suggest things I may have forgotten about myself.  This week the form of question was in reading Tarot Cards.  I have done this many years...and very seldom offer to do card readings for others, so I consider myself an amateur.  But I find that the Jungian theory (Karl Jung) of shadow self and the unconscious having messages that I can listen to, provides information that may be of use to me.

I'm reminding myself that there is a dark shadow (that part of myself that I don't know much about, but others can frequently see) as well as a bright shadow (also mostly invisible to me) of my unconscious.  I shuffle the cards and think how I want to focus my question to the universe.  I'm thinking about aging and changes.  That is all.

I keep the question in my mind as I shuffle the cards, and then start turning them over and placing them on the cloth.

I spread the cards in a familiar and ancient pattern called the Celtic Cross. I'll share here for the next few days how this spread talks to me, and what I think of it!  It took maybe an hour the first time, and now I'm typing the details here, after taking photos of the cards.  I use the Motherpeace deck by Vicki Noble, all cards made on circles of cardboard. I skip the idea of reversed cards that way, since I turn them all facing upright.

The working mugs

The dark color isn't so much grey as a deep bluish lavender, called Plum in the studio.  When it has white under it there's that lovely light blue.

I made these to go with one of my favorite mugs that I've used all winter, because simple as it is, this shape keeps my coffee warm long enough to drink the bottom half. I hate having to go warm it back up when I've only drunk half a mugfull.

Yes, these were posted here a few weeks ago.

The clay bends as it fires

When this was dry from being made, all the tendrils had  separated on the outer ends, and curled up away from the body where they were meeting it as I made it.  They had only been attached on the inner ends.  Some of them even broke off (thus the wider spacing between some.)

After bisque firing, they remained separated on the outer ends...about a quarter to a half inch away from the body.

So I dipped them into white glaze, and voila...they moved right back down and reattached to the body.

Clay also becomes very fluid in a hot temperature.

Handing something to you

I got a kick out of using my own hands a models...just cutting around them on a slab of clay. Of course there was 15% shrinkage as it was fired.  And I'm not at all happy with the way the brown glaze turned out all splotchy.

Studio Sun. afternoon.

Yes, I've gone back to the studio.  But my work from last week is just now loaded into a glaze kiln.  It should come out tonight or tomorrow.
Yesterday I did some simple glazing on some simple mugs.

I'm still having difficulty with my fine muscle skills of my fingers...so no painted designs.

Today's quote: (we haven't had any in a while, have we!)

If you are feeling anxious, sad, or drained, try hugging a tree and allow her vast amount of grounding energy to assist you.

Something old, something new...

No not about to be a bride.  Just wanted to share that old pots can hold new flowers!

And I finally finished the fruit bowl.

Centerpiece bouquet in a short bowl shaped vase.  I'm so glad I still have a few of these. Strangely they don't sell half as well as tall thin vases...something about just shoving flowers into a vase rather than making an arrangement!

What do you use now that will someday be in a museum?

 This treadle sewing machine was woman-powered.  It just sewed nice straight seams. ..no gimicks.

The pitcher and basin were usually made of ceramic.  An industry which provided bathing facilities for thousands of people before they got running water and a bathroom!

If I look around me to see what might be worthy of a museum in 100 or 200 years, I hope these fluorescent light bulbs will be there...and of course some laptop or iPad. An air conditioner/heater has made my life much better.  How about a microwave? I think a pop-up umbrella is pretty nifty too.

Swannanoa Valley Museum

This is the new sign at theSwannanoa Valley Museum...in Black Mountain NC.  It's really nice. The next entrance along the way is the Black Mountain Center for the Arts.

Just past the historic marker for French Botanist, Andre Michaux, people are lounging outside of the Dripolator coffee shop.  This is looking east along State Street.

These large wood doors are replicas of the original fire house doors, which now houses the SV Museum.  When it was the fire house, there was even the pole which fire fighters would slide down from the second level.  (A sign designates where the pole and the hole in the ceiling used to be.)

Living close together

 Our buildings have smoke detectors, which frequently go off with cooking (don't they all!) But we don't have sprinkler systems, and the buildings are all frame.  So when the firetruck sirens come and park in our driveway, lots of us came outside on a twilight evening, to see the firemen walk into one of the buidings,and hopefully come back out again soon.

They were walking up the hill and everyone's standing in front of the office.  The red lights change our environment!  I took my photos and went back inside...didn't smell any smoke!

Rain means no studio use

When the studio has to close due to flooding...the classes and open-studio times are canceled.

The building used to be the police department garage...then was rennovated, the wall of doors changed to a wall of windows, and decorative murals placed on outside walls.

Our manager, Charles Freeland, gets out the shop vac and works to get the water sucked up.  It seeps in under the walls from rain coming down the hill above, as well as the roof downspouts.  The city owns the building, and has made some improvements in the drainage, but it still is a problem.

We are very grateful to now have an air-conditioner-heating unit, and hot and cold running water.  In the 11 years I've been a member, there have definitely been improvements!  Just can't get past the rain intrusion yet!

More potters at the show

Here's another booth, in which I didn't capture the name of the artists (I think their business is "Clay, Weed, Paper.") I think I bought a hand made book from these folks last year.

There were some really great pottery/sculptural displays.  

A fellow member of the Swannanoa Fine Arts League had this booth.

Old friend Will Byers who used to live in Black Mountain (and still says so on his sign) but now resides in Tennessee. He still is doing pottery (after a stint of doing photography!) We found out we lived in Knoxville at the same time in the 80s-90s.

OK   I think I've shared all the Art by the Tracks photos now!

Fun at Art by the Tracks

...beautiful art at a good show.