Death & Connection to Nature (Podcast)

Death & Connection to Nature (Podcast)

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Lupa is an artist, author and amateur naturalist in Portland, Oregon. She is the author of a number of books published by Llewellyn including her upcoming book Nature Spirituality From the Ground Up: Connect With Totems in Your Ecosystem out in January 2016.

Lupa is an artist, author and amateur naturalist in Portland, Oregon. She is the author of a number of books published by Llewellyn including her upcoming book Nature Spirituality From the Ground Up: Connect With Totems in Your Ecosystem out in January 2016.

For those unfamiliar with Tarot, the Death card can feel ominous and terrifying. What if there was a deck that faced it directly and in every card of the Major and Minor Arcana?

In this brave new Archetypal Tarot podcast, Death is embraced early on with an interview with Lupa Greenwolf, artist and creator of the Tarot of Bones .

Lupa is the author of a number of books including her upcoming book Nature Spirituality From the Ground Up: Connect With Totems in Your Ecosystem out in January 2016.  Lupa is also working on a new tarot deck The Tarot of Bones, a natural history themed divination deck, which will make its debut in the summer of 2016. The full 78-card deck will feature photography of Lupa’s artwork made from animal bones and other natural materials.

Cyndera and Lupa discuss stones, bones and how relating with these natural presences can deepen the human connection to nature. A naturalistic interpretation of the Death Card allows us to get in touch with the ignored presence of Death in our lives and how it relates to our current relationship with the environment.

Topics covered in this podcast:

– the process of working with animal remains as an artistic and spiritual medium

– how to make art for both major and minor arcana

– How to work with Death in tarot readings and combat superstition

– How encountering bones assists with deepening a connection with nature

Tarot-of-Bones_magician

The Magician Card of The Tarot of Bones, featuring nature-found moss and a corn snake skeleton.

 

 

The Sun – At Play With The Child

The Sun – At Play With The Child

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The Sun from the Raider Waite deck

The Sun from the Raider Waite deck

Here Comes the Sun! After the dark debacle of the stage represented by the Moon card, the nineteenth card of the Major Arcana shares its rays of light on the Archetypal Tarot Podcast.  Inside the protective walls of a golden kingdom, two children (or a child and horse in the Rider Waite) are happily at play. Like Romulus and Remus, suckled from the wolves of the last card, it is as if the birth of a new Rome has taken place as a long-awaited result of this Tarot journey’s recent trials. Julienne Givot and Cyndera Quackenbush explore this stage of rebirth by delving into the child archetype in its many manifestations, including its shadow.

Listen as Julienne and Cyndera share a synchronistic moment and find out how to have fun while even riding a city bus. In the Hollywood realm, Robin Williams as Puer (eternal youth), Tom Hanks in the film “Big” and Shirley Temple are discussed as examples of this stage. In the Sun card enjoy yourself in a land somewhere between the Teletubbies and the Secret Garden.

Popular associations with the Sun card:

• Optimism—Expansion—Being radiant—Positive feelings
• Enlightenment—Vitality—Innocence—Non-criticism
• Assurance—Energy—Personal power—Happiness
• Splendor—Brilliance—Joy —Enthusiasm

Film and Television References:

The Child: Innocence, Fun, Trust
The Child archetype resides in us all and is the first that we come to know. The Child archetype is sometimes called the guardian of innocence and it represents our beginning point. This archetype sets up our earliest perceptions of life, safety, loyalty and family. The heart of the Child archetype is one of dependency and responsibility. Addressing the Child archetype within can awaken a new relationship with life, a new start.

Related Articles:

Summertime and the Child Archetype
Three Archetypes of Awesome
The Child Archetype

Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium

 

No Teletubbies were harmed in the making of this podcast.

Meet Your Dating Survival Guides

Meet Your Dating Survival Guides

©Kevin Dooley

Dating can feel like a trip to the amusement park, filled with excitement, ups, downs and the occasional sense of inertia. Certain archetypes can help serve as guides for keeping grounded while amidst the thrills and spills of dating life. So far I’ve written about archetypal attraction based on shared patterns, paired needs and romantic chemistry. Now it’s time to dig into some of the archetypal characters that will likely show up for everyone dating. They also can play into why some people don’t even dip their toe into the dating pool. I call these our Survival Archetypes. They are roles we take on when we feel vulnerable as well as ones that can guide us to authentically being ourselves.

We all work with the survival archetypes. Some people are so in the thrall of the unempowered aspects of them that they have a hard time seeing beyond their negative effects. It’s my hope to turn this around a bit. Each archetype should be used as a guide – not a way to judge yourself poorly. In fact they are an excellent way of spotting how you might judge yourself and how to make a more empowering choice.

The four dating Survival Guides are: The Victim, The Prostitute, The Child and The Saboteur.

The names of these archetypes might seem to some harsh or intimidating, but that’s because we tend to know them only by their pathology. They also contain a wonderful possibility that often gets overlooked.

I launched this series on dating by recommending attention as a key for getting clear on who you are and who you want to form a relationship with. Paying attention to your thoughts and behaviors by seeing them as patterns helps you get clear on your options. That clarity can get lost however if we use the pattern to judge ourselves poorly or condemn ourselves.

The technology of using archetypes is best served with a practice akin to Jon Kabat-Zinn’s Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) coupled with self-compassion. The basis of MBSR is moment-to-moment non-judgmental awareness. Awareness and self compassion are powerful practices in life and especially in the necessarily vulnerable experience of dating. Developing awareness and self compassion practices can make all the difference in being able to be authentic (you know, the real you) and attract the right people into your life. This isn’t just me talking, there are increasingly more scientific studies showing how awareness and self compassion are amazing for us in every aspect of our lives, from reducing stress, relieving pain and bringing greater resilience and happiness to practitioners. Two other pioneers in this field are Kelly McGonigal, Phd and Kristen Neff, Phd. Neff’s book Self-Compassion: Stop Beating Yourself Up and Leave Insecurity Behind is an excellent starting place.

This series will focus on each of the four survival archetypes as they might show up for a single person looking to meet a significant other. They are of course useful to those already in relationship or those thinking about ‘getting back out there’. I’ll share ideas on ways to bring awareness to your actions and choices in a way that helps you enjoy yourself more in the process of creating new relationships. If we are enjoying ourselves from the beginning, we’ll be less prone to heap expectations on the person we are dating and vice versa. Sound good? Look for updates soon and links will be added to the list above so you can jump to the next exciting article.

Three Archetypes of Awesome

Three Archetypes of Awesome

Little things can mean a lot. Let’s say you’re having a crappy day and you’re at the store when the cashier pulls out a coupon that saves you a dollar. This gives you a boost and you walk out the door in a better mood.  Maybe you don’t honk at the numbskull ahead of you for doing whatever it is that annoys you.  That person doesn’t get irked with you for being a numbskull honking at them and who knows what other little improvements occur because someone did you a solid just for the heck of it.  Little bits of beauty & generosity have a tendency to carry on long after their tipping point.    Like watching a TED talk and getting inspired to write an article about something both simple and radically important about the patterns at work in our lives.

Neil Pasricha decided to do something seemingly small when he was going through a very rough patch in his life. His marriage was falling apart, his best friend took his own life and he naturally was finding it really hard to think of anything good.  He started a blog in order to record and share what he called 1000 Awesome Things, figuring that it might help him focus on the positive again.   Little did he know that this one effort would have him publishing books, calendars, TED talks and receiving a Webby Award for his blog in 2010.  All of this AND bringing a grin or a LOL to millions of readers.  Neil’s 17 minute talk about how all of this came about is totally worth watching so, go ahead, it’s right down there,  I’ll wait.  Then you can read about how this talk is an invocation of three of your core archetypes.  (Or you can just skip to the next bit.)

[ted id=1048]

Neil calls the major lessons of his experience the three A’s of Awesome:  Attitude, Awareness and Authenticity.   Each of these invokes one of your core archetypal patterns, the Victim (Attitude),  the Child (Awareness) and the Prostitute (Authenticity). These are 3 of the 4 core universal archetypes common to everyone also known as the Survival Archetypes.

Neil’s own story has a lot to do with the Victim archetype. He could have simply wallowed in his circumstances, let them take over and obscure the beauty in his life.  The unempowered side of the Victim is the part of us that can get wrapped up in anger, sadness, and blame.  We all have a Victim pattern in our lives – we have setbacks, get hurt, make mistakes, have crappy days when we feel like we’ve gotten the fuzzy side of the lollipop.    We also have the empowered side of  the Victim that makes choices to get out of the mire of blame and move on.  Neil calls this ‘Attitude’ and I see it as using the pattern of the Victim to make a gigantic difference in a few small choices.

The second ‘A’ of Awesome is Awareness and this invokes the Child archetype in us.  The Child or as Neil says, our inner three year old, can be amazed at the simplest things, see beauty where most adults just see a knot in a piece of wood.  Invoking the awareness of the Child archetype can help us enjoy something simple, open our eyes to opportunity or just appreciate something we would ordinarily pass by.  This isn’t just a mood lifter, but a way to be in the world with a deeper sense of presence. The Child can be the antidote to a fast paced world where it’s difficult not to become jaded to little pleasures like putting on socks still warm from the dryer.

The third ‘A’ is for Authenticity which believe it or not, invokes Prostitute archetype.  The unempowered Prostitute is that part of us that will negotiate our self worth away because of someone elses opinion or keep us doing something we dislike because we feel we can’t do anything else.  The empowered Prostitute reminds us that we can be authentic and make choices not based on fear but out of an authentic belief in ourselves.  Neil uses the example of pro football player Rosie Grier and his penchant for needlepoint as an example of authenticity.  Rosie could have easily kept his passion for something unmanly under wraps and let what other people might think of him control who he was (keep in mind this was the early 1970’s) but he didn’t.  In fact he published several books on his interests.  It doesn’t get much more authentic than that.

While this archetype has a  shocking name, it can be a guide for us to live authentically.  Are you not doing something because you are afraid of what people might think of you?  Are you putting the opinions of others over your authentic dreams and desires?

Part of us is grouchy and lives in Florida

Part of us is grouchy and lives in Florida

Understanding archetypes goes much deeper than a chat about a movie and beyond the confines of a psychology textbook.  An archetype is not just a pattern “out there” in theory but it is a recurring set of experiences that unfold through the course of a human life.  Our ability to spot when a particular pattern walks in the door makes the difference between acting out and making a conscious choice.  We begin to view the shape of our lives within an archetypal language by introducing ourselves to four patterns that we all share, the Survival Archetypes.  Let’s imagine that four well-known television characters become clothed for a time with each her own version of a pattern.   Rose, Blanche, Dorothy and Sophia share a home somewhere in Miami in the Emmy winning television sitcom, The Golden Girls.

The Child

‘Rose’ image via Wikipedia

This pattern and the next are the most obvious to match with characters from the show.  Rose captures the essence of the Child perfectly.  Her wide, gullible eyes lack any indication of doubt because she accepts anything an adult tells her.  The pattern itself balances innocence and responsibility.  Forced to make her way through life by her own efforts, Rose gathers herself up from a fantasy world where she is taken care of by her husband’s pension plan or a steady job and takes life on directly.  This is significant because the Child has to leave the safety of the family and enter a harsh world populated by sharply critical adults.  When we want to run away from a situation and deny what is happening, we are confronting the Child within us.  Yet this is also the pattern where we can choose to see each situation as overflowing with limitless potential and see things as new again.

The Prostitute

‘Blanche’ image via Wikipedia

Of course it’s Blanche.  In almost every episode, she decides to assign a value to her body by comparing her looks to another woman or using her body to advance her own interests.  At every turn Blanche is chasing a man or furious that her wiles haven’t produced the results she expected.  The Prostitute grabs a price scanner and makes its mark on every part of us it can so that we feel safe in the world, often by remaining in a relationship or a job.  Whenever she is confronted with a problem, Blanche throws on a negligee and adjusts her makeup in order to barter her way through.  She never fully believes in her own capacity to solve her problems beyond her salable attributes.  Only by the end of an episode does Blanche find what is truly valuable:   Her friendships and sense of herself beyond her outward appearance.

The Victim

‘Dorothy’ image via Wikipedia

Dorothy is the “smart” one with the cold stares and the newspaper in her hand, ever expounding on the failures of society with its potential to violate and betray us.  It is her voice that speaks up after silently burning for a few moments, waiting for the assault to stop, and sets appropriate boundaries.  More than a few times Dorothy picks up a newspaper and hits Rose over the head when the St. Olaf stories go on too long.  This is the Victim, present when we feel unable to defend ourselves but also when we go after someone else for revenge.  Its empowerment isn’t in aggression and dominance but in being clear about our boundaries as they relate to who gets “in” as well as how far you get “out.”

The Saboteur

‘Sophia’ image via Wikipedia

Sophia’s entrance is often preceded by someone  starting to dream about a wonderful new idea or vision of themselves.  She shuts them down with a opinion based on how they will fail, often gouging out a chunk of self esteem in the process.  The Saboteur does the same.  Dorothy, for her part the empowered Victim, slaps her hand across Sophia’s mouth to prevent the impending criticism.  When you are about to make a choice that will interrupt a new opportunity for you to build self-esteem and connect to your destiny, the Saboteur has entered the room.  Through the entire series, Sophia exemplifies the Saboteur in her attempts to pursue a vibrant, active life for a woman in her eighties and confronts the view that she is hastening towards senility and the grave.  The ability to step into a new life for ourselves is guarded by the Saboteur, but make no mistake:  This is the pattern where WE are blocking our way forward, not anybody else.

Blanche: What do you think of my new dress? Is it me?
Sophia: It’s too tight, it’s too short and shows too much cleavage for a woman your age.
Dorothy: Yes, Blanche. It’s you.

Picture it:  One night you can’t get to sleep.  Something’s really bothering you at work or you’re ashamed of your bank account.  Maybe you’re not with the person you love anymore.  Whatever it is, you get up and shuffle into the kitchen.  Soon, you are surrounded by four of your lifelong archetypal pals, only they’re doing all the talking.  You sit there on the table while they pick at you, bicker and lay into each other with their concerns and fears.  Basically, you’re a cheesecake, slowly eaten away bite after bite.  Instead of becoming a pile of crumbs when these voices are in control, we can take the time to pursue a relationship with them.  We can know when we are making a choice that obscures or magnifies our destiny.  At first a silent partner, studying our deeper motivations, but in time we claim our place at the table.  Eventually, we will distance ourselves from their automatic choices and see what has been waiting beyond our fears in front of us the whole time.

More articles about the Survival Archetypes

Andrew lives in Portland.  When he’s not concocting original condiments, knitting, and reading, he occasionally finds himself writing poetry and archetypal articles.  You can email him directly:   heartbreakthrough@gmail.com  Photo by:  Anatoly Petrenko
Summertime and the Child Archetype

Summertime and the Child Archetype

It’s summertime here in the northern hemisphere and it seems our Child archetypes are clamoring to go out and play.  I remember as a child, summer was about being outside and hanging out doing whatever we fancied at the time.   For most of us, childhood was the only time we’ve felt totally free.  Once the archetype of the responsible Adult comes along, any frivolous playtime tends to get reserved for weekends and vacations.  We box up the fun and put it on the shelf until the appropriate time.

Summer can bring the Child out in all of us.  I’ve noticed it in my clients when assignments  are not getting done and lots of appointments are getting re-shuffled.   Something in our core nature says it’s time to play during the summer.  Most people take their vacations during the summer, the cycle of nature practically demands that we take some time to relax and play.

From personal experience, fighting off the Child archetype and the need to play can make me miserable.  It’s as if the Adult in me is punishing the Child by putting off something fun until I deem it totally necessary.  Frankly, that sucks and it continues to be so until I open up to an opportunity to play and then totally go for it.   Here’s an example of just such a situation.  I’ll place the archetypes in parenthesis to illustrate.

Recently, I was offered an opportunity (Adult) to go to Los Angeles and help test a new game (Child) about archetypes produced by a couple of my instructors from school.  I would also get the opportunity to check out a business that trains actors using archetypes, something that I am interested in (Adult).  I would need to re-arrange all of my appointments for a few days (Adult) but the opportunity sounded like a lot of fun (Child).  I also could catch up on some learning material in the car on the drive down (Adult) so I loaded up my iPod with lectures that I had been meaning to listen to.  What happened was my Adult was so busy planning and making things happen, that by the time I got in the car early Wednesday morning my Child archetype had had enough.  I happened upon a satellite radio station that plays 80’s new wave and the Child archetype took over.  I sang along and danced in my seat all the way to LA.  I was filled with child-like joy and didn’t once think about anything that I ‘had’ to do.  I got to LA refreshed and ready for anything.  My friends and colleagues even remarked about my infectiously happy mood.  I realized pretty quickly that I had really done myself a favor by just letting the Child archetype take over for a bit.  None of the so-called responsibilities of my trip were neglected and in fact I had a lot more fun doing everything I set out to do during my visit.  During the 6 hour drive back home I listened to some of the lectures and sang along to some more songs and caught up with some friends on the phone (yes I used my hands free headset).  All in all it was a great exercise in paying attention to what was needed in the moment – neither Child nor Adult archetype was neglected and provided something that I wanted to share with you here.

I invite you to be open to opportunities to let your Child archetype lead you to some fun.  Please share your stories, ideas and suggestions for listening to the call of the Child archetype in your life in the comment section bel0w.

What counts? Does productivity = happiness?

What counts? Does productivity = happiness?

How do we measure what makes life worthwhile?  When the dotcom bubble burst, hotelier Chip Conley went in search of a business model based on happiness. In an old friendship with an employee and in the wisdom of a Buddhist king, he learned that success comes from what you count.  Watch Chip’s 20 min talk on what he found.

What’s pretty amazing is that we don’t really measure happiness on a meaningful level at work or in government.  I’m not even sure we have a good way to do this yet.  Oh sure, we look at indicators of things that *might* mean that the general populace is more or less happy for a specific time period.   Attrition rates  and productivity seem to be our only key indicators.

Is our productivity really the measure of happiness or success?  This seems like an idea that has become outmoded and more related to the last century than this one.  Looking at this symbolically, I doubt that continuing to look at ourselves as if we were factories is at all useful to our well-being.  What’s productive about a walk through the park on a warm summer day?  What’s productive about sharing a delicious meal with friends?  What is productive about many of the things we can do each day that bring us a sense of peace or even joy?

I spent last evening watching my 4 year old niece while her folks went out for dinner.  We watched the Muppets (3 episodes, each watched twice) and we made puppets out of paper bags and ribbons.  There was nothing at all productive about what we did, not even the creation of the puppets was about ‘getting them done’.  We both totally enjoyed the experience of playing and collaborating on our creations.  To my niece, if something was ‘silly’ it was good and for us everything was silly.   Ok well maybe brushing teeth and going to bed wasn’t silly but it wasn’t exactly all about being productive either.   This is the sometimes delicate balance of the Child and the Adult archetypes.  Go ahead, do something silly and unproductive.  It might be the happiest, most successful part of your day.

The Child Archetype

The Child Archetype

Simply said, we all have had a childhood and a part of us remains a child throughout our lives.  Eight or Eighty we are all still capable of playing wild and free, throwing tantrums, hiding from grown-ups (authority), believing that anything can happen or just being silly for the sake of doing so.

“We are every age that we have ever been.”
~Madeline L’Engle

The Child archetype resides in us all and is the first that we come to know.   The Child archetype is sometimes called the guardian of innocence and it represents our beginning point.  This archetype sets up our earliest perceptions of life, safety, loyalty and family.   The heart of the Child archetype is one of dependency and responsibility.  Addressing the Child archetype within can awaken a new relationship with life, a new start.

There are many aspects of the Child archetype each with their own set of specific expressions. While we can carry expressions of all of these aspects, one will usually be dominant in our childhood as well as our later life.  Which aspect best describes your experience of the Child archetype? Review the list below along with descriptions on the following pages.

Related Articles:
Summertime and the Child Archetype
The Sun – At Play With The Child
Three Archetypes of Awesome
DMC and the Angel (orphan child)

Orphan Child (Abandoned Child)
The Orphan Child is the major character in most well known children’s stories, including Little Orphan Annie, the Matchstick Girl, Bambi, the Little Mermaid, Hansel and Gretel, Snow White, Cinderella, Harry Potter and many more. The pattern in these stories is reflected in the lives of people who feel from birth as if they are not a part of their family, including the family psyche or tribal spirit. Yet precisely because orphans are not allowed into the family circle, they have to develop independence early in life. The absence of family influences, attitudes, and traditions inspires or compels the Orphan Child to construct an inner reality based on personal judgment and experience. Orphans who succeed at finding a path of survival on their own are celebrated in fairy tales and folk stories as having won a battle with a dark force, which symbolically represents the fear of surviving alone in this world.

The shadow aspect manifests when orphans never recover from growing up outside the family circle. Feelings of abandonment and the scar tissue from family rejection stifle their maturation, often causing them to seek surrogate family structures in order to experience tribal union. Therapeutic support groups become shadow tribes or families for an Orphan Child who knows deep down that healing these wounds requires moving on to adulthood. Identifying with the Orphan begins by evaluating your childhood memories, paying particular attention to whether your painful history arises from the feeling that you were never accepted as a family member.

Films:Margaret O’Brien in The Secret Garden; Hayley Mills in Pollyanna; Daniel Radcliffe in Harry Potter, Matt Damon in Goodwill Hunting, Linguini in Ratatouille
Fiction:David Copperfield by Charles Dickens; The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum., Harry Potter by JK Rowling

Magical / Innocent Child
Magical Child represents the part of us that is both enchanted and enchanting to others. It sees the potential for sacred beauty in all things, exemplified by Tiny Tim in Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, and by Anne Frank, who wrote in her diary that in spite of all the horror surrounding her family while hiding from Nazis in an attic in Amsterdam, she still believed that humanity was basically good. Her insights offered at a time when most people were collapsing under the weight of war and persecution continue to inspire people to seek out the wondrous side of life, even in a crisis.

One might assume from the name that this archetype refers to only the delightful qualities of children, but as demonstrated by Anne Frank and Tiny Tim, it also embodies qualities of wisdom and courage in the face of difficult circumstances.

Baudelaire wrote that “genius is childhood recaptured,” and in that sense the Magical Child is something of a genius too. The Magical Child is gifted with the power of imagination and the belief that everything is possible. The shadow energy of the Magical Child manifests as the absence of the possibility of miracles and of the transformation of evil to good. Attitudes of pessimism and depression, particularly when exploring dreams, often emerge from an injured Magical Child whose dreams were “once upon a time” thought foolish by cynical adults. The shadow may also manifest as a belief that energy and action are not required, allowing one to retreat into fantasy.

Films: Drew Barrymore in E.T.; George du Fresne in Ma Vie en Rose; Audrey Tatou in Amelie; Shirley Temple in Good Ship Lollipop
Fiction: The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry; Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lindgren; Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland  by Lewis Carroll; Luna Lovegood in the Harry Potter Series