THE EMPRESS

From The Halloween Tarot

Original writing by Kathryn Ravenwood

 

“What are you going to be for Halloween?”  For those of us who love this time of year that question can spark creative fires that may not burn any other time. Costumes! Parties! Wigs and makeup! Decorations! It’s off to the thrift stores to forage for the perfect parts to our costumes; sewing machines, paper and scissors and glue, lights and spider webbing take over our homes.  It is a day of open social license to be different, to act out and be outrageous. What fun!

I decided the Empress, source of all Creativity, was the perfect Tarot card for the season. And what an Empress she is!  As the Bride of Frankenstein, she herself was created from the equivalent of the body thrift store!  Re-animated from what was dead, she lives again.

How is your creativity lately? It is easy for us to forget just how much we do create in our lives. We often associate creativity with “art” -  painting, singing, writing, sculpting, cooking/baking and other obvious artistic expressions. The fact is that we are constantly creating our lives as we go along.  Each day is a new beginning, a blank canvas so to speak.  We get to choose how and what we think, what we wear, what we eat, where we go and how we act out our lives.  It is all a big stage and we are the star of our own show.

How is your life script these days?  Are you running the same old lines on the same tired old sets with the same old ho-hum response from your audience of friends, families, and co-workers? Or have you dressed up with new costumes, written in some new roles that make the plot more exciting?  Have you changed the cast of characters in your life?  How are all those parts of yourself and your entourage interacting? Is the plot interesting? Is the outcome completely predictable? Are there any new twists and enticements? Is your life exciting or boring?

Are there things left to do that you want to go for?  What are you waiting for?  Time is short and we have busy lives, but we need to make the time and budget to travel, read, learn and study, take up new hobbies, explore things that seem like fun or spark an interest.  We may not stay with all of them, but we need to honor them, check them out, and discover why we are drawn to them.

I recently was meditating on what new direction I might take in my life – I admit I was trying to see an end result and was not even looking at the first steps or the path!  But Spirit kindly stepped in and said, “just try this…. which leads to that… which leads to something entirely different that you don’t even know about yet.  Have fun!” Wow – great advice and really the essence of creativity.  Just try it.  Just do it. Get started. See what happens. Nothing is permanent.  We can always change our minds. Or we can do nothing and wonder what it might have been had we tried.

Frankenstein’s Bride was certainly not perfect but she did come forth from seemingly impossible beginnings.  What is waiting for you to bring forth? What lives in the depths of your stuffed and forgotten desires that longs to be recycled and re-birthed?  Try something new today.  Mix up your wardrobe, try a different combination in that morning smoothie, cut some pictures that appeal to you from magazines and glue them onto a poster board just because they are provocative to you.  All these artistic gestures on the outside will manifest changes on the inside as well.  You just never know what you might discover about yourself and your world.

Trick or Treat… hold out your bag and see what goodies get dropped into it!

 

…Kathryn Ravenwood 10/20/17