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
