FEBRUARY // Project 2: Obscured Challenge
THE EXPERIMENT
OBSCURED CHALLENGE – pick several cards you don’t understand from your deck and come to understand them. In this experiment we use the word “obscured” to denote that a card is still partly hiding it’s identity.
Important note: please do not comment on our cards or our interpretation of our cards. In SoulCollage® we don’t comment at all on other people’s cards. In that way, even though Somsara and I are sharing these experiments with you for educational purposes, our decks still belong solely to us.
In case you don’t know, in SoulCollage® each person has their own deck, that they make over time and they are the only person who gets to make, read and interpret the cards in their personal deck. This is one of the things that makes these decks ultra-sacred, so magical and worth energetically protecting.
All SoulCollage® imagery is evocative and enticing for other people’s souls. If seeing one of our cards arouses insight for you, know that insight IS YOURS and you can journal about it, work/play with it on your own and just understand that we never need to know about it.
JESSICA’S CARDS
(in order of when they revealed):
CARD #1
Initially, I didn’t know what this card meant, so I never gave it a name. Then, as I pulled it I always felt uneasy and started calling it “Sloth, Owl, Frozen.”
Hilariously, this obscured card was the first to reveal more of itself to me.
The day after we selected our obscured cards, this one was on top and I heard inside my head the Smiths song, “You Just Haven’t Earned It Yet, Baby”.
And I just knew who this card is.
There’s a lot of potential in that card, but it’s frozen and a sloth with a gun (slowness) and an owl (wisdom) is guarding it.
Now I love this card as much as I’ve always loved that song.
CARD #1
FIRST NAME – Sloth, Owl, Frozen
NEW NAME – You Just Haven’t Earned It Yet Baby
CARD #2
Once I got going, the rest of the cards started to reveal faster. It’s like they all started stumbling over each other to be known, and heard.
Card two I never named because although I was intuitive about the images I layered on it, once they were all together I had no idea who the card was.
Then these four words came to me, Space Gypsy Dream Boat. Ever since I was young, certain fictional locations have really appealed to me. The list of magic places includes, but is not limited to:
· The inside of Samantha Stephens house in Bewitched
· Wonder Woman’s invisible jet
· Cinderella’s bedroom in the animated Disney movie
· The inside of Jeannie’s bottle on I dream of Jeannie
· The house in Practical Magic (really it is a full-on character in that movie)
· and most recently Rose the Hat’s trailer in Dr. Sleep
This card is about the feeling those private fictional spaces that belonged to magical women gives me.
Now it is not only beautiful on the card, when I pull it I know that I can get to those power places whenever I want. Beautiful!
CARD #2
FIRST NAME - ???
NEW NAME – Space Gypsy Dream Boat
(p.s. I know we are not meant to use the word Gypsy, but with SoulCollage® you’ve got to be loyal to the exact words that come through. I apologize in advance if the terminology bothers you and please know I am using it in a Stevie Nicks kind of way.)
CARD #3
My third card has been coming up a lot lately, in important readings so I was excited to know a little bit more about where she’s coming from.
On the card there is a lot going on.
There is a baby kangaroo being bottle-fed milk by hand. (Noticing more hands in my cards by the way, I must be hanging out with Somsara too much, LOL.)
There is a blonde woman holding onto a giant piece of meat and looking at the viewer defiantly; like “this is mine”.
But in SoulCollage® we aren’t supposed to describe what’s on the card, but instead to hear the voice of the card. So I held the card and closed my eyes for a few seconds and then I knew.
I have several cards in my deck that are about different aspects of balancing my motherhood and my selfhood. This is one of those.
The speaker is the woman and she says, “this is mine.” and “you can’t take that away from me.” “It’s mine, I earned it and I’ll protect it.”
Now I see this is also a protector card and represents a kind of energy that I really need right now. I’m very glad to know this “this is mine.” card better so she can be helpful to me and help me grow that confident-about-my-rights energy.
CARD #3
Old name: Bringing home the bacon (sorry, that’s a lame name, but sometimes they just are.)
New name: This is mine.
I hope that this helps you work with your own cards! Make cards, learn who they are and let them help you live your best life. Xo, JS
SOMSARA’S CARDS
Admittedly I started this project with the assumption that I would not figure out some of the cards I chose. Some seemed “unknowable” or simply just to weird to make sense of. What I discovered though, is that the cards DO want to be known – and if you give them a little more of your time and attention than maybe you normally might, and intentionally dialogue with them – they all eventually come forward. Some took weeks, some took a day or two, but to my surprise I figured out every card I wanted to know. Here is the process I went through with 3 selected cards:
1. Old name: Myths? Medusa? (Not sure)
This card has been a mystery since I made it. I love the way it feels but the imagery was so confusing and disjointed to me – Medusa, spacemen and a Los Angeles institution Griffith Park Observatory. I stared at it a long time trying to make the “logical” connections and nothing came. I meditated with it, and asked it who it was, but still no clarity. I decided to make myself do the thing I often avoid doing which is writing / journaling about it – this is not a natural process for me, even though I know it works. So I set a timer for 10 minutes, took a deep breath, and forced myself to write for 10 minutes straight (no stopping!) about what I was feeling in this card. Choppy at first, but then it started to flow. This card was about myths. And yes space and exploration but the real a-ha was the building itself – one I have loved since childhood high up on the hill over Los Angeles with it’s warm interior glow has always felt like a sacred and reverential type space to me – almost like a church? Yes that FELT right – it had a spiritual feel of worship and looking for answers – and THAT was the key. This card was about where I go (now as an adult) when I have the big questions in my life – myths, star gazing, exploration, science, mystery, magic – this is a card about seeking and finding answers in places that matter to ME personally. I love this card and what it represents now – it is my “new place of worship”
New Name: A spiritual place
2. Old Name: Bend over backwards
This is such an old and unpleasant card and one that frustrates me. Put it into the “I’ll never know this card truly” pile because the imagery felt so simple and yet I couldn’t unravel it. Since I had success with the timed writing practice, I decided to dive in again here. Stare deeply into the card, connect with it, and write non-stop unedited. Not gonna lie, it was such a struggle this one! Running out of things to write about this card I really investigated deeply into every little nook and cranny of the imagery of the card and after having nothing else to write about I found lots of little birds hidden in the tree. This tired man. The birds. The roots growing out of an exhausted form and suddenly it hit me – this is about the paternal side of my family. The birds are a link to my maiden name and without going into all the details, my father is a pretty exhausting, tiring and ultimately draining topic for me – and yet, we are so bound to our families - our roots. There are definitely more layers to unravel here (this one probably goes deeper than I even realize) but I have found the key that has begun to unlock this card and now I can start working with it.
New Name: Paternal Roots
3. Old name: Breaking through the cold exterior
Let’s face it, this card is a mess. I actually told myself if I don’t figure this out today, I’m going to retire it because there’s too much going on here, I probably put too much imagery on the card and it’s a big muddled mess. So how’s that for going in with a good patient attitude? I didn’t even know where to start with this one. Jessica had recently been talking about all the “water” in her cards and I saw that I had some ice in this card too, so I began there. Let’s just start this time by observing what elements are in this card and see if that’s somewhere to start – just straight up word association.
Ice. Fireman. Fire and Ice – OK that’s interesting – so two things that are in opposition. Or fire melting ice? But he’s chopping it apart not melting it. The hidden female forms were really the mystery here to me, why were they’re two of them. Connecting with the card and trying to feel who or what these forms were. A ghost form trying to emerge with butterfly type glasses to see. A chrysalis? A “cool girl” in high heels trying to protect or hide/veil this ghost/spirit. Oh she’s “protecting” this more spirit-like creature. Now I was getting somewhere. I decided it was time to go to the timed writing exercise and through that stream of consciousness writing it became clear to me that this is about the ego and the tricky process of separating (axing) out the “firey” ego who wants to be seen and heard and be loud/look/perceived a certain way and let the real inner more gentle true voice “thaw” and be heard. Suddenly I love this card! I can see that the ego is trying to help me, even when it’s actually not. It’s like seeing two sides of myself in this card and as the fireman in this image it’s my job to understand how it’s sometimes a real struggle to separate out the messages you are hearing to make sure you are checking your loud ego and getting the signal from the noise. This card is now a good kind of messy to me.
New card name: Ego, fire and ice.
What I most learned from this process is that each card has it’s own story that wants to be heard, and you have to give it it’s own time. You can’t rush it, but you can really PAY ATTENTION to it and with these cards you can always look deeper. There’s so much hidden in there we don’t see, and pushing – let it it stay with you and roll around – will bring you insight. And if all else fails – force yourself to write non-stop for 10 (or more) minutes!!