Igniting the Heart Torus: Tarot Visioning with the Ace of Wands on Quest 2016

Quest 2016 continues with Jeffrey Davis. Here is an abridged version of the prompt Jeffrey asked us (join us for his full prompt and to play into 2016, we are still welcoming newcomers):

Imagine your best possible self at the end of a day in late 2016. What symphonic activities have you been engaged in?

I fell asleep last night with the phrase, heart torus, floating through my mind. I came across the term–thanks to recommended reading on Quest–in Jennifer Louden’s Life Organizer: A Woman’s Guide to a Mindful Year. Images for the heart torus abound on the web; I am new to the term and love the images of the mesh of energy lines circling through the heart and the body.

I started the day by cutting a physical door in my poetry book’s butcher paper 2014-2015 marketing plan that hangs on backside of my actual bedroom door (that door, scarves, laundry, and marketing have a cameo appearance in Suzi Bank Baum’s Permission Slip movie about what it takes mothers to give themselves permission to create).

Prompted by an end of the year review from my publisher, Saddle Road Press, heartened by news I’d be receiving a royalty check for my poetry book, I decided to revisit that sweet old tattered marketing list to take stock of all the leg work accomplished last year: reviews solicited, interviews undertaken, readings, workshops, signings, and writing retreats.

Behind the newly cut door paper door, I placed a fresh sheet of paper. On it I drew in a sun with a lantern dead center to stand in for the Vajra heart, diamond heart. Along the rays of the sun I wrote in the names of the cities I’d still like to visit to teach writing workshops based on November Butterfly in order to help others write about the past or what still grips some portion of them. I know most book tours last one year, but I’ll dip into two given last year’s challenges and interruptions.

Another quarter of the sun’s rays I devoted to the Tarot Teaching, writing, and consult work for this year. Another quarter of the sun’s rays I assigned to the manuscript in progress and its tasks: finishing and placing the new poems and reading commune memoirs and poetry already published by others. I’m simultaneously reading Dune Child by Ella Thorp Ellis (about the artists and writers and photographers living and passing through a tiny settlement in the dunes of Pismo Beach just as the Depression hit) and Kate Gale’s devastating (so far, halfway through) Lake of Fire, (a novel based on a 60s era New England cult) and would love suggestions for other cult or commune literature or memoirs to read.

And the final quarter of the sun’s rays I left open for “Unnamed Joy.” Fill in the blank, to let go a bit of the Capricorn grip and let in some unnamed fun.

I also had on my mind a line of poetry I read first thing over email from Poetry Daily… a line from Seamus Heaney’s poem, Postscript: “the earthed lightning of a flock of swans.”

All of the above I took into meditation to consider Jeffrey’s question:

Imagine your best possible self at the end of a day in late 2016. What symphonic activities have you been engaged in?

What surprised me most is how little the vision that unfolded had to do with business. The kaleidoscope of images mean in 2016, if I live the year as I saw it manifesting in meditation, that I will enjoy:

blue herons and mist along the Russian River as I kayak with my husband, french bread and wine stowed in the hull

the unmistakeable ambers and violets of the Grand Canyon walls as I descend and ascend with my children

our two wooden tables in the kitchen covered with art supplies

the rippling wet oranges and golds of the coy at Encinitas Meditation Garden

the Tarot Sculptures of Niki de Saint Phalle in Tuscany, Italy (her sculpture garden!) and a blank notebook

Three Oranges, Joan of Arc, December, and Orchard poetry movie creation with my father and my poetry movie collaborator Robyn

opportunities to teach in beautiful settings

Torus of heart, gold mobius, lit with the joy of connecting with like questers, artists, writers, mothers, and others drawn to this path

After meditating, I decided to choose a card, asking how may I best ignite the torus of my heart as I open to this year of abundance on so many levels:

And in response, I received the Ace of Wands, which I took to mean, open to receive the gift of limitless creativity. Blaze forth!

Today’s in process drawing

I was going to re-draw the image heading this post because I wanted it to look like a lantern. It looks like many things, I suppose, and I decided not to censor it after reading Suzi Banks Baum’s post today at Rising Forth: Daring to make the invisible visible at Arrowmount School of Arts and Crafts

For fun, I’m also including a photo I took of my poetry movie collaborator Robyn’s recent sculpture stones, which, we originally intended to thread with dowel and then edit out her hand. But I decided it looked like the Rider Waite Ace series in which you see the hand in the clouds offering up its gift. Here, then, we have the Ace of Stones!

January 5, 2016 Synchronicity Update:

Without having seen this post, Robyn sent me (as she does on a regular basis), new images she took this week. She mentioned, “I meant to tell you that this piece reminds me a lot of your drawings…” She was referring to a series of black and white drawings I did while I was studying Reiki in Iowa City many years ago (a series exhibited at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics years ago, “Two Feet in an Open Sky”). But I noticed right away the image crossover with the shell’s inception point, in blue, and the flame in the lantern drawing today. The image comes from a book titled, “Piercing the Surface: X-rays of Nature by Carlo and Stefano Greco.”