The Fool's Journey, a personal odyssey in SoulCollage(R)

I spent the last couple of weeks in July “on a tear” assembling ten new SoulCollage® cards. TrueNorthArt's blog party turned out to be a good excuse. I put together four Community cards, one character card, two Council, two Committee, and my first Companion card.

When I told my husband I had 22 paper cards, he said, “Good, now you have a Major Arcana.” That set me to thinking. That, and Kathryn Antyr's use of collage for the Hero's Journey.

How might I fit my existing cards into a Major Arcana pattern?

I tossed and turned for a couple of nights running through how I might move things around. Then I got up and did it. Then the cat sat on my cards. Then the monsoon rains on the only humid day of the year caused the cards to swell, so I had to press them back into shape with the help of a couple of thick phone books. (Phone books are still good for something. You can't press stuff using Google.)

I'd done something similar once before. I’d heard a writer using tarot suggest collaging a set of Majors for your writing project in an afternoon. I'm not nearly that brave, but upon discovering my in-progress 50's noir had 22 characters...I once spent forty-five minutes in Starbucks moving them around into a Major Arcana pattern. And guess what, it worked. Very well, in fact.

Writing coach Steve Barnes says if you internalize the Hero's Journey as a writer, you're golden. Your subconscious will make the story for you. I've been a tarot reader for 22 years. (There's that number again!) I wondered if I'd internalized the Fool's Journey enough for it to affect what cards I created first.

The following is a very subjective trip through the Fool's Journey using what's on hand, including Community cards as well as Council. Some are very obviously archetypes. Others fit into the sequence through design elements.

I hope you enjoy this syncronicitious journey.