After writing this i realize i went off topic a lot. It's a lengthy blog about tarot cards, Aliens, opinions and other crazy thoughts which i carry around.
As of yet, few know i'm working on a tarot deck. Few know because i am not much of a salesman. That has always been a struggle to me. To encourage someone to take an interest in something. I think nearer completion i may start to promote it more. However...rest easy all of those who do tarot or appreciate the symbolism. I am not really the mind behind it all, i only do the artworks. Chanel has been reading cards for 15 years or more. So i can't just draw anything i want to draw like i was used to doing in my own artworks. But it is a good challenge that way. Trying to add certain meanings and emotions without using certain strategies where i might have used before to convey things. Sometimes when i draw, the pencil may accidentally go a certain direction not meant. Usually this needs erased, but sometimes it can create a more powerful posture in a character or a better emotive quality for the card than originally envisioned
I like it when that happens. all hand drawings i do are from my mind. A very odd time i will use reference for things such as a frog or a horse because i am not used to drawing certain things. But i mostly let my mind do the work. There is a reason for that. I do that because one...i am lazy haha. but no, the main reason is. the drawing comes out of your hand movements as very natural, and you can exaggerate certain things in an artwork to emphasise certain things you want to stand out. If drawing from life, i'm sure it also would look good, but you might start to become worried about drawing/adding/extending dresses and gowns, things that aren't already on your reference photo.
I didn't know about tarot and i suppose i still don't, but there are a few cards that when i've drawn them, i began to "get in" to the card...the mental thinking of a lot of the cards. To me, it had to seem real. It is the story of a fool and his trials.
I relate to the hermit card of course because i am an artist, a poet and i live out in the countryside. Each of these things combined leads to a life of inward searching and solitude. I probably make it sound far too romantic, but really, it is a hard life to live. In cities, although there is a loss nowadays of human intereaction( ask someone something at a bus stop and turns out they have earphones secretly hidden away in their ears). the city is a living breathing place of people where artificial suns hang on steel trunks and keep you awake all night. So in the country, all you can hear is the cries of foxes from over the fields, sometimes some birds in the trees unsettled. but night is true night and you can see the stars and the strangeness of the mystery of the universe. I used to watch the air traffic and really, there is more than you think. are they all human? who knows.
So for the Hermit card, like all cards, i had a laylout of roughly how Chanel thought it should look. I am drawing her visions...in my own style, although she'll ask my opinions. She'll tell me the meaning of each card, and then i can suggest things. So some of my ideas are in there which is nice. For the hermit card we imagined what she calls "fathertime". For this card the hermit HAD to be living in clutter. I make no illusions, i believe clutter is part and parcel of having an introverted life. you spend too much time inside to see the outside. I don't apologise for it anymore, and neither should you if you are like this. Not all minds and souls are the same....some people never go inside their mind or imagination and we never think bad of them for it. Those people are sometimes referred to as...i dunno "realists". I am a man with my head in the clouds haha. though i much prefer it there anyway. For me personally it adds colour to my life. For most people for example, a forest is just a forest. But for me it's more than that. Each place has a history, and even if you don't know about that history, your mind still wonders about it. In any given place, there are ancient things unfound. you know this to be true. We've shared each and every part of each and every land with many thousands of years of human and dinosaur activity. But my problem is, i think i am focused on past mysteries. the future does interest me though. I believe that Aliens will give us the knowledge of teleportation in the future. The fact that i actually believe this without having any reason or proof too, surprises me...and, maybe scares me, but not too much. it doesn't scare me too much that i would think of crazy things with no evidence. I've understood like you, many things in this earth and human activity that are true, and everyday "normal" people can't explain such as how can we watch a box in the corner of the room and see news from another land when in our old days, the news would have taken weeks even months to reach our king, who then weeks later you would have heard rumour in the towns. Now we are all privileged to hear news right inside our own home, no matter how profound or mundane.
Or having a man walk along the surface of the moon. or having vechicles drive upon the surface of mars. I believe of course that for me personally this is the signs of the time where more than a few ancient scriptures have been talking about, the part where they say " you will see signs in the sun, the moon and the stars" Now this being enchantedfolk, i won't break into much biblical talk. that is not what this blog is about.
But the strange things, the changes in our technologies in the last 200 years are amazing to most people. we take for granted the ability to lift a phone in the middle of the countryside and call someone half a world away. Folks...when you get right down to it, that is a changing of earth's natural ways. But we as humans changed it nontheless. we changed reality by creating communication devices that bring us closer together. This is great i think, for human interaction. It's great for that, but the negative is all the radio and tv waves that pass through us and every living thing struggling for it's existence. But as humans we did change and warp reality to suit ourselves, and all changes to nature will probably have good and bad results.
I am not sure what will happen in the year 2012 apart from hundreds of thousands of people gathering at the ancient aztec ruins in hopes of seeing strange sightings.Maybe nothing will happen. Maybe something will. If it does, i would guess that the airspace from Nevada to Peru will be saturated with UFOs, and not all of them saucer like to look at. it will probably be a very scary time for human beings on earth, and also cattle in the fields and many other animals. when helicopters fly low at night over the fields, the cattle go crazy. Some have even dropped dead from fear(none of my fathers however). So with the UFO's, it will scar many living things. I do believe that alien people have been visiting us since ancient ancient days. Who knows who REALLY discovered fire at the start. Did man discover it for himself?
I saw a documentary once where jungle tribes were taught about the planets by men in flying ships, long before humans learned how to fly. If that is true, then it's something to consider. I don't really know where this blog is going....i'm off the topic entirely. It was supposed to be about the tarot cards i'm doing. But really...i suppose it's a blog about how to keep propping your head up when it's heavy with weird thoughts all overlapping and not making much sense.
The 2012 thing. I bet when that year comes, people in the know, will say the end is near and expect that year to be a strange one. Maybe they will wish it to be strange so much that they will work deceit and like about things they saw, to hype others up so that they can then feed off that excited energy. In the new years eve of 1999, many christian people gathered around our local town hall expecting to see the return of Christ. Now this surprised me. If Christ in the scriptures says " the day and hour unknown", and it's written more than once, and " not only the son knows, only the father"....did these Christians proclaim to have some higher knowledge than Jesus? Even the reverend whom they followed out to the townhall should have known better. I didn't write the bible, and i am not a reverened. yet even i knew they were acting crazy. How did they overlook these scriptures? Why would they think it would be so easy? and thus it appeared to me that they had become the one thing they were against all along. A Cult. A hypocritical cult. Though being an oul heathen that i am, i had not been to church in quite a few years by then, but the entire building became to me, a middle finger gesture shown to God.
This is why i fear 2012 could be another get together of crazy people. But i don't know. i really don't know. I think i would trust in the Mayans for there was something quite spiritual back in the ancient days that we seem to have lost now. I mean, the spiritual feeling is pretty elusive these days. The last time i felt a spiritual moment was when an entire audience of 70'000 or more people applauded Drummer Rick Allen of Def Leppard for his dedication to drumming despite his amputation in 1984. i had tears in my eyes, i think many people did. it was a very profound feeling of human appreciation that spanned over 2-3 huge fields i would say. the drummer you could was very touched by the appreciation of all the people. But as humans, the need to connect, to group up and have an experience exists all over the world. There is a comfort found in the company of like minded people. i do foresee a day but it's because i'm an optomist. i foresee that we will have ONE common experience that we ALL will see, and it will be strong enough to erase bigotry and racism from our hearts. It will i believe erase hatred from all of us. However...that hatred might have to be placed onto another thing not of this world, in order that all of us humans live in peace. When whites no longer hate blacks, when blacks no longer hate whites, when people no longer hate homosexuals etc etc, we will see each other as having the same colour of blood, the same human skin and characteristics. But it may be because we are joined as human brothers and sisters to stop the onslaught of those other immigrants.......Alien life forms from space.
All humans, at least human men(i don't know why) have the need for war. We war for everything from land, to women, to entitlements and sadly enough...we war even for peace. in fact, warring to keep the peace is the main reason, and i would say the noble reason, providing we don't overstep the mark and extend the warring to unimportant things like......*coughs* oil. Had to throw that in there. yeah, i think blowing up buildings and bodies and unnamed faces for black oil from the ground is a sign of human stupidity, but then that's what happens when you need to secure the human made unnatural way of life. To fuel a horse you give it hay. to fuel a car, you have to destroy and blow up things in other countries. But anyway, war is something that humans felt the need to carry on. it has been going on since humans were first made probably. Now...you have to wonder, was man made in God's image phsyically, or mentally, or both? Or was that originally, before corruption, or was it all the one thing?
All we know is, human men seem to be ruled by pride, and the pride can be broken down into different catagories such as jealousy and lust. they are also ruled by fear, and their fear of the unknown is very strong. In war, where once you may have hated each other, if you and your once enemy fight against an even bigger enemy, that enemy who fought alongside you becomes an ally and gets your respect. That is because he fights alongside you, alleviating your fear of defeat at the hands of the bigger enemy. Often people will say "mankind" and they include women in that. So if mankind loves war, we are to just blame women too? I do not think that should be. Although in recent years, many women have become quite cold and distant and not very loving at all, traditionally women had the caring loving side. I daresay, women in higher positions actually tried to delay or stop war from happening. Also i would like to say, not all men like to war, but collectivly their raw brutality seems to be harnessed very efficiently through scaremongering by leaders. their wills are weakened by the prospect of their land and their livlihood being destroyed alongside their families being murdered. put fear into a man and trap him in a corner, and he will fight his way out. In a sense, the media and the corruption of it is playing different lands off against each other. Like corrupt soothsayers and spindoctors. Many lives ended by false information and specially tailored half truths.
anyway, i don't know how life would pan out after today for example. I am told that many seek answers through seers and tellers of fortune although sadly many only seek answers about riches and love. or forced love, even if it means breaking up famalies. forced riches, even if it means getting one over on someone else. the heart of people can't always be expected to be pure in this world, no matter how we want it. Some never want advice, unless it is advice that lets them reach their goals, though the goals are leading to destruction. But i draw these cards and their symbolisms and meanings. Initially it was at war with my Christian faith. After all, the tarot is considered occult. But it became a little more clear to me. The Jesus that i know, is not the same Jesus that the same people knew when they stood out there in 1999 waiting for something that even Jesus himself had no knowledge of. I still see their hatred of gay people, and of muslims in many many places. I still see their idolatry in riches. Though it is not my place to judge, i daresay if Jesus returned, these Christians probably wouldn't recognise him anyway. They'd be on the phone to the president to nuke him out of the sky.
Whatever the case, many times when i read about Native American beliefs such as from the Hopi tribe, much of what is said, is how i feel about life and spirit. I suppose it is similar to bible scripture in many ways.
www.angelfire.com/folk/4eartheden/Hopi.h...
Drawing the cards is interesting to do. If used correctly i wonder that maybe it can help people. What i do know is, and for a long long time i was skeptical, the readings Chanel have given me in the past are accurate and detailed. There was no possible way she could have known things unless she's hired private detectives and sent them over to spy on me in Ireland. So, it is a strange power behind the cards then i suspect, but i am hoping it is a "good" spiritual power. I prefer to think of the energy as a caring loving entity...maybe an angel who is looking out for particular people who seek answers. though the answers are often not what we humans wish them to be. Then it is up to us to ignore them if we want. I do not know. At this present time in my life, i have a feeling that i am to complete the deck. my art at least to my knowledge is being used for good, to help people be guided in their certain ways in life.
here are some cards, and sketches and colours
thanks for reading this spiralling, rambling of non-sensical things.
James
