A couple of weeks ago, I was re-watching Ira Glass's oft quoted talk on storytelling. I used to ask my drawing and watercolor students to watch the third segment of the talk because it's so relevant for beginners at any new creative practice.

Essentially, you have to bite the bullet about what the thing you're practicing looks like and how you want it to look (or sound or read). You must keep practicing until your skill and understanding meet up with your aesthetic sensibilities. The active instruction is that "You have to fight your way through that."

But as I was listening recently, I was struck by the subsequent instructions. "You will be fierce. You will be a warrior."

That, I thought, is what we carry with us after years of practice. After conquering an acceptable level of ability, agility, in any expressive form. This practicing and conquering actually makes us warriors in many other areas of our lives. We carry our learned and earned warriorship with us.

Each creative artist has a unique narrative of their own individual process and procedure. But regardless of the story and the product, it's the process of creative warriorship that propels us along our soul's journey.

My personal life has trained me as a warrior but that is a story worthy of a large advance.

I worked through Shambhala Training in Boston and in Vermont, at Karme Chöling, in the early 1990's, with small workshop groups led by Pema Chödrön. That was a particular and broadly applicable form of overt Warrior Training.

With that warrior training in mind, as I considered all of my creative projects over the years, images from the Suit of Swords in the Pamela Coleman Smith deck kept coming to the forefront of my mind like they were plastered on my forehead.

So, I reviewed that entire suit of swords in terms of the creative process. As a result, I am developing a course with that framework on the Tarot. This will be preceded by my upcoming course on Creative Wayfinding.

Just look at this Ace of Swords.

Here is the Hand of God tranformed into the Tarot from a long history of appearances in sculpture and painting. This is Divine Intervention, offering a gift. Any of the Aces represents a Divine Gift. But here, the hand of god is offering the gift of the sword. The Swords represent thought or reason, the intellect. But in light of the frame of the creative process, this hand presents the Divinely Inspired Idea which sparks most any creative project.

Any artist who is not a complete megalomaniac, will confess that their original idea or inspiration for any project, product, process or performance was not of their personal, mundane design. Somewhere, at the beginning of the process, shone through, If only for one brief second, this Hand of God, offering that stroke of a bright idea.

As I develop my course on Tarot as a guide through the Creative Process, I am offering a 12-week course on Creative Wayfinding.  We'll have total accountability and companionship through the process with weekly meetings of like minded souls. If you would like to learn more, click here.

Thanks, as always, for reading.


©2021 Suzanne McDermott (All Rights Reserved)

Whether you are a creative or some other sort of worker, one of the topmost important ways to take care of yourself right now is to rest. It is not enough to just sleep right now.

There is entirely too much going on in the world, too much changing and way too quickly. Our physical bodies, our brains have not evolved quickly enough to keep pace with the speed of our ongoing tech developments, the increasingly rapid-fire news cycle, and our social and economic shifts over the past few years.

Rest is a critical component of recovery and healing. Rest is also a critical component of the creative process.

In so many ways, rest is about trust. Trust that your world will get along fine without your active participation for a while. That whatever you're resting on will support you. That you will continue to be just fine without trying to figure anything out or make anything happen.

When you don't know what to do next? Try doing nothing. Try resting.

Turn your energy and dilemmas over to source, to your personal definition of a higher order of things. Notice your breath if you have to calm your mind, and just rest.

That's really what this IV of Swords is all about. The illustration is by Pamela Coleman Smith and is a part of the classic and highly influential Waite-Ryder deck. The abbreviated, original meaning indicates rest (possibly after suffering).

We see a figure at rest, his hands in prayer position, above what is commonly called the "Sword of Truth", with three additional swords hanging on the background wall. The integral, often overlooked part of this image is the stained glass window showing one figure imploring another for some sort of assistance. Considering that the scene is depicted in a church and that the window is illuminated, that scene is playing out in a spiritual domain.

Most things are beyond our control. The unfolding events of the world certainly are. Why not hang up your swords, lay yourself down, ask the universe, or God, for help (if you need it), and surrender to rest?

I will elaborate on rest in a future post and maybe add to this one later. But for now, and for so many reasons, I am going to rest.