I just received a wonderful moment of sunshine when ElyseM sent me the link to a review of the Journey Oracle she recently posted on youtube. It is so true that we don't often see what we have accomplished until we are able to see it through another's eyes. Here are some of the stories behind several of the qualities she noticed about the Journey Oracle.
Elyse commented on the beautiful packaging. If only you knew how many versions came before this one! At first I could not afford professional printing, and so each Oracle deck was put in a felted case. My source of this wonderfully thick felt disappeared just when Ann Mortifee offered to publish the Oracle in exchange for one of my shamanic paintings.
Then the staff at Kask Graphics in Campbell River suggested the use of "auspicious" colors and so the gold and green--which invites good fortune--plus some "sparkle," became a reality.
Elyse was most impressed by the book. This is the greatest complement. I began working on the Journey Oracle in 1992 after I had a dream where I was showing a woman a deck of cards I had made, It took five years to create the round paintings of pen and ink by looking into disks of rawhide, slices of agate and cross-sections of amonite shell. But this turned out not to be the hard part.
What is this Oracle? How do I describe a never-before-seen-thing? How to conduct a reading? All the rest of the 22 years of its creation have been seeking answers to these questions. It was not until I read Carl Jung's autobiography and discovered his description of the four parts of a dream--that I found my way to journey to the Oracle. You can read the full story of this shamanic journey into a waking dream on my website.
Our lives are truly hand-made art. And each time we circle the table, collecting into our grasp the forces that amaze and confound us, we translate our questions and problems into a language of image and symbol. This language dialogues with our imagination--the creative root of life we call the unconscious--and our situations are transformed into meaningful action and self-knowledge. Thank you Elyse, for helping me see my journey through your experience.
