Surya and his two wives. Standing in the light of conscious awareness, we see a long shadow cast before us, the shadow of ourselves. This shadow is like a reflection of ourselves, in which we can see ourselves more clearly. Most of the time we do not notice our shadow, but when we turn to face it, we may see parts of ourselves that we were unaware of. Seeing that it is dark, we may becomes scared of our own shadows, afraid of facing up to what lies therein. "Everyone carries a shadow," Jung wrote, "and the less it is embodied in the individual's conscious life, the blacker and denser it is." The Jungian shadow is everything outside the light of consciousness, whether good or bad. It represents the aspects of yourself which are unknown to you, which have become repressed through self-denial. What aspects of yourself do you keep hidden? What aspects of yourself do you refuse to aknowledge? These aspects of yourself may be revealed to you through your dream...

Do you find yourself constantly questing for your deep down true self? When I was a teenager I used to really wonder who I was and how it was possible to find myself changing over time. I decided that who we are can shift from one identity to another over time, and that it was ok to change your style of clothing, the music you listen to, the friends you hang out with. It's ok to learn new things and develop as a person. I kept being told how important it was to study and understand yourself, but how could I study something that changed over time? Would my current ideas and beliefs be totally different in the future? Would I be a completely different person in ten or twenty years time? Would the future me even remember who I used to be? Would the old me be long dead and forgotten? And what would happen when I died altogether, would I be totally forgotten and lost to the world? Would I be staring into the abyss of nothingness for the rest of time? Could I somehow preserve mysel...

Tarot of Marseilles Twelve are the apostles of Jesus, including the traitor Judas. According to the Gospel of Matthew, Judas commited suicide by hanging himself, and so the image of a hanged man was associated with traitors. The image for the twelth Tarot card is a hanged man, known as "pittura infamante" the defaming portrait. Such portraits were painted in order to shame a known criminal. Often the portraits were life size frescoes, displayed in public spaces, and accompanied by a written label to "name and shame" the criminal. To depict someone hanging upside down was considered particularly humiliating. These images were effective in punishing noblemen for their bad debt, bankruptcy, fraud, forgery, etc. What this image says is that someone of high standing and wealth has fallen from grace, their ego has taken a beating. The lesson this card teaches is that an over-inflated ego will be turned on its head. The height of pride will become the lowest of the lo...

Tarot of Marseilles The wheel of fortune is ever turning. Past, present and future are all on the wheel, and as the wheel turns, the present becomes the past and the future becomes the present. We can't freeze time, we can't stop the wheel from turning. It seems like history repeats itself, and we go round and round in circles. How does the number ten relate to this card? Humans have ten fingers to count, so ten represents a full set. A shape with ten sides is called a decagon, which almost resembles a circle or a wheel. In Pythagoreanism, the number ten played an important role and was symbolized by the tetractys, or tetrad. It's a triangular figure consisting of ten points arranged in four rows: one, two, three, and four points in each row. It represents the order of the Universe, comprised of four elements. It's also associated with the ten sephirot of Kabbalah. The sephirot are ten ways in which the Supreme Being or Higher Power is known to us. The number ten...

Hello everybody I suppose I better start blogging again! I was blogging over at wordpress for a little while but I just couldn't get to grips with the format. I like that this blog is easily linked to my other accounts, it gets automatically shared with my twitter and facebook, so that makes life easier. So what is this blog all about? Basically, this is my online diary where I can write about the stuff I'm doing. I often share pictures and things on my facebook page, but my blog enables me to go into more detail and write several paragraphs, if you're interested in reading more about what I do. What is the purpose of my art? When I was a little kid, I wanted to become an artist so that I could communicate the lovely things in my imagination with the rest of the world. I wanted to bring the imaginary to life. This is why I do what I do, because I believe in the importance of imagination. What you have in your head is not insignificant. The thoughts and images that po...

Well I have been writing this blog for about a year and a half now. Many blogs have preceded this one. Blogging is just a way for me to note down ideas and process information, it's something I do so I can reflect on things. I feel right now like I'm coming out of a tunnel, I can see the light at the end and it is drawing ever so close. The tunnel has been that shady time between November and May, when the northern hemisphere slips into slumber. It was the night of Halloween when I ended my 9 year relationship with Mike. We had a lovely time together, and he is still dear to me, but I had come to realise that we were not the best match. We didn't argue or fight, we were quite content with each other, but I don't think we ever really opened up to each other. We kept each other at a safe distance and enjoyed each other's company without getting too emotionally intimate. I want desperately for him to be happy. Then I met Tom, who was straight away open about his...

Through our daily earthbound life, we recognise the sun rising in the east (northeast in the summer and southeast in the winter) and mounting the sky. The sun rarely passes directly overhead, and rather we see it moving toward the south, if you're in the northern hemisphere. The sun will then set toward the west (southwest in the winter and northwest in the summer). This all changes if you're in the southern hemisphere, where the sun will appear to travel through the north, rising in the southeast at winter and the northeast at summer, and rising in the southwest in summer and northwest in winter. The following diagram shows the perceived passage of the sun for each hemisphere. For this reason, I would place my altar in the South and draw the circle anti-clockwise if I were in the southern hemisphere. Whether we are in the southern or northern hemisphere, the altar is placed in the darkest quarter of the circle, where the sun is perceived to travel under the earth. Psychol...