It's Ruby Tuesday - again!

I'm a bit early for Ruby Tuesday, but tomorrow is grooming day for Kylie and I'll be leaving the house earlier than I usually post.

So - Happy Ruby Tuesday!!

This is part of a mandala I made when taking an online course with Patricia Ariel about Astrology and the Mandala.  I enjoyed it so much.  And learned more about myself - this image was made for my Ascendent, or Rising Sign, Leo.

From the Mandala's Heart

 
I saw you looking at your chart with symbols and connecting lines.

You've seen them before and even thought you understood what it all meant. 

But you didn't. 

Only when you left all of your preconceived notions of how you were going to make "your" mandala was I able to materialize and show you what you were missing.  Only when you were quiet were you able to use your eyes and hands and listen with your Heart's intuition to my Heart's communique.

The Elements are what they are and using words to describe them doesn't let you experience them fully.  The mandala made with hands and eyes and no mind will give you the truest picture of me - which is a mirror of you.

Fire, Earth, Air, Water contained within the circle, which is contained within another circle, which is contained within another circle - you get the picture.  Contained, yet pulsating and expansive, merging into the other circles - individual yet part of a larger picture or body.

You once wrote a poem dedicated to and about Changing Woman - your words painted a picture.  Today, I'm changing the last line to read:   

all that I see is now who I am.

When you have no words, make a picture to find the words.


(One of the suggestions from Patricia was this:  I'd like you to "speak" to your mandalas. Write a brief letter or a poem telling them things, like if you were talking to somebody you just gave birth.  I wasn't sure what to write, so I let the Mandala write to me.)

Mandala from Creative Astrology course

Well, here it is - I finally uploaded it to Flickr, was able to rotate the picture there and then blog it from Flickr.  A round about way of doing things, but I simply could not get the picture to load correctly in Blogger.  Even in Flickr, I had to correct the upload.  

Anyway, this is what I created as a result of Ariel's wonderful course - people are still working on theirs and haven't uploaded them yet.  I'm looking forward to seeing everyone's creations!

This is basically my astrological chart with visual elements of my choosing, rather than astrological symbols.  I don't understand working on a flat piece of surface - like drawing, painting, etc - and just had to add some texture to it.  As you can see, I like lots of textures, colors and visuals - they keep me interested in viewing any object. 

I wanted to show some of the details with this, but I can't figure out how to blog several photos from Flickr.  I guess I'll have individual posts with their images. 

Clicking on the picture will take you to my Flickr page.

Creative Astrology - the Element of Air

From Croneletta's altered book which she made for me.

I'm participating in an online Creative Astrology course, hosted by Patricia Ariel, a gifted artist. It's intended to spark more of our creativity through the language of astrology.  From her blog:

Workshop

If you enjoy astrology and have interest to know a bit more about how it works, while finding out more about yourself and yet sparking your creativity, you may enjoy Creative Astrology. This workshop was designed to help you understand the astrological language in an intutitive way, taking your own birth chart as a reference, and learning how to recognize the astrological symbolism inside yourself and in the world around you. This workshop is not intended to be a complete course on astrology, which would demand many months of apprenticeship and a different learning approach, but to give you a glimpse of how it is based upon and how you can see it in action in your life. as a complement you'll learn how to build a mandala journal and connect the mandala imagery to your chart and personal experience.

One of our exercises today was to look at digital collages made for each of the Elements in Western astrology - Earth, Air, Fire, Water - see what our reaction was to each of them.  The Air collage was the first one I viewed and it immediately turned me off.  Surprising me.  The other 3 elements did not produce that kind of reaction, so I'm curious what will be revealed.

I have the planets Venus and Jupiter in Aquarius, an Air sign - last year, after having an intense dream, I consulted my friend, Lark, a very talented astrologer.  She informed me that that portion of my chart was lit up and I think it still may be.  After thinking about my immediate not-so-great reaction to that collage, I know it's something I'll be working with.