What is Soul Mapping?

Soul mapping is a process of getting information and direction that is not readily available to your everyday waking awareness. It uses archetypal images that have been carefully selected to go under the radar of the conscious mind. Talking about issues only goes skin deep, but when you use images, music, and dance, the right-brain opens the door to deeper levels of intuitive knowing. The image cards provide keys to an inner landscape of a situation, person, or line of questioning. By exploring what the image means to you personally, currents, flow of energies, and patterns emerge in response to your question.

I like to use the icon of Psyche and Eros when describing soul mapping. Luther Gerlach's beautiful photographic image tells of a tender love between two archetypal energies. "Psyche" is the Greek word for soul, and "Eros" is the universal symbol for love, desire, longing, and passion. Together, they spell "Soul's Desires." Soul mapping is a way to get down to your soul's desire.

Soul mapping uses a deck of 74 image cards, now organized in a tarot format, since so many people relate to it. It is divided into the Major Arcana of 22 cards symbolizing universal laws and Minor Arcana of Physical, Mental, Emotional, and Spirit World suits. Visually they are represented by magenta, red, green, blue, and purple, respectively. Another deck consists of 50 archetypal cards I use in formulating personal information to describe a person's primary energies in categories such as Ego/Personality, Life Values, Self-Expression, Home, Creativity, Occupation, Health, Marriage/Relationships, Resources/Money, Career, Relationship to the World, Children, and Parents. This deck is particularly useful in working with dyad: mothers and daughters, husbands and wives, etc. to foster visual understanding of differences in life views. People are wired differently, and the cards help to "see" those differences in visual terms.

But soul mapping is not Tarot, at least not as it was originally intended and used. It is not divination, fortune telling, or occult. It does not come from the devil. It is purely, simply, a way to get focus unconscious material to get information and direction by accessing what you already know. And it is fun.

Soul mapping was born during a bout with pneumonia three years ago. Bored with bed rest, yet too feverish and weak to do much else, a hair-brained idea sprang up that took me by surprise and kept me in its thrall for the entire two weeks it took to get better. I was driven by a half-baked idea to make cards I could use to intuitively answer questions of the subconscious mind. I riffled through a bazillion magazines, cut out images and pasted them on large index cards. I used the archetypal names from the tarot because they are so universal; but I wanted contemporary images rather than medieval ones. When I was done, I had over 100 cards.

Once recovered, I immediately began experimenting in my creativity classes and therapy groups. At first, I used the cards to develop intuition and insight.We made group creative stories and asked questions such as: "Who am I, right now?" "What do I need?" "What are my challenges?" "What do I desire?" The results were dead-on, and everyone was amazed at how accurately the image cards described their inner landscape. Even now I use them in my personal and professional life and still wonder at the creative process that brought them to life. After much trial and error, some images have been replaced by others, and the decks have been spiffied up and no longer on index cards. Right now the decks feel complete. But who knows, there's always room for improvement.

My daughter, Angelina, has been blogging for quite a while now, totally smitten with the blog bug. She was getting so much satisfaction from her endeavors, I wondered, How can the cards be used in a blog? I wanted to get in on the fun too.

So here goes. I envision using the cards to give weekly direction, much the same as the stars give direction to us earthly folks who have used them for milennia to tell where we wanted to go. The cards can't compete with the stars, but they have their own way of pointing to true North. There is always an answer at the end of every question, so I will ask: What do myself and my future blog readers want to know about the spiritual, mental, emotional, and physical energies of the coming week? And I will draw 4 cards for each of these domains of experience and post the cards and talk about what comes to mind about each one. I hope, if anyone is out there, that readers may comment on how the cards detailed their goings-on for the week. It's a way of reaching a larger audience and testing their viability. And perhaps people will be inspired to comment on that. I hope so.

Unlike my daughter's unstinting devotion to journaling, which she has been engaged with for years and years, I will only appear once a week. I think that is adequate for now, subject to change of course. Since all this is very new for me, I only hope that this will publish and be my very first blog entry. I wish you all fortuitous passage on your daily journeys wherever you are bound. It would be my pleasure to be a small part of that journey.