Month: September 2016

12 Essential Archetypes for Personal Transformation

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The painting above by artist Tammo de Jongh (1967) depicts 12 of the most familiar archetypes of human consciousness. In this first blog of a series on archetypes, we’ll concentrate on the Child archetype shown in the upper left hand corner of the right side panel. The child has two butterfly bows in her hair and wears a key hanging from a chain around her neck. There are 6 archetypes on each panel. We’ll read more about the other 11 later in the series.  The Child archetype indeed represents the primary key to unlock personal spiritual transformation.

In Chrysalis, the Child  archetype was named the Divine Child. I did this for several reasons. First, Chrysalis does not believe the key to understanding the Great Mysteries of creation and life requires an authority figure such as a priest who purports to be in possession of all the answers. Religious ideology (even tarot ideology) and dogmatic “correct beliefs” are anathema to Chrysalis for the simple reason that human consciousness is eternally evolving; truth must always be reinterpreted in light of present day scientific and social progress.

michaelangelos-creation-of-adamSecondly, we were all taught, for example, that divinity – God – is wholly other. This disabling belief is symbolized in Michelangelo’s famous Sistine Chapel fresco showing man’s finger (Adam’s) and God’s finger almost, yet never, touching. (This separation only ends in death and only then if you’ve been good, or so the story goes.)

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But we no longer live in the 16th century. Chrysalis’ Divine Child is an archetype for today who encourages you to embrace your own divinity and co-creative responsibility. There is no grand puppet master in the sky pulling the strings of 7-billion hapless Earthlings. That is a falsehood.

In Chrysalis, divinity is defined as the singularity that connects everything, including each one of us, to a fundamental field of information that exists throughout the universe. This singularity, that nexus, is not beyond our reach. In fact, it lies at the center of Self, which is the human heart. The center of the universe – divinity – exists within everyone! Your unique singularity is the center of the universe.

This does not imply we live alone without assistance – quite the contrary. The fundamental field of information (Φ) includes archetypes of the Collective Unconscious, gods, goddesses, mythical creatures, angels, faeries, ancestors, and you name it. It is an energetic, complex matrix of self-organizing information systems that’s accessible to us via our intellect and intuition. We constantly exchange information with this omnipresent field whether we’re aware of it or not. To be aware of it is to be enlightened.

Since the foundational principle of Chrysalis Tarot is, “We are all One, interconnected and interdependent,” Chrysalis avoids God-talk assiduously. Chrysalis can be either polytheistic or anti-theistic, depending upon your definition of those words. Frankly, we regard personal gods as a man-made divisive lot, a self-evident fact in today’s world. We tend to take our myths and metaphors far too seriously.

When these mythological gods are monotheistic male deities, the inevitable result is exile of divine feminine truth, oppression of women, conquest of nature, inequality, and numerous other metaphysical imbalances that bear dire physical consequences for humankind. Only personal transformation accompanied by a global paradigm shift can mollify this monotheistic malignancy of separatism.

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Above is the key to the image at the top of this blog. It begins with the Child archetype shown here in the upper left hand corner. Please note the Chrysalis archetypes referenced below are approximate syncretisms, i.e. the same frequency but slightly different resonance. All Collective Unconscious archetypes, and there are thousands of them, are malleable, dynamic entities.

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1.   Child (Divine Child)
2.   Enchantress (Sorceress Morgan Le Fay)
3.   Fool (Merlin, the archetype of Self)
4.   Actress (Bella Rosa)
5.   Logician (Celtic Owl)
6.   Mother Nature (Gaia)
7.   Observer (Celtic Owl)
8.    Joker (Ravens, trickster archetype)
9.   Warrior (Herne)
10.  Slave (Papa Legba, gatekeeper and servant archetype)
11.   Patriarch (Green Man)
12.   Old Woman (Storyteller)

© Toney Brooks

Tips on Making Wise Choices

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We supersized the Two of Stones to make it easier to spot the ethereal spirals between the two boulders. One way to interpret these subtle spirals is as Otherworld energy that informs the bear’s decision whether or not to proceed forward.

Similarly, spiral energy – dynamic energy of change – informs every decision we make. Some of this energy is self-generated local energy and the remainder is nonlocal energy, which is generated outside time and space in the Otherworld. This Phi energy from the Otherworld was the subject of last week’s blog, which you can find here.

How do we discern what Phi energy is saying to us? How does it inform our choices?

Interestingly, one of the best books written on this subject was composed in the 16th century by a Spanish knight turned priest known today as Ignatius of Loyola. Ignatian spirituality has had a profound and guiding influence on my own life and, consequently, on Chrysalis Tarot’s methodology of discernment.

the-weaverFor example, the Seven of Mirror’s keyword is discernment; the Two of Spirals is a card that encourages us to analyze spiraling energy carefully, and Clotho, The Weaver (pictured left), connects you to your destiny through a succession of choices, crossroads, steps and missteps.

  1. The logical first step in making a wise choice is “to weigh the pros and cons in the matter before you.” ~ LWB. Weighing pros and cons and organizing your thoughts represent local energy, but local energy can be like a full or new moon when tides of emotion run high. Weighing pros and cons has the added benefit of calming you down and protecting you from decisions made solely on emotional whim.
  2. The next step is to submit your decision/intention to the Otherworld for confirmation and then meditate upon it as you find time. Answers are often found in mediation. Some people prefer to ritualize the act of submission, although that’s not really necessary.
  3. Confirmation will occur in one or more ways: Consolation (Six of Scrolls); Intuition (Ace of Scrolls) – you’ll know because it “just feels right,” but beware of confirmation bias, which is churned out by the ego; Synchronicity (The Ravens, The Green Man and numerous other cards that evoke synchronicity, which are called “nonlocal correlations” in quantum physics); Revelation – your choice may be unwittingly confirmed by another individual acting as an Otherworld messenger. If communicated wittingly, it’s someone giving advice and should be so regarded. Dreams, Locutions and Infused Knowledge are additional avenues of confirmation. All confirmation produces consolation – feelings of confidence, inner peace and well-being.
  4. If, after a few days, you don’t feel that you’ve received sufficient confirmation, then don’t be reluctant to return to the pro-and-con drawing board for further reflection. Your choice may be correct but the timing isn’t, or your may have overlooked an important consideration and simply need to slow down a bit. Working with the Otherworld usually requires patience and persistence.
  5. Sometimes we second guess our choices even after they’ve been confirmed. Ignatius was quite clear about this: a choice confirmed by consolation, or by another method and accompanied by consolation, can always be trusted. So stick to it, even though you may be going through what Ignatius termed a “time of perturbations.” Perturbations are fear and anxiety fueled by self-doubt. If perturbations persist, you may have blocking issues in need of healing. The Otherworld often will use perturbations to prevent an unwise decision, so never force things.

Simply by opening yourself up to the Otherworld and inviting it to influence your life’s choices guarantees spiritual reward. Furthermore, co-creative cooperation with the Otherworld is probably one of the most effective chakra clearing exercises I know.

Speaking of chakras and choices, the three most important chakras in decision making are #7 Crown Chakra, #4 Heart Chakra and #3 Solar Plexus or Gut Chakra, sometimes referred to as the Second Brain. While it’s important to keep all seven chakras (energy meridians) in healthy yin-yang balance, these three chakras are the primary processing centers of Phi integrated information (previous blog) that propels you toward destiny, so trust your gut.

It’s my personal belief that when we are well grounded and our chakras are clear and balanced, making difficult choices isn’t all that difficult.

lcd_galaxies_615                Image credit: Olena Shmahalo/Quanta Magazine

© Toney Brooks

 

 

 

Phi and Higher Self

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haramein Chrysalis calls the fundamental field of integrated information alluded to on the left Phi (Φ). Phi is irreducible; you cannot get behind this ubiquitous field of energy that underpins the geometry of the cosmos and all that is.

Phi is pure consciousness. It is the Akashic Field, the Zero Point, Omega Point, Qi, Prana, life force, Pleroma as well as any of a number of other ageless monikers that point to the same metaphysical reality.

In Chrysalis Tarot, we simply refer to Φ as the Otherworld, although it is very much part of our natural world. The Otherworld transcends our natural world in the psychic and physical sense. Although it is unseen and mysterious, it is not supernatural.

Likewise, nor are archetypes, gods, goddesses and imaginal creatures such as faeries, angels and so on supernatural entities. They themselves are nested fields of “cohered” information within Phi. We can dub these nested energy fields “self-organizing integrated information systems,” each possessing a dynamic, discrete frequency or vibration. Or, to make life more interesting, we usually just anthropomorphize these frequencies and give them attributes, e.g. Papa Legba as a gatekeeper and Ma’at as balance and justice. These proper names are metaphorical memes known as metamemes. We do this so we can more effectively learn about them and they in turn about us. We could say that an archetype’s key attributes are intuited, emergent properties of its information field.

All nested substrates of Phi are also conscious. The cosmos itself is conscious. Everything is conscious, animate or not, a belief known as panpsychism. “The universe is growing in complexity and consciousness,” wrote philosopher Teilhard de Chardin.

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Our brains tune to universal frequencies through our crown chakras and unconscious minds, which, unlike individual conscious awareness, operates 24/7. Our minds, when in altered states of consciousness (meditation for example), have access to much of the useful information in Φ. However, private communication, the exchange of information between you and your Higher Self, is sacrosanct. It is firewalled, as it were, and therefore inaccessible to psychics, charlatans and sundry do-gooders. Dialog between you and your Higher Self provides the essence of your own personal mythology.

However, if your unconscious mind, which serves the greater Collective Unconscious, chooses to communicate with someone able to help you know yourself better and grow spiritually, it may do so. This happens frequently and became the impetus for the 16 Troupe characters in Chrysalis. We hold that other people – friends, family and even total strangers – can act, usually unwittingly, like angels (messengers) in disguise. The Troupe archetypes also can represent spirit and animal guides, the subject of a future blog.

Your Higher Self is your destiny – your greatest individuated potential and your calling. You can elect to move either in the direction of destiny and Higher Self or in the opposite direction. That is self-empowered free will. The guideposts we encounter along the way are called synchronicities. They let us know we’re on the right track. Therefore, the better you come to know yourself through spiritual exercises such as tarot, yoga, meditation, reiki, etc., the sharper the image of your Higher Self becomes, thus illuminating your path to personal destiny.

In mathematics, Phi expresses the Golden Mean or Golden Ratio found in the Fibonacci series – 1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21,34, etc. This sequence is expressed geometrically as a spiral, nature’s ubiquitous symbol for creation and transformative energy on all scales, including self-transformation. The Golden Mean is one reason we named a Chrysalis suit Spirals – a suit to aid your quest for destiny by helping you make wise choices.

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“[The universe] cannot be read until we have learnt the language and become familiar with the characters in which it is written. It is written in mathematical language, and the letters are triangles, circles and other geometrical figures, without which means it is humanly impossible to comprehend a single word.”
~  Galileo

  © Toney Brooks