a crafty tarot practice for your crown chakra
Keep office hours with the universe
One of the reasons we have spiritual and artistic practices is to make room for creativity and connection, opening ourselves to whatever inspiration might come our way. After all, we don’t lock ourselves in a windowless room and then wonder why it’s so hard to write poetry. The crown chakra practice below is all about unlocking the door and letting the breeze flow through. And it’s largely inspired by insights I gleaned from working through Julia Cameron’s book and course The Artist’s Way. So I’ll walk you through a brief detour before we arrive at our practice:
One of the pillars of the twelve-week course is morning pages: Three pages first thing in the morning, written out by hand, even if you’re cranky about it. Come to think of it, it may be even more important to do it when you’re cranky about it. The idea is to clear out the cobwebs and get your juices flowing to invite more creativity into your day and by extension, into your life.
The other core pillar is the weekly artist date. This could be anything from taking a walk around your neighborhood, no earbuds, just listening to bird calls and traffic sounds, to spending the afternoon at a museum, to taking $10 to the thrift store with the dream of finding a fabulous new accessory. The artist date tops up your creative reservoir on a regular basis. And it’s not only about carving out time to fill your cup. It’s also about convincing yourself (your brain, heart, soul) that being a fabulous artist who does romantic, delightful things is already within your reach.
In my Artist’s Way group last spring I had a fabulous realization. Like many creatives who think, “but I’m not a real artist, because I’m not a professional artist,” I struggle at times to indulge my inner artist in the ways she deserves. But throughout this process, we often talk about the inner artist as a young child self. And in our group, we kept coming back to all the reasons we hadn’t taken ourselves on our weekly artist dates. “I want to go to a museum, but I don’t have a whole afternoon.” “I want to take myself to dinner, but I can’t justify the cost.”
We had all these great ideas. And when we couldn’t make them happen, we just… didn’t feed our artist at all.
But this was my smart realization: if I were responsible for feeding a child, I wouldn’t wait until I had the time, money, and energy to prepare a feast. I’d feed them in whatever way I could. I’d never say, “No, you can’t have a PB&J today. But just wait till you see the steak dinner I have planned for next week!” (Which, by the way, I may talk myself out of between now and then anyway!)
That was a game-changer for me. Better to go for a 10-minute walk to see what the neighborhood chickens are up to than to wish I could go to a show and end up doing nothing at all to feed my inner artist.
The practices of morning pages and artist dates—and the one I offer below—are all about carving out small and big spaces to say to the universe, “I’ll open the door, you bring the flow.” And then watch the magic unfold.
Channel inspiration
This crown chakra practice is designed to help you open yourself up to whatever inspiration is available to you. It’s a way of tuning into source/the universe/the divine and bypassing your thinking brain (as much as possible—if that feels hard, just know it gets easier with practice!) to see what insights want to emerge today.
You’ll need paper and something to draw with and any Tarot or oracle deck. If you don’t have one, you can use the free version of the Labyrinthos app to draw a card.
Once you have your materials, think of a question. For this practice, the simpler the better. If you’re working on nurturing your creativity, you could ask something like, “How does my inner artist want to play?” If you want to deepen your connection to your body, you could ask, “How does my body want to be loved?” Or if you want to just be wide open to what the universe has to say to you, you could simply ask, “What message is available to me today?”
With your question in mind, shuffle your deck until you feel satisfied. Cut the deck once or twice and then turn over the card at the top of the deck. When the card comes out upside down, that’s called reversed. When it’s right side up, that’s upright. You can use it in either direction—look at it in the orientation it came out in, or flip it if you prefer. There are no rules here.
Gaze at your card. Notice the colors, patterns, textures, symbols, and images. Try not to do a lot of interpreting (a girl holding a cup! What does it mean?! Or, I know this card, this means that I need to focus more on my work!). Whether you know the card well or you’re meeting it for the first time, try to just appreciate what’s on the card and not your previous associations with it. And try to release any questions that arise. This is a practice of not thinking.
Once you’ve done some good looking and admiring, grab your piece of paper and drawing implements and begin to draw intuitively. Just put marker to page and let the images take shape. Maybe you reach for green and a tree emerges. Then you reach for blue, because a bird wants to be in the tree. And suddenly there are stick figures sitting at the base of the tree and it’s you and your late grandmother. Or it could be spirals on spirals on spirals. Or random scribbles in every shade of yellow, red, and orange you have.
This practice may feel easy and natural to you, and if so, that’s wonderful! But if you’re someone who is often in their thinking brain, defaulting to analysis and explanation, more comfortable with words than imagery, know that you’re in good company. It’s OK if it feels uncomfortable or even difficult. It can be hard to get out of our heads and into our intuition, but that’s all the more reason to practice. You got this!
Use the buddy system
It’s so easy to do spiritual practices like this one and just keep it to ourselves, but they can also be a great opportunity to deepen a relationship by sharing something from the heart. So even if you don’t want to show anyone your drawing or even reveal every detail of what came up for you in this practice, I encourage you to share some part of this experience with a friend, just for the sake of being seen a bit. And who knows? Maybe it will spark something creative in them, and wouldn’t that be a gift?
See if you can round out this practice of connecting with source by connecting with a loved one. Share, reflect, repeat, and let your creativity flourish in community.
Nurture your inner artist
Under the umbrella of my other business, The Book Midwife, I facilitate a 12-week Artist’s Way group twice each year in spring and fall. If you’re intrigued by the idea of recovering your inner artist and making creativity feel more accessible in your life, I hope you’ll join me for the next session!
Photo by Michael Held on Unsplash.