Review of Possibilities

A mixed media collage reviewing my fifth week of revisiting the artist way.
Painter IX

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This week has been dominated for me by The Hanged Woman about whom I blogged at length on Sunday.

In the book this week is about removing the limits we place on what its possible to ask for and to receive.

Its also about listening. Listening to the whispers of intuition, to the universe especially via synchronicities, to one's innermost deepest wishes, needs, fears.

And its about taking time out - the need an artist has for downtime - something that was emphasized to me by having a plumber around making it difficult to rest - on the Wednesday I snoozed on the settee in the afternoon and he only woke me up three times to tell or ask about things!

On Sunday night, in bed, I had one of those thoughts that has to be noted on paper before sleep wipes the memory away. I dutifully put the light on and wrote it down.

It was about an exercise that helps me to ground anger, connect to spirit despite grief and ground fear. I also got the need to retest the second half of the Artist's Way now, next week - Abundance - would go ahead as planned but with Christmas in it I'd be unlikely to have time to retest it then.

Next morning I did my daily tarot reading.

My standard short reading consists of three cards - the first is the main focus and the other two expand on it.

The main focus was 9 of Stones reversed. I looked in the book and discovered that I'd penciled in "Test (or retest) Artist Way type programme". The second card was about anger and the third about suppressed / denied emotions.

This was so specific and so in agreement with what I'd received drifting before sleep the night before that I went round yesterday in a sort of glow. It does feel good to know that such messages are getting through!

This collage contains, besides the hanged woman:

• The angel from week 2 - as Christmas is coming there have been plenty around - one even got a revamp on the Camel Exchange from a new contributor. And I found one I'd been sent when my Christmas swap last year had gone astray.
  
• Another butterfly mask (seen this morning in a shop window) - as I was putting it in Carol Singers came to our door so I added musical notes to it. Joy Eliz has done a version of the Hanged Woman for me which she posted yesterday and she included music in it! Thank you Joy! See how relevant it was!
  
• In the background is a a church door in Stow-on-the-Wold that has Yew Trees growing on either side of it embedded into the building. My sister sent me the photo I've used. You can see other people's photos of it here and here (both on Flickr). I cloned out bits of it and added a key to hang by the door.
• I've also included a Rune that is a symbol for the Yew too. As Yew trees were grown specifically for making bows its also the symbol for an archer's bow. Joy Eliz included a fiddler's bow. But I made the connection to Yew via a different route.
  
• There is a "wreath" of water and a rainbow. I definitely associate rainbows with the hanged woman and have done for some years but am not sure why.
• At the bottom is a strip of the Christmas paper I made a couple of weeks ago. The photograph of the Yews had included leaf litter and I wanted something brighter!

There have been plenty of synchronicities this week. One of the neatest was yesterday when the Plumbing company rang to say that they'd be sending an engineer out today. I was just in the middle of a 15 minute break and reading a little from "M is for Malice". This is what came just after the phone call:

" Oh. Guy. Good, it's you. I was just wondering if you were here yet. The furnace over at the church has been acting up again. First it clicks on, then it clicks off. On then off."

Our new boiler (that's British for furnace) was fitted last week but only reliably worked on partial power, it was acting up - it wouldn't work on max... Max, of course, was the name of last week's plumber...

It wasn't doing the clicking on and off - that's what the old boiler had been up to just before we replaced it.

And - yippee - today's plumber seems to have fixed it! Our old boiler was indeed very old and much lower powered; this one is astounding - it is actually capable of making the house warm not to mention heating water on demand!

Have you noticed any neat synchronicities recently?

Update: For anyone who suffers from M.E. its turns out that dark chocolate can help - good news for Christmas. Of course this will only be true if you don't have a bad reaction to chocolate as I did (migraines) until I had the appropriate HK allergy corrections...