Hi Artists,
Today we’re going to find inspiration through bibliomancy (doesn’t the word itself sound like some kind of magic?).
Bibliomancy is the practice of using sacred books or texts as a tool for divination.
Here’s how it works:
Choose a book (typically one with meaning for you)
Let a page fall open
With eyes closed, choose a passage
You can also start with a question in mind or approach your bookshelf blindly as well as the passage. Choose your approach.
Prompts:
Which book or text did you pick?
What passage did you choose?
What inspiration or meaning is there for you?
As always, if you’d like to share what you found come back and post in the comments. I’d love to hear about your experience. Your inspiration may very well inspire others too!
Keep going.
XO,
LJT
P.S. We have a few online events coming up, come join us!
Midway Reflection and Celebration: can you believe we’re almost to Day 50? Let's celebrate and plan for the next 50 days so that you can make the most of your project.
Creative Play Sessions Round 2: stretch your creative mental and emotional muscles in a series of playful exercises with the community.
Phone Photography with Anna-Alexia: this class is SO good! Learn how to take expert-quality photos with your phone, develop your visual voice, and easy editing tips to make your photos even better.
The book was Divine Beauty by John O'Donohue. I am ashamed to say I never completely read it. It was gift to me by an old client of mine as a thank you for our work together. The page opened at this quote from Frederick Turner.
'A beautiful thing, though simple in its immediate presence, always gives us a sense of depth below depth, almost and innocent wild vertigo as one falls through its levels.'
The book, I chose//that chose me, was Orbiting the Giant Hairball: A Corporate Fool’s Guide to Surviving with Grace by Gordon MacKenzie and I opened up to a part of a poem he wrote, titled: Propagation in the Desert, the passage I pointed to was:
Vulnerably,
Tenderly,
A shoot appears
In a tentative
Mystical
Dance of creation.
Gordon and I crossed paths in 1989-90, he was a mentor and I didn’t know it. He was Hallmark Card’s Creative Paradox. I met him because I was working a temp job at Halls department store in Kansas City before moving to CA to go to graduate school. I think he is to me what Allen Ginsberg is to Ethan Hawke. I have 3 copies of his book, the same book because I keep giving it away. I love it that much. It’s funny, the page I opened to was a poem, and not just any poem but one about running organizations (specifically Hallmark) as pyramids or plum trees. The first being an Adminstrative organization and the second being a holistic organization. What this all means to me is that it’s time to read the book again AND that in my creative business to take on the image of a plum tree, to create to share and grow like the plum tree.