Welcome artistic souls!

Thank you for joining me for another month of magic & making! I've been working quite a bit with the concept of tuning in to my own intuition, and I think this will make a lovely focus for June's art ritual inspired by the strawberry moon. Here’s an invocation I wrote that you are welcome to use in your ritual practice this month:

Intuition

The experience of intuition can be somewhat difficult to pin down. Many people ascribe intuition to a kind of psychic knowing, while others believe our intuition is really just our subconscious mind's ability to recognize and anticipate patterns. As the science fiction author Isaac Asimov said of it, “Intuition is the art, peculiar to the human mind, of working out the correct answer from data that is, in itself, incomplete or even, perhaps, misleading.”

I like Asimov's use of the word "data" because it seems as if it neutralizes—with a kind of scientific distance—those signs and symbols that trigger our intuitive knowing, signs which we often feel on an embodied level, rather than a logical level. We all have had the experience of gut feelings, perhaps most obviously if we sense we are in danger. That intuitive sense of being in the wrong place at the wrong time is scary but also a reminder of how our intuitive nature will amplify its messages to keep us safe.

I'm sure you’ve also experienced intuition in a blissful setting, perhaps falling in love, or encountering something so achingly beautiful in nature that you get goosebumps or a shiver, and you can feel yourself in connection with an energy much bigger than yourself. When I experience a moment of intuitive clarity, I sometimes feel it in the back of my stomach, like a heaviness radiating sharply, but other times I experience it as a jolt or lump in my throat. These are all feelings that arise before thoughts or language and hardly feel like scientific data. Think about where in your body you feel your intuition and what situations or context trigger different feelings of intuition.

The embodied experience of intuition is perhaps what makes deciphering or decoding our own intuitive messages an art, rather than a science.

Even as he describes the triggers for intuitive knowing as “data,” Asimov also declares intuition an art form “peculiar to the human mind.” We encounter a stunning amalgam of information and sensory input in our lives—much of it contradictory, subtle, or even calculated—and yet from this we have the power to create something unique. Our minds are always working on processing and filtering this information, and this kind of mental activity can be very difficult to turn off. If you have a meditation practice, you may already know some ways in which you can cultivate mindfulness and distill your intuition through the practice of attentive, intentional presence.

In this way, we can even think of intuition is a muscle that can be strengthened with practice. It is a form of proprioception that requires a level of mindfulness or emotional intelligence deeply intertwined with your body's nervous system. By paying attention to these physical shifts in our body’s energy prompted by the nervous system, the world of self-calibration opens up to us, giving us more control over our mindset, our reactions as well as how we respond to the situations we find ourselves in. By checking in, centering, and gaining clarity, our ability to feel joy, safety, empowerment, wonder, and connection can be enhanced.

Art Ritual

Channeled for the Strawberry Moon

June's art ritual is all about amplifying your intuition by connecting to wonder through the practice of collecting thoughts, mementos, and ephemera that you encounter. Collaging the material items that symbolize deeper intuitive messages you receive over a period of time allows you to externalize those messages and investigate their meanings as a coherent whole. Do this often and it will become a powerful practice for developing your mindful attention and learning to recognize your intuitive voice.

Start by

Collecting sparks of Wonder!

The idea of “sparking” wonder may sound familiar if you’re a fan of Marie Kondo’s work based around the principle of sparking joy. Her work teaches some wonderful lessons about listening to your embodied intuition and being intentional about the energy of the things around you. Joy is a slightly different emotion than wonder, however, and unlike joy, wonder may not feel wholly positive in the body but perhaps neutral or even unsettled. For instance, wonder may feel more like a question has been raised: we may take notice of a correspondence but can’t sort out why or find that something tickles us but can’t explain our response.

I think the feeling of wonder is closer to the experience Roland Barthes’ describes through his idea of the “punctum” in his famous treatise on the magic of photography, Camera Lucida. The punctum is a detail in an image that conveys meaning (typically instantaneously) without us knowing exactly why. (Barthes contrasts this with the “studium,” which essentially illustrates something we already know). The punctum is a trigger or symbol that brings up or makes clear a deeper truth we know intuitively without us having to logically think it through. We see the punctum and we just know.

PunctuM

“The punctum of a photograph is that accident which pricks me (but also bruises me, is poignant to me).”
Roland Barthes

What Barthes describes here is an intuitive hit, a ping of inner knowing that we feel in the body (it pricks, it bruises). This meaning is totally independent from whatever the photographer’s intention was, in the case of a photograph. That’s why he calls it an “accident.” It is a meaning or a symbol that is specific to the viewer’s subconscious, from the viewer’s lived experience or memory (whether or not it is consciously remembered).

So, as you go about your daily activities this month, try to tune into anything that sparks wonder or curiosity, such as any symbols of the synchronicities you encounter—icons, numbers, phrases, animals, colors, etc. Take note of what you notice each day—what pricks your attention?—and record these in a journal entry or drawing. Since we are working with paper, you can also begin saving the various paper or cloth ephemera your encounter that will trigger the memory of a punctum moment (a moment of recognition or wonder)—tickets, receipts, cards, ribbon, labels, fabric, buttons, those stickers on fruit, and so on. Like any punctum, the resonances between and across these disparate items or symbols will likely only make sense to you. Your intuition is the force curating this collection. That’s exactly as it should be, by the way, since you are the only one who can truly hear the voice of your body’s intuition.

Working with these notes and ephemera for our art ritual this month, we will make little “pockets of wonder” that can hold keepsakes in an art journal or grimoire, or could be used as a greeting card for someone special. If you like to collage, junk journal, art journal, or scrapbook, you’ll recognize that the process of collection of objects (“data”) that I’ve described—in which your aesthetic sense and intuition guides how you combine images, words, treasures, and memories—is very similar to this activity. These wonder pockets are like miniature paper versions of wonder cabinets or cabinets of curiosities, also known as Wunderkammen, that many see as the precursor to public museum collections.

Instructions are below as well as a free pdf with the full instructions and printables of scrapbooking pages/designs. You can also purchase my book of double-sided scrapbook pages here. I hope these resources help you to further attune to your own intuition!