AMP: Artists' Meeting Place and Resource Collective

I thought I'd try posting a weekly Motherpeace card in addition to the Dream Symbols Dictionary. For those who aren't familiar with the Motherpeace Tarot, it was created by two women who shared a feminist approach to the tarot. The theme is based on the ancient days of goddess worship and tribal cultures as well as shamanic magic, spiritual journeying and healing. I've owned the deck for years but it really started speaking to me loudly about six months ago. I do wish that Tom would add more blog categories. Tarot is more spiritual than supernatural for those of us who use it as a tool for self-reflection and spiritual growth but I'm not sure that it fits under religion and philosopy, either.

This deck is more than tarot. The "Little People," as the creators call them, are often engaged in tribal and community scenes, depicting women in many phases of strength and spiritual work. It's used by some therapists and social workers in their work with clients.. Although the images are ancient, they still depict the dramas of everyday life that we all face. Although the first edition was written in 1983, it's still so timely that you'd think it was written within the past year. The historical and mythological information presented is extremely thought-provoking - in fact, freaky - because our life today has many parallels to the life that women lived in various periods of history. Although we like think we've learned something and that gender roles in society have changed, in many ways the structure of our society hasn't changed at all.

Motherpeace has come under a lot of criticism for being blatantly feminine-oriented. I won't deny that - but we all have both masculine and feminine traits and qualities, what Freud termed the anima and animus. Society has imposed gender roles on us for centuries, causing us to either deny or squelch some of the qualities of the opposite gender that we naturally possess, creating disconnection and imbalance. Sometimes when we do recognize and nurture these energies, they can spiral out of control, such as in the case of one who becomes overly aggressive in an effort to retaliate for being perceived as weak due to gender stereotyping.

If you're a man reading this, just adapt it to your own interpretation. In tarot, as well as in dreams, male and female symbols can represent their opposites because the symbols are referring to qualities and characteristics rather than the physical or biological.

Journeys With Motherpeace - Week of November 12th -19th

Rather than having recurring dreams, where the dream basically repeats itself, my dreams tend to reflect recurring themes. Dreams with recurring themes are a bit different than recurring dreams. With recurring dreams, your unconscious is pointing to the same unresolved issue over and over again. Recurring themes point to similar feelings and patterns within the way we handle different situations in waking life. Water leaks and damage have been with me for a few years now.

As a dream symbol and in most earth based religions, water symbolizes the emotions. Water corresponds with the west within the concept of the four directions. Emotions encompass feelings from love to fear to anger to heartbreak to weakness to strength.

So, leaking water in dreams represents a leaking of emotions or loss of power. Dreaming of a leak that you can't stop might symbolize an emotional situation in waking life that seems to be out of control. Passively watching a leak without taking action to repair it might be an indication that you are in a reflective stage and are not quite sure whether you want to repair the leak or just let it go.

Dark Kabaret (www.DarkKabaret.com)-A One-Night Stand of Vaudeville and Burlesque Wonder at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco.

San Francisco, CA. October 2, 2006 – Dark Kabaret will be presented at the Great American Music Hall on November 18, 2006. The illustrious and musical Dark Kabaret, blends feverish vaudeville with the vibrancy of a modern song-and-dance. It is the setting of magic, mystery and romance, echoing the frenzied bitter-sweetness of a time that was much sexier and addictive than our own, striving to surge people into a frantic gaiety. This show is not the calm before the storm; it is the storm itself in all its majestic and intense beauty.

Sweet.

Driving home tonight on the dangerous rural highway with its curves and drops, I was very conscious of the darkness. It's rained most of the day and while the moon is waxing to full, the sky is so cloudy that it was pitch black. I felt uneasy and afraid, but I also felt moved to reflect upon the light side of the darkness.

Darkness is the absence of light. For most of our society, darkness is associated with fear and wrongdoing. We sometimes feel very vulnerable at night, some children - and adults - are afraid of the dark. When it's dark, we are far more frightened by "things that go bump in the night" that wouldn't bother us at all during the day. Darkness can cover actions that a person doesn't want seen. We sometimes describe the rough times in our lives by referring to them as "a dark year" or "a dark time."

Hey there! I'm not sure how to get the news out about my workshops that I'm holding in Williamsburg, Brooklyn NYC. I think everyone should know about this. Check out the photo--that's what you learn to do!!!

Please go to:

http://www.xyandz.org

There is footage of our last workshop of people learning how to fly. It just is so much fun.

Thanks guys-

tell me what you think!

take care,
Karen
karenfuhr@hotmail.com

Hey there AMPfolk,

I am photographing Johnny Marr (ex-
Smiths guitarist) and his bandmates in
Modest Mouse this Wednesday - day after
tomorrow, and need a place to shoot.
With no budget of course.

Do you know any rabid Johnny Marr fans who
would be willing to host a small photo shoot?
In any kind of interesting locale?

But it is coming up asap, so if you know of
anything, please call my cel: 213/ 610-2361

Best,
Beth H
www.herzco.com

Sorry, folks - unfortunately, news of a suicide yesterday inspired this one - but this symbol isn't always included in most dream dictionaries....

At this time of year, when fall is turning to winter and the animals and plants are going into hibernation to awaken renewed in the spring, we are reminded of the natural cycle of life, death and rebirth. While dreams of death are rarely associated with physical death, suicide has a slightly different meaning.

You may have heard the saying, "Depression is anger turned inward." Suicide is a form of aggression toward the self, a sign of feelings turning inward that can cause destruction without the possibility of rebuilding. Anger and depression can literally kill the spirit unless one remembers that emotions, feelings and events are actually external to who we are at our core. At our core, we are peaceful and loving - negative feelings and events don't have to affect us when we choose to watch them through the window instead of answering the door.

Have you been carrying around feelings of guilt, shame or despair that you can't seem to shake? Has there been an ongoing problem that you are avoiding or can't see the light at the end of the tunnel? Your dream is giving you a clear message that you'd better deal with these feelings or situations before they do kill you with physical, emotional or spiritual pain.

After Joe died, I had to go back to work full time and was unable to extricate myself from my previous part-time job as planned. I developed health problems because of overwork, had little online time and when things finally did slow down, I had major problems with my little local ISP, having no service for nearly a month. Thanks to me and the Taurus stomping fit I threw and threats I made, they now have a weekend on-call number, but the universe was telling me something.......

Writing the column as a volunteer editor on what was supposedly the second largest women's site in the world (or so the site owner said, I never saw that stat anywhere) was paying off for a site owner who rarely contacted anyone outside the clique with anything other than criticism while she made her living from our efforts. I'll give her credit in that we retained copyright to anything we wrote and any money we made on the site - mostly Amazon affiliate fees - was ours to keep as opposed to other sites that take a percentage. She wrote my site prior to my coming on. When I started, the site traffic was 23,000 per month. In less than a year of working my ass off to build and organize my section of the site, I was receiving 150,000 visitors per month. My site was even used by at least one college psych professor to teach a unit about Freud and Jung. But when I seemed to fall off the face of the earth, the site owner didn't bother to pick up the phone to see if I was okay or to at least say "thank you" although she was fully aware of the situation.

This was the second time I'd let myself get into this situation (I helped build a large and well known pagan forum just to be told, along with several others who'd also put in a lot of work, knowledge and time, by the site owner that we were no longer needed - and he was supposedly a personal friend of ours) and the Goddess was finally telling me in no uncertain terms that while life gives to the giver, I often give way, way too much.

So, I found myself spending a bit of time on MySpace and seeing other people using it as a networking resource based on the gazillion friend requests I'm getting for dating services, vitamins and musicians. I've never really wanted to write a dream dictionary because it's been done to death - and the interpretation is really the dreamer's. But I do miss it, I need to get myself writing again and thought that this would be a good place to start. So this is just for me, to get up some momentum in getting back to writing, and for you to enjoy and hopefully learn from.

All Corrientes music is recorded, mixed, and produced by Ivette Torres in a home studio. There is a section on the Corrientes website named "EVT Productions" which is dedicated to Corrientes recording information. New songs are posted in this section with information on the equipment and techniques used on the recordings. http://corrientesmusic.com/EVT_open.html ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Toda la música de Corrientes está grabada, mezclada y producida por Ivette Torres en su estudio de grabación casero.