Recovering a Sense of Creative Self-Compassion with the Star
Week Eight of the Tarot Artist's Way...
Hi little coven! Before we dive in, a couple of quick notes:
⟶ You can now find a playlist with easy-access links to all Tarot Artist’s Way content here, in case you want to catch up on or review previous weeks.
⟶ The lovely
is documenting her journey through my book in weekly instalments here on Substack. Check out her publication⟶ Thank you so much for your support and votes for Tarot for Creativity in the CARTA Awards! Winners will be announced later this month, and I’ll keep you posted.
This summer, I’m guiding you through a tarot takeover of Julia Cameron’s 12 week creative recovery program, The Artist’s Way. Each Monday, I’ll pair a key theme from the book with a tarot archetype, and share fresh insights on The Artist’s Way’s message, through a tarot-lens. Today, we’re diving into Week 9: Recovering a Creative Self-Compassion with the Star.
These brief Monday essays are free to read. To deepen your journey through access to live & recorded Sunday journaling sessions, original Morning Pages prompts, themed Artist Date suggestions, our community chat thread and more, consider becoming a paying subscriber to The Shuffle.
Week Nine of our tarot-informed journey through The Artist’s Way is a call to trade discipline for enthusiastic self-compassion.
Building on last week’s exploration of strength and vulnerability, the Star card invites us to remember Cameron’s most effective advice: “fill your well”.
ICYMI, the replay recording of our latest Tarot Artist’s Way journaling session is here.
Encompassing the desire to understand, relate, and actively alleviate pain, compassion is one of the most valuable and vulnerable human traits. It’s everything we need from others at our worst, and everything we have to offer at our best.
To exercise self-compassion is to be present and caring with ourselves, to acknowledge our own lived experience, to offer ourselves the best when we find ourselves at our worst.
Creatively, we can think of self-compassion as a commitment to understanding and relating to our inner artist, and actively working to keep our creative self healthy, well, and happy.
In the earliest pages of The Artist’s Way, Julia Cameron frames self-compassion like this: “In order to create, we draw from our inner well. … If we don’t give some attention to upkeep, our well is apt to become depleted, stagnant, or blocked.”
This devoted upkeep is creative self-compassion, and it’s expertly illustrated by The Star tarot card.
To read the Star as a self-compassionate card is to recognise that acts of self-compassion are sacred, intimate, and — to draw on last week’s theme — strong. I’m always affected by Pamela Colman’s Smith starry figure, who kneels naked between pool and earth, one foot hovering over the water as she holds heavy vessels aloft, pouring smoothly into the foundations that support her.
The physical strength depicted on the surface of this scene is a metaphor for the psychic resilience required to undertake and sustain creative and spiritual upkeep. Self-compassion is not a retreat, this image tells us. It is a way of showing up to ourselves.
And while the tending work of self-compassion is often hard, I love Cameron for reminding us that the well cannot be filled through mindless discipline: “Being an artist requires enthusiasm more than discipline,” she writes in Week 9. But at the same time… “enthusiasm is not an emotional state. It is a spiritual commitment, a loving surrender to our creative process, a loving recognition of all the creativity around us.”
Creative living is — must be — self-compassionate work. It’s rooted in showing up to ourselves, again and again over time. Filling the well when it’s empty, pouring from it when it’s full. Our enthusiastic commitment to care is what keeps our flow from becoming stagnant, depleted, or blocked.
As a creative, communion with yourself as an act of care is essential. It can help you when you feel burned out, guide you toward the things you want to express through your art, support you where you face rejection, and inspire you to create a more meaningful practice.
— Tarot for Creativity
There’s a rawness to this work, a requirement that we lay ourselves bare to ourselves — hence the nudity. There’s also an expectation that we fulfil the needs exposed by that act of showing up wholly to ourselves.
The tools that The Artist’s Way offers are vessels for this tending — The Morning Pages siphon up what’s deep within us, bringing creative flow bubbling up from the ground — here is the compassionate act of understanding — and Artist Dates pour in creative possibility from outside of us — here is the administration of the medicine. Both tools are effective ways of keeping creativity alive and flowing. Combined, this treatment plan keeps the well fully stocked.
For our purposes, the tarot acts as a third, unifying tool. Like the Morning Pages, it summons up creative material from the subconscious. And like the Artist’s Dates, it introduces play; the images provide spontaneity and spark curiosity as they pour in external input we can choose to work with.
To use these tools (in whatever way feels authentic for each of us!) is to enthusiastically honor the spiritual commitment Cameron writes about. To labor in pursuit of “the mystery of joy.”
In Chapter Nine of The Artist’s Way, Cameron notes the importance of prioritising self-compassion when the going gets tough in our creative lives. That the Star card follows the Tower card in the tarot mirrors this guidance: where there’s pain, compassionate convalescence must follow.
She points out how necessary it is to offer ourselves understanding and care when we experience fear and setbacks: “Use love for your artist to cure its fear,” she writes.
But while it is essential to practice self-compassion when we’re afraid, when we’re knocked down, when we’re blocked, the real secret is not holding out on ourselves in the interim.
Self-compassion isn’t the kind of medicine we wait to take until we’re hurt; we need — and deserve — a constant supply. •
Join me live on Sunday, July 13th at 7pm UK / 2pm Eastern / 11am Pacific for a tarot journaling event where we’ll reflect back over the past week and pull cards for creative self care.
Below, full-access subscribers to The Shuffle can find:
Morning Pages prompts
Artist’s Date suggestions
What’s next
A discount code for my limited edition Inner Artist tarot letter