My experience with SoulCollage® has been that of finding and being found. Creating collages for aspects of my personality, for family and friends, and the forces and energies at work in my life, I am surprised by new insights. It is a wonder filled experience. SoulCollage® brings together my interest in art, spirituality, and psychology, and joins the other roads I explore to access inner wisdom.

SoulCollage® is a creative and intuitive process of making 5" x 8" collages that may delight you as well as have deep personal meaning. This process supports insight and personal development. SoulCollage® is a multilevel process. From images in magazines, on cards and calendars, or photographs, you will choose an image or allow it to choose you. Asking yourself what the essence or main quality of that image is provides direction for choosing more images to collage with it on 5" x 8" matboard. The focus of the creative process gives it particularity and meaning for you. You will cut the images out, and move them around until their relationship and placement are known to you. You will choose a background to support or enhance the images, and then glue them down. Each card will have a core message for you. Time to reflect on the image, write about it, and then share only what you would like to share is part of the process. Open-ended questions may be used to access your own inner wisdom using the collages. The SoulCollage® process and the book: SoulCollage®: An Intuitive Collage Process For Individuals and Groups, are the work of Seena B. Frost, M.Div., M.A., a licensed marriage and family therapist in California. For more information, consult: www.soulcollage.com. 

Underlying Concepts for SoulCollage®

The Source Card

A card may symbolize the Oneness of All. In reality no one image can represent the Source; it is imageless. Some have used images of flowers opening, images of light or immense space. Whatever image you choose or chooses you, it will attempt to capture the void out of which all existence emerges and to which it returns. Just keep your eye out for possible images and eventually you will discover one that feels right for you.

Positive Intent/ Negative Potential

Each card has both a positive intent and a negative potential. Sometimes a card seems to represent only a positive influence, but when a quality or energy is exaggerated, it may have a negative potential, as in any excess. When a positive quality is absent in our lives, it also has a negative potential. A card holding a negative quality will have a positive intent, such as an Inner Critic trying to develop skill, drive, and perfection in a person.  

The Four Suits

If you decide to assign categories to groups of cards you make, as in a deck of cards, four possible groupings have been explored by Seena Frost. You may create others, specific to your interests.

The Committee Suit includes the cards which represent the many expressions of our personality and the roles through which we participate in life. Some feel neutral to us, others have a positive or negative connotation for us personally. Examples of Committee cards are: the Inner Critic, the Hard Worker, the Artist, the Nurturer, the Lonely One, the Procrastinator, the Organizer, the Overwhelmed Housewife, the Hurt Child, the Gardener, and the One Who Fears Closeness.

The Community Suit is composed of cards representing or reminding us of those persons, pets, ancestors, friends and family, community leaders, and mentors whom we have known and count as significant influences in our lives. It includes historical figures that we have known only through writings, art work, or their action in the world.

The Companion Suit is conceptualized as a seven card suit for the animal guides corresponding to each of the chakra energy centers in our body.The chakra guides are not always animals; each person finds their unique allies there. Drawn from the work of Stephen Gallegos in Personal Totem Pole Process, these guides may be found through guided meditation with a facilitator, by reading the guided imagery journey in Seena's book, or through dreams or vision quest experiences.

The Council Suit cards represent invisible and mysterious influences in our lives. The forms or patterns are universal; they act through us and in the world. They are best thought of as metaphors. C. G. Jung conceptualized and wrote about the "archetypes" of the collective unconscious, a parallel understanding. Examples of Council Suit cards are: the Creator, Motherhood, the Wounded Healer, the Warrior, the Fool, the Savior, the Lightbearer, Compassion, and Death.

Consulting Your SoulCollage® Cards

You may wish to create the time and space to share your cards with others and/ or to consult the cards for answers to the important questions of your life. With an attitude of respect, expectation and openness, and a meaningful question about which you are sincerely concerned, you may consult the cards individually or in a group. The question must matter. They may be general or specific. Examples of questions are: How can I take better care of myself?, Who will help me feel safe to take this risk in my life? How can I let go of this grief I carry? What's up with this pain in my neck?

An attitude of respect for the question, synchronicity, and your created cards is enhanced by clearing a space and some time. Then, place your Source card, if you have one, in front of you. Light a candle or in some other way acknowledge the intention of this time. Taking your whole deck, lay the cards face down in front of you, draw the number of cards you want to consult, keeping them face down in front of you in a line. Put the rest of the deck away. Turning one card over at a time, ask each card the question in turn, beginning your response from the perspective of the card: "About your question, I have this to say..." If you have a group, ask someone else to write your words as you speak. Working alone, a tape recorder is helpful.