The Unfurling of The Creative Spiral

It was a moment of astonishing satisfaction to see a pile of my books on the table in front of me the day they arrived from the printer. It had taken many years to reach this point.

The book's title is THE CREATIVE SPIRAL.

It's different from other books that I have worked on because it is all my own work, and bringing it out into the world has been like giving birth after a long, and often challenging gestation period.

It’s emergence into the world mirrors the theme of the book itself.

Once upon a time... at a time when I was struggling to make ends meet, someone suggested something to me. It was a period when my meagre English pension barely paid my rent in Ibiza, so I was supplementing it by running occasional children’s art workshops, and doing Tarot Readings at a Sunday market in a boutique hotel. Oh, I forgot to mention it, I was also cleaning holiday villas. Art sales were non-existent. My friend had come for a reading and afterwards we sat over a coffee and started brainstorming to find creative ways to generate more income. Suddenly she said, ‘How do you think you could bring your two passions - Tarot and Art - together?’

Nothing particularly sprang to mind immediately, and the idea remained as just that - an idea.

But the seed had been sown and in some mysterious way must have begun to take root and silently started to germinate over the next few years, until one day it came to me that the unfolding wisdom held within the Tarot’s Major Arcana wisdom is also mirrored in every act of creation. 

We start from Nothing (The Fool), gather our tools and start generating ideas (The Magician) and gradually work our way through false starts, wrong moves, blocks, frustrations and disappointments. Each of the Major Arcana cards has something to offer to help us at every stage of the way, and every one of them has played its part in the genesis of this book that has taken ten years to come into being.

There have been many stops and starts.

This is how it ran...First, there was the concept (The Fool) but then it took a few years before I began to gather up the material (The Magician) and a couple more before I could see any meaningful way to put it all together (The Empress). I didn't believe in myself enough (The Hierophant) to push things through with the necessary discipline (The Emperor) so the manuscript mouldered in my computer files for quite a long while until I joined a wonderful group of fellow writers who, quietly and unobtrusively leant their support (Justice). Then, just when I thought I had it all together, had found a publisher and resolved to invest in myself, the universe threw me a curve ball (The Hanged Man). The illustrations that I'd wanted to use turned out to be protected by copyright. My publisher suggested I do my own (after all, I am an artist!) I baulked at that idea. Illustration is NOT what I do and besides, there was other art that I wanted to do and I knew how time consuming it would be to create a series of tarot cards.A friend of mine had taken a year to illustrate the whole suite of Major Arcana cards. Spending a year doing something I did not feel confident about had not been part of the plan! But then The Wheel of Fortune came into play when a commission to work on the design of a house renovation left me with very little creative energy for any major art project and working on small watercolours offered a welcome respite.

So, the illustrations did get done while my wonderful colleagues in the Writers and Readers of the Balearics continued to offer support and my publisher and book designer worked wonders at turning it into something truly beautiful (The Sun).

There followed the long and painstaking work of editing, proof-reading and fine tuning the entire manuscript, checking details such as the contents list and page numbers and making sure not to forget to acknowledge anyone who had helped me along the way. (Judgement). Until finally it was ready to come into being and be launched into the world (The Universe ).

Turning an idea into a reality is a process that is fraught with dangers when we embark on any creative odyssey. It is all too easy for something to throw us entirely off course. How many of us have half-finished or half-baked projects stuck in the back of cupboards or long unopened hard drives?

More often than not, the thing that prevents us from bringing them to completion is rooted in our psyche - our fears; our past disappointments; our social pressures and our conditioning.

In THE CREATIVE SPIRAL you will find a blend of personal experience, spiritual insight and practical exercises that offers writers, artists, musicians, performers and makers of every kind fresh ways to reconnect with imagination, confidence and flow. Whether you're beginning your creative journey, recovering from burnout or searching for renewed inspiration, THE CREATIVE SPIRAL invites you to step beyond fear, to trust your intuition and rediscover the transformative power of making.

THE CREATIVE SPIRAL will be published on 29th September and will be available online. However, for ethical reasons, it will NOT be available on Amazon. For more detailed information when it becomes available online, please SUBSCRIBE TO MY EMAIL list. In the meantime, I do have a limited number of printed copies that can be posted directly to you immediately. Email me at oil_painter_at_large@marylynnestadler.com for more details.