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Dreaming into being
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Minimalist Tarot

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Compelling design for unique ideas.

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hello!

I’m Christel and I’m an artist & designer—and an adventurer in the natural and hidden worlds. I can help shepherd your project from the realm of ideas into physical existence. MORE →

hello!

I’m Christel and I’m an interdisciplinary designer—and an adventurer in the natural and hidden worlds. I can help shepherd your project from the realm of ideas into physical existence. MORE →

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rEcEnT pRoJeCtS

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Zeta Ophiuchi

An “equitable exchange of energy” collaboration with mystic Chrissy Sawyer.

Zeta Ophiuchi represents the gateway to the Void, an invitation to expand and transform in ways that are as yet unnameable. The creative process Chrissy and I followed was highly intuitive and experimental, and unfolded through our sharing of deep spiritual insights and experiences.

This project represents a new kind of collaborative work for me, one that combines spiritual exploration with visual communication of the numinous and esoteric.

SEE THE WEBSITE

WATCH A PROCESS video

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financial services brand & website

Spirit-First Finances

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spiritual teacher brand & website

Anne Bérubé

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podcast brand & social assets

The Way Change Works

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synth musician brand & website

The Killer Bee Relay Team

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naturopath brand & website

Dr. Stephanie Cordes, ND

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marketing & strategy brand

SOULO Projects

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visual artist brand & website

Trillium & Twig

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author/speaker brand & website

Nancy Regan

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entrepreneurship course

SoulOPRENEUR LAUNCH

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shop-ready website

Farmers’ Markets Nova Scotia

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ocean research brand

Ocean Tracking Network

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health/wellness brand & website

Verdure Wellness clinic

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print & digital book design

OTN: The First 10 Years

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digital brand & website

Black Market

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podcast brand & website

“MAYBE” Podcast

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WaNt To WoRk tOgEtHeR?

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Mar 19, 2023: Spring equinox and alchemical rebirt

Mar 19, 2023: Spring equinox and alchemical rebirth

Tomorrow evening the sun will move into Aries, beginning a new solar year and marking the spring equinox, followed within 24 hours by a new moon in Aries. Mercury, Chiron and Jupiter are hanging out in Aries as well, preceded by Venus and Uranus one sign ahead in Taurus, followed by Neptune and Saturn one sign behind in Pisces, and Pluto in the final minute (1/60th of a degree) of Aqua. With all planets in the solar system direct, the energy right now is full on, packed with full-steam-ahead power. Brick walls are prone to getting punched through like the Kool-Aid man at any time right now.

This kind of unstoppable confidence and power is what it takes for rebirth, regeneration, recharging—all words that came out of these cards today. This is the end of an era and the beginning of something new, and the train is not slowing down to let people on or off anymore. Wherever the course has been set, that’s where we’re going.

And from all indications, our destination is the peace and partnership that comes from being true to the realest, deepest parts of ourselves, while at the same time knowing that others’ truth and pain is just as important to them as ours is to us. This is the balance of the cardinal cross: if we can build a brotherhood of love in pain, we open doors to collective regeneration.

It seems like we’ve passed through a phase, collectively speaking, of being lost in our own miasma of trauma and suffering, a condition that saps the will. But now we’ve come to the dynamite phase: no dicking around anymore, we’re going right through that mountain, even if it seems very solid and very thick. No punches pulled, no feelings spared as we look at ourselves and the world we’ve made and declare that this has got to change.

This still has a lot to do with our history and past trauma and ancestors, although we’re casting a wide net to include our unwritten “pre-history” and extraterrestrial, galactic ancestors—the ones who originally gave us the genetic bits that became our human DNA. [For full text, go to Clarity Readings in my Linktree]

Mar 13, 2023: Big fake money and Saturn in Pisces

Mar 13, 2023: Big fake money and Saturn in Pisces

Whether it’s dissolving precarious foundations or pushing out the tide to reveal that there aren’t any foundations at all, the Time Lord in Pisces is reality-checking a world economy that is essentially a giant Ponzi scheme. There is only one solution: owning up to the no-pants, hair-on-fire reality of the situation (that creating, manipulating and laundering money doesn’t actually turn into anything of use or value to the world and is, in fact, a huge drain on society), and to accept the inevitable decline in “value” (read: Super Mario gold coins) of western economies, GDPs and hoarded private wealth.

So today my question is: How will our illusions about money and wealth be further dissolved by Saturn in Pisces (and Pluto in Aquarius)? The answer comes in three parts:

1. We will have our priorities reset. Clearly this is already happening when we were forced to confront the value structure of our own lives during covid. Put your faith in the deep water of constant change rather than in the temporary assets that promise stability or future fortune. Home, family, friends, internal life and inner peace are assets to be guarded at all costs.
2. We will have our wounds exposed and no amount of money will fix them. Humanity as a whole has continued to rape and pillage parts of ourselves to satisfy other parts. We steal and enslave and oppress some people so others can have a carefree life. But we’ve reached a point where even the cushiest life will give no protection from the deep well of internal horrors we’ve papered over, generation after generation. Pain will out, and money won’t help.
3. We will begin to build a new idea of “home” and centre it in all forms of care. Instead of the clinical, bureaucratic hospitals, schools and care facilities we know now, the “institutions” we’ll build in the future will be much smaller, simpler and able to support existential, emotional, mental and spiritual health/education as well as physical. Instead of spending on exclusive suburbs and designer furnishings and luxury decor [For full text, go to Clarity Readings in my Linktree]

Mar 10, 2023: The cosmos whispers “Come together

Mar 10, 2023: The cosmos whispers “Come together, right now, over me”

Today is the day of Venus, and she is currently opposing the moon in Libra and sextiling Mars in Gemini (which is trining the Moon, which is trining Saturn as well). The sun is now beginning to conjunct Neptune, which will get tighter and tighter as the month wears on. Don’t know about you but things are getting very dreamy even though there’s this underlying intensity of purpose coming through. Feels like an episode of Twin Peaks where the deep meaning is in whispers between characters that the audience doesn’t here, or in backwards-talking metaphors that aren’t exactly clear even in reverse.

My question is: “What secrets are being whispered by our local planetary consciousnesses at this time?”

First cards out are Gemini: Cross-Pollination and Aries: Act, which speak to the subtle communication between different forces, like a bee “communicates” with a flower. Really, the bee initiates a process of change but has no say on how that change is carried out. Each force, each consciousness, works its energy in its own way. And for us humans on 3D Earth, we only pick up little indicators, most of which happen in the unconscious dream state.

What seems to be happening on planes relevant to us is the processing of past energy signatures into a new state/slate that is as yet unwritten. Note the progression of card numbers here: 33, 44, 55, like density shift changes on multiple levels. These times require mutability, flexibility, sustainability to be able to dance with change and not lose balance or heart.

Three cards from the Thoth tarot emphasize a fire/water transmutational combustion that comes from opposing forces working together in their own discrete, sacred domains. The Princess of Wands is a flaming flower, opening for pollination. The Emperor is the Arian ram, the Jupiterian god-king initiator, the phallus that impregnates. And Art is the symbiosis of these elements, the alchemical transformation of opposing forces into the double-helix spiral of manifested form, the goal of Holy Marriage/Hieros Gamos, the two that becomes one.

(Decks: Starcodes Astro Oracle, Thoth tarot)

Mar 9, 2023: Humanity’s journey of empowerment a

Mar 9, 2023: Humanity’s journey of empowerment and adolescent angst

It’s Jupiter’s day and he continues in his conjunction with master healer Chiron, both opposite moon in Libra today. Sometimes healing is found in self-assertion and “taking care of number one”, not in avoiding conflict or compromising. Jupiter does have a tendency to blow things out of proportion, but at the level of the human collective, I’d say that the empowerment of self is much more needed than increased confidence in any appointed ruling bodies. Libra can be the cult leader, the controlling zealot who justifies himself and his actions on self-righteous grounds.

My question today is “How can Arian/first house embodiment of personal power heal the world?”

First card out of the Astro deck is Taurus: Cultivate. In sidereal astrology, which reflects that current state of the sky, Jupiter is conducting Chiron in Taurus. The tension between Aries and Taurus is the journey of coming into power, first for the self and then for the community. The ram may take sudden initiative to bust through obstacles, but the bull is harnessed power, the ring through the nose symbolic of servitude. This is not enslavement but commitment to serve the greater good in communion with the Earth. The next card, Progressions: Journey, may indicate that we need to view this movement on a larger scale, decades rather than years, generations rather than decades.

The last two astro cards, Debilitated: Discomfort and Imum Coeli: Root, portray this Aries>Taurus process as adolescent growing pains, which includes reckoning with painful wounds in childhood, family and sense of self. Humanity is growing from teenager to young adult, making mistakes, finding identity, fighting to survive in a world preoccupied with ancient power struggles, reckoning with baggage and trauma we don’t fully understand.

The animal oracle cards share wisdom from the primordial mother to her adolescent children, preparing to enter the wider world at the galactic level: Be generous of spirit, set healthy boundaries and watch your words. Ultimately, spirit has your back… [Read full text by going to “Clarity Readings” in Linktree]

Mar 8, 2023: Shamanic dreamwork

Today is Mercury’s day and the first day of Saturn in Pisces, where it will be until May 2025. The moon is currently opposite Neptune and trining Pluto, a situation ripe for deep messages. My question today is: how can we use dreams to affect reality?

The two cards from the Astro deck are Eighth house: Mystery and Tenth House: Authority. This could reflect the Piscean domain of the unconscious coming together with the Saturnian domain of power and dominance. There are all sorts of things that we never speak aloud, that we are compelled by trauma or cultural taboo to hide or at least not acknowledge directly.

From the Mystical Shaman deck, The Curse comes to underscore this meaning, pointing to all that is “unspeakable” lying below the surface. But the Luminous Warrior is there too, this brave, strong, gentle masculine holding a ball of light. This work—going down into the dark, frightening places in one’s own psyche/memories, into the locked-away parts of the collective unconscious—is the shamanic process, symbolized by the Andean Cross. We climb up and down between the lower, middle and higher worlds, carrying messages, putting things back together. Pachamama, Gaia herself, holds these worlds/wounds in her body and opens the way for those who dare to tread.

The dream state is like an access conduit, a Jeffries tube through the conscious world and the unconscious mixed up together, allowing us to see and tinker with the hidden systems that shape our waking life and the 3D world. Now is the time to give yourself full permission, full authority to shift the unmovable, beginning within dreams.

(Decks: Starcodes Astro Oracle, Mystical Shaman Oracle)

Mar 7, 2023: Mutable axis of passionate transforma

Mar 7, 2023: Mutable axis of passionate transformation

Today is Tuesday, day of Mars, and the full moon in Virgo has just peaked. As I write this, Saturn is hanging at 29° 59’ of Aquarius, one tiny minute away from Pisces, into which it will ingress in a few hours. Mars in Gemini is squaring both the sun and the moon, pulling tension on the mutable axis. My question today is: What is this time of tension between mutable signs showing or offering us?

Holy shit, first card out AGAIN is Cancer: Immerse. This is the calling card of the season, apparently. I’m seeing it as the authority to go deep into grottoes that fascinate me without having to explain myself or wait for assistance, to be the mother to myself that is both adventurous and protective, a destination and a home.

Next two cards are Virgo: Digest and Gemini: Cross-pollinate, representing two points squaring one another on that mutable axes. Considering how prominent Cancer has been, I’m seeing the moon/emotional sphere heavily involved here. What do you feel strongest in your heart, your belly? Ride the surge of feeling, wherever it’s guiding you. The final card from the Astro deck is Pallas Athena: Think, the feminine warrior who attunes to the Moon and to Mars, and knows when to simmer in emotion and when to strike.

Altogether, I’m getting advice on how to turn strong emotional compulsion into motivated action through the mutable axis of the zodiac. Virgo is the principle that insists upon looking at every angle and planning for a sustainable outcome. Gemini is the principle of collecting information, discarding that which does not resonate and sharing/exploring that which does. Pallas Athena harnesses the wisdom of opposites, duality, tension to guide each important step.

From the Wisdom deck come three cards that seem to underscore this message: Poised, A Change in the Wind, and Exchanging Gifts. Balancing the tension is difficult these days and requires a warrior spirit with feminine intuition and receptivity to the constant change pushing and pulling. We must be open to gathering wisdom and honing a variety of skills… [For full text, go to Clarity Readings in my Linktree]

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