Artwork Description
Swoon – Oracle Deck: Jeannie-Splitting
Dimensions: 17 x 11″
Year: 2024
Medium: archival digital print on Moab Entrada 300 gsm
Edition: ed. 1/20
We all have the capacity to split off parts of ourselves that feel too difficult to handle. A little compartmentalization here, a little distancing
from our shadow there.
But what happens when we encounter experiences that are so far outside of our ability to cope that our psyche has no way to hold them at all? If you were Jeannie, you might turn to other personalities entirely, other faces and other names charged with holding the weight of your burdens in a split off kinda way. Jeannie was the sort of young woman that many cultures might train as a medicine woman or a healer, but where she grew up there was no such tradition, and in the
absence of any structure to help guide her fragile sensitivities, Jeannie fell apart. And put herself back together in odd ways. And fell apart again, many times.
What the Jeannie card has to offer is an appeal to wholeness. When this card comes up, it often means that now is a moment to have gratitude for the ways we have been able to protect ourselves by splitting off things that once felt overwhelming. To appreciate our ability to adapt in the moment, while considering the possibility that now might be a good time for those exiles inside of us to come back home.
We may need to reckon with the burdens that our split-off selves have been carrying, but in turn we will also be able to receive their gifts.
–Swoon