2 Artisan

“Creativity is a drug I cannot live without.”

Cecil B. DeMille – Early Hollywood Film pioneer

Artisan Martha Graham – Library of Congress – Public Domain

Card Responses and Context in the Illuminated position.

+ Creation

(Creative, Expressive, Fresh, Imaginative, Inventive, Innovative, Original, Spontaneous, Stylish)

1. Creation happens: in birth, design, manufacture and connections. Every idea has the germ of newness, this is Art. Apply yourself to inventing your life.
2. You are the creator but true artistry will take talent and persistence. Recreate, refine and hone your skills and you will become the maestro. Then watch how people seek you out.
3. Uncage the artist within and do some original creation. Otherwise you are a spectator of someone else’s design.
4. Crafting something already known or developed is still an act of reinvention that offers something different, and hopefully better. Get busy refining or modifying. Take it to the next level.
5. How is your “brand” shaping up? Assert your own style.
6. Every idea has the germ of newness, this is Art. Apply yourself to inventing your life.
7. Uncage the artist within! Create originally, lest you be at effect of someone else’s design.
8. Esteem that you too are a unique creation and perspective
   brought into form. You might as well be you.
9. Did you know Viagra was originally a Heart medication? You never really know what will come of any idea. Repurpose something you already know or have. 
10. What do you bring to the table to make the whole thing work? Figure it out.
11. The synesthete, hears color and can taste sound. If you are capable of awareness beyond the mundane or traditional you venture into a world of creative imagination.

Quotations Illustrating the Overleaf in this pole

• We have art that we may not perish from truth.” Nietzsche
• “Art is Nature speeded up and God slowed down.” Malcolm de Chazal
• “Adhere to your own act, and congratulate yourself if you have done something strange and extravagant, and broken the monotony of a decorous age.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
• I feel most deeply that this whole question of Creation is too profound for human intellect. A dog might as well speculate on the mind of Newton! Let each man hope and believe what he can. Charles Darwin
• “If we ever wanted a hero’s or heroine’s journey, we have it today. The new world awaits. The glorious challenge is to create a world populated by human beings who have consciously decided to embrace their own and others’ creativity, who connect in ways that promote cooperation and trust, and who allow themselves to be pulled to an extraordinarily different future.” Breakpoint and Beyond by George Lane and Beth Jarman
• “Creativity thinks up new things. Innovation does new things.”  Theodore Levitt, “Marketing for Business Growth
• “What is Creativity? – Creativity is a crushing chore and a glorious mystery.  The work wants to be made, and it wants to be made through you.” Elizabeth Gilbert   Author: Eat, Pray, Love

Card Responses and Context in the Shadow position.

– Self Delusion

(Artificial, Dreamy, Emotional, Flaky, Moody, Picky, Self-Delusional, Self-Destructive, Skeptical)

1. Artifice is a veneer. It is meant to convince the observer that substance is present when actually it is a false front. Sometimes the creator can deceive themselves, as well. The authentic self is hidden or deluded in masquerade. Is it time to unmask? Perhaps someone is deceiving themselves and wants you to believe it with them?
2. Self Deception might be useful for training your persona, but it is terrible if you can no longer see the original you.
3. Never mind how fashionable it looks, just know that what you come up with will be met with surprise, and possibly delight, but certainly acknowledgement that you did it yourself.
4. Because I think it, it has already happened. Don’t delude yourself into believing that no effort is required.
5. Is imitation the sincerest form of flattery? Or is it just easier to copy someone else’s work because you are too lazy or too scared to risk producing your own? Do the work yourself and learn the skill and process hands-on.
6. Sometimes a creator deceives themselves. Make sure what someone tells you they can deliver is not actually vaporware.
7. If you frequently say, “conditions are never right” to create, then even when they are, you’ll have no practice under your belt. Stop making excuses or deluding yourself. You are stalling.
8. A negative pole Young Soul Artisan credo is: “Fake it till you make it.” Self-Deception might be useful for training or propping up your persona, but it is terrible if you can no longer see the original you.
9. Who are you looking at? Is it the genuine article? Or a projection from your own psyche? Or a fabrication meant satisfy you superficially? Get clear or you might get burned.
10. Mature Artisan and mathematician Ludwig Wiggenstein said, “Nothing is so difficult as not deceiving oneself.” You can underestimate or overestimate. Pay attention that you’re not kidding yourself.

Quotations Illustrating the Overleaf in this pole

• “In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.” ~Ralph Waldo Emerson
• “A genius is to achieve complete possession of ones own experience, body, rhythm and memories.” Pavase
• “I sometimes think that God, in creating man, overestimated His ability.” Oscar Wilde
• “Most cultures throughout human history have not liked creative individuals. They ignored them or they killed them.” Howard Gardner

Artisan Role Overleaf Energy in The Michael Teaching

In its most exaggerated form the Artisan is the creator, tinker, discoverer, and questioner, the conceptualizer, and the one who differentiate to discover nuances. Even to his/her flaw, the work might become a source of noble essence-sacrifice when viewed as a great undertaking or lead to despair, collapse and even suicide with the unrealized dream. It is the nature of the Artisan to dream, to bring illustration explored throughout this text and their meaning defined. This person has the uncanny ability to exist in chaos and extract order from it. Think, The Wacky Professor with an office so cluttered as to overwhelm others but to know where all items are. Additionally, the Artisan, when in full function, is perhaps the only role that can actually “multitask” because of their 5 conceptual inputs. These folks often work on my than one project and may have trouble finishing one before moving onto another.

Cultural Archetype- Exalted Arcana

I am, therefore I create! The notion of the Artist is embedded in everyone, to some degree. From adaptation, to solving puzzles, to dressing dolls, to assembling models, to drawing by hand or electronically, or discovering a process and developing it; all fall within the driving essential characteristics of this Archetype. Fascinated with “what makes things tick” (including people), the drive of the Artisan archetype is that of intellectual understanding of the workings of creation, and acting as a creator! Masks, costumes, adornments, idiosyncrasies personal ticks or styles, are the substantive influence of this aspect of a person.

Life Metaphor and Implied Motto

Life is a canvas. A piece of clay to be molded. A structure to built.

Examples of this Archetype

1. Famous People: Michael Jackson, Natalie Portman, Alec Baldwin, Christian Bale, Kate Beckensdale, Leonardo DiCaprio, Juliette Binoche, Audrey Tautou, Nicolas Cage, Lady Gaga, Johnny Depp, Albert Einstein, Michelangelo, Judy Garland, Leonardo De Vinci, Cher,  Marie Antoinette, Dr. Christian Barnard, Marlon Brando, Francis Ford Coppola, General George Custer, Walt Disney, Princess Grace Kelley, John F. Kennedy Jr., Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, Sir Walter Raleigh, Ted Turner, Prince, Shirley McLaine, Elvis Presley, Franz Kafka
2. Mythical or Cartoon characters: Bugs Bunny, Jessica Rabbit, Pepe Le pew Aphrodite (Venus), Vulcan, Phoenix (bird)
3. Institutions: Unions and Guilds, Ballet, Cosmetics industry,
4. Familiar Occupations: actor, dancer, fine artist, surgeon, fashion model, carpenter, contractor, mechanic, designer, craftsman, architect, inventor, musician, writer, poet – or the one who invents new methods within any occupation
5. Animal Totems: peacock, chameleon lizard, termites, butterflies, platypus
6. Inventions or works of art: all art, basic sciences, tools, painting, rock music, jazz music, dancing choreography
7. Cities and Nationalities Paris, San Francisco, New Orleans, French, Hungarians, St. Petersburg, Russia

Identify Statements of the Artisan Role Energy
(Not every aspect may be in play.)

1. Music is a hallmark of my existence. I love to play it, or write it or sing it.
2. I like to create something unique, one that has my own signature on it.
3. When entering a room, my attention go to the decorations and the mood of the place.
4. My world is a canvas for my creative endeavors.
5. I’m at my best when I’m creative, expressing my artistry through either fine art, inventions, crafts, fashion, design, poetry, music or ideas.
6. My body and fashion is often a place where I express my own style.
7. I am fascinated by tattoos, body piercing’s expressive hairstyles, and other expressions of individuality, whether my own or someone else’s.
8. I get excited taking things apart to discover how it was done and to see if I can exert my own spin on it.
9. I’m fascinated by the inherent structure in things, and have an innate curiosity for how things are put together, from the tallest skyscraper to the sub-atomic particle.
10. It is easy for me to be unique, seldom do I find others who as I am.
11. When I am in a rut, I can appear to have a dark cloud around me and feel it in me.
12. I want to be the architect of my own life.
13. I tend to be bored with the mundane or monotonous, unless it is something I apply my creative touch.
14. I can seem a bit scattered and ungrounded at times.
15. My attention can operate at several levels or on several things at once.
16. I crave personal space for doing things I love to do.
17. My imagination is unlimited when I am happy and I can make something cool with very little.
18. I don’t often do well with criticism of my creations and can be hypersensitive and easily hurt it.
19. I’m at my worst when I slip into delusional worlds of my own making that bear little resemblance to reality.
20. Others are baffled by my seemingly unordered approach to life, but I always see a structure in it.

The Artisan Set

The Artisan Set comprises the fundamental energies listed below. These subordinate Artisan Overleaves are second-nature to that Role, but offer anyone flavor of it when one or more is selected during a lifetime. They are embedded in, and native to, the construction of this Role as design defaults. Visually displayed under the Artisan column on the Card Color Chart in Section 1, realize that if no other Overleaves were chosen from other categories by a person of that Role, they would automatically orient to these nested qualities.

The Artisan Cards are all Ordinal, Expression-oriented. Artisans feel the compulsion of having their creations acknowledged, noticed, and to be seen as unique individuals. Using Discrimination for their Goal (Card 8) is the only way to assure that they sort through the vast array of options available to them. It follows that their Attitude of Skeptic (Card 15) makes them harder to convince that a substitute will suffice when they aspire to an original. Thus, they use Caution Mode (Card 29) to be deliberate of their choices, never settling for an accident. As one might infer, the act of creation is one that involves the mind, as many of the Overleaves in the Artisan Set indicate. Naturally, it takes advantage of the visual capacity rooted in the Intellectual Center (Card 36) for it serves to process all the variations for trial and error. Yet it is error, especially when choices are extreme and capricious to the point of self-sabotage of that which they most desire, that leads an Artisan into the Chief Feature of Self-Destruction. (Card 22) For if an Artisan cannot create beauty they may equally create disaster, chaos, and destruction. The agile, lithe, and quick-witted Mercurial Body Type (Card 43) is a favorite of Artisans since it offers them their own manikin to dress and display. Posing and making an artistic statement is often the first venue of their personal expression.

When a person has chosen any of the Artisan characteristics, they are engaging an aspect to utilize or evaluate. Notice the particular card you draw. If you chose the Artisan Role, be on alert that what you create in the world, or how display yourself, is ready for a full-on update. Is how you present yourself congruent with the YOU, you know yourself to be? It is time to break out the tools, get out the paints, draw up some new plans, and then show it off!

From One Archetype to the Next…

Now that the idea is hatched, a design put forward, or a thing is made, you will need the assistance of an organizer; one who corrals the multiple dispersion of ideas into a singular focus or objective. Hence, the necessary partnership between the artist and the business man or woman, who can direct an efficient flow of production and wage an effective campaign to spread its adoption. The ability to create shared benefit and conquer a problem, TAO initiated a force to expand and spread the work and establish a working system. For that purpose of taking action, its aspect is empowered by the Warrior Role – Card 3.

by Stephen Cocconi ©2011, Updated, 2024

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