SoulCollage® = ‘Soul’ + ‘Collage’ by Deborah Gai Lewis
This article is from the SoulCollage® Community Newsletter
SoulCollage® = ‘Soul’ + ‘Collage’
Debrah Gai Lewis | Lillian Rock, New South Wales, Australia
April 2022
Surely all of us reading this article love SoulCollage®, but have you ever paused to think about the meaning of the name’s two component parts?
Soul
The word “soul” is defined as “the nonphysical aspect of a person: the complex of human attributes that manifests as consciousness, thought, feeling, and will, regarded as distinct from the physical body. A person’s emotional and moral nature, where the most private thoughts and feelings are hidden.” The Modern English word “soul” is derived from Old English sáwel, which means “immortal principle.”
SoulEssence (Transpersonal) by Debrah Gai Lewis
One synonym for “soul” is “essence”: “the deepest and truest nature of a person, people or a nation, or what gives somebody or something a distinctive character; that which confers individuality and humanity, often considered to be synonymous with the mind or the self.”
Seena Frost, the creator of SoulCollage®, considers Soul to include:
“. . . the [SoulCollager’s] personality parts, including the ego; the energies of the physical body; the archetypes, [universal patterns in human experience]; and even other sentient beings.” (SoulCollage® Evolving, 8)
For Seena, the term blends the psychological and the spiritual:
“This Soul, as I use the word in SoulCollage®, might also be called the Whole Self. And it is actually holy simply because it is a form manifested originally from Source. No matter how shadowed the Soul may become through a lifetime, at its core there is a spark of the holy. I call that spark of Source which lies at the center of every Soul, SoulEssence.” (Ibid.)
Soul in Various Cultures
Many cultures have recognized a nonphysical principle of human life or existence. There is evidence back to prehistoric peoples of a belief in an aspect distinct from the body and residing within it, what we call the soul.
Among ancient peoples, both the Egyptians and the Chinese conceived of a dual soul. The Egyptian ka (breath; life force) survived death and remained close to the body, while the spiritual ba flew off to the region of the dead. The Chinese distinguished between po, a corporeal, substantive, yin soul, which remains with the deceased body, and a spiritual, ethereal, yang soul, the hun, which survives the body and the grave and is the object of Chinese ancestor worship.
Christian concepts of a body-soul dichotomy originated with the ancient Greeks, who had various concepts for soul, each particular to an era and philosophical school. They were introduced into Christian theology at an early date by St. Gregory of Nyssa and by St. Augustine. In Christian theology, St. Augustine spoke of the soul as a “rider” on the body, making clear the split between the material and the immaterial, with the soul representing the “true” person. In the Middle Ages, St. Thomas Aquinas returned to the Greek philosophers’ concept of the soul as a motivating principle of the body, independent but requiring the substance of the body to make an individual.
In Judaism, the Hebrew terms nefesh (“living being”), ruach (“wind”), neshamah (“breath”), chayah (“life”), and yechidah (“singularity”) are used to describe the soul or spirit.
In Hinduism (Sanātana Dharma), the Atman (“breath” or “soul”) is seen as the universal, eternal self, in which each individual soul (jiva or jiva-atman) partakes. The jiva-atman is also eternal but is imprisoned in an earthly body at birth. At death the jiva-atman passes into a new existence determined by karma, or the cumulative consequences of actions.
Essentially all religions and spiritual schools of thought—including “new religion” and “new age”—have a concept or philosophy of soul.
These concepts live on in colloquial speech today, in phrases such as “body and soul,” “heart and soul,” “kindred soul,” “soul mate,” “lost soul,” “bare one’s soul,” ‘sell one’s soul,” “bless my soul,” “soul music,” and SoulCollage®!
The SoulCollager by Debrah Gai Lewis (Committee Suit)
I Am the One Who collages my soul and receives inspiration, guidance, and wisdom from my creations.
Collage
Collage (from the French: coller, “to glue” or “to stick together”) is a technique of art production, primarily used in the visual arts, where the artwork is made from an assemblage of different forms, thus creating a new whole. The origins of collage can be traced back hundreds of years—techniques of collage were first used at the time of the invention of paper in China, around 200 BC. Collage in the modernist sense made a dramatic reappearance in the early twentieth century through the work of the artists Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque. The term papier collé (“pasted paper” or “paper cut outs”) was coined by them.
Seena Frost explains that she chose collage as the medium for SoulCollage® “because it quiets fears you may have about not having talent to make ‘art.’ Everyone can choose an image, cut it out, and glue it down. . . . Collage is a metaphor for any discovering, gathering, and reweaving of energy bits already formed and present in the universe. A new and personal creation can be made from the ever-present divine chaos of images all around us. Just choose, assemble, name, and then inhabit your SoulCollage® cards.” (SoulCollage® Evolving, 87, 4)
Here are two favorite quotes from collage artists that I consider relevant to SoulCollage® and SoulCollagers:
“Collage artists are as much editors and arrangers as they are creators.”—Cecil Touchon, Masters: Collage: Major Works by Leading Artists (Lark Books, 2010, 86)
“Originality doesn’t mean making something that’s completely new; nothing is completely new. Originality means bending and shaping what’s come before until it belongs to you.”—Robert Hunt (Ibid., 59)
“Using the SoulCollage® process, everyone becomes an instant artist, and we also become explorers of Soul.”—Seena B. Frost, SoulCollage® Evolving (1)
Soul + Collage = SoulCollage®, a powerful combination to discover your wisdom!