Dahlia

creativity, the fool, new beginnings, courage

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When you plant the bulb of a Dahlia, you know what you’re going to get. The flower that grows will match the bulb that is planted. When you let the flower go to seed, however, you don’t know what those seeds will turn into. They could be a completely new variety of dahlia, or something much less exciting. The only way to find out is to nurture and grow them and watch what they turn into. 

I heard a quote in yoga recently that stuck with me. I don’t remember the exact words, or who said it, but it was something along the lines of: 

“Courage is starting something new without knowing what the result will be.”

The dahlia represents this exact kind of courage. 

It also represents creativity. The way dahlias grow made me think of the way a child can grow up to be anyone. Parents often think they’re raising a carbon copy of themselves, when in reality, they often have much less influence than they think.

But the parenting analogy isn’t really interesting to me, since I can’t stand children and have no interest in ever having them. We all create, though, whether it’s literal humans, or a creative project like this one. 

I have vague plans for this oracle deck, but I don’t know what the end result will be. I don’t know if hundreds (or thousands?????) of people will subscribe to this Substack, or if it will turn into me rambling to my five closest friends and a couple strangers if I’m lucky. I don’t know if enough people will care about this deck for me to be able to get it printed some day, or if I’ll just be printing out each card for myself and gluing it onto card stock. 

Often, we don’t know how things will turn out when we start them. We just have to nurture them, let them grow, and let them become what they are meant to be. 

The energy of the Dahlia also reminds me of the Fool card. The fool starts his journey with very few supplies, very little planning. He doesn’t know where he will end up or what hardships he may encounter along the way. He just starts his journey, faithful that it will work out. 

The Fool is card zero in the tarot deck. It’s the very beginning of a journey. I’m reminded also of the blank rune. I used to think of divination symbols like the blank rune as a bit of a “fuck you.” You ask the runes to tell you what will happen in the future (or to give more understanding of a current or past situation), and the runes just say “no.” But perhaps, sometimes, it’s best for us not to know. Maybe there can be some fun in not knowing. Or, if not fun, then courage. Courage to venture out into the unknown. 

The first draft of this essay had a long section about my uncertainty of how the art for this deck will turn out. I’ve done a bit of digital art in the past, but not much. Thankfully, after designing this card, I feel great about how it turned out. Here’s to hoping the rest of them will be just as beautiful. 

If you love this card too, prints are available on my Threadless shop.

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At the end of each post, I’d like to have a little section about how I designed the card. When there’s a hand-drawn element, I’ll post my lil sketches here. When the card is a collage of photos, I’ll credit the folks who took the photos. 

This one is all collage. The photos I used were taken by:

Jacques Gaimard on Pixabay

Kai Pilger on Pexels

Karolina Grabowska on Pexels