Imagination will make a Human of you.
In SoulCollage®, as your neters1 arrive with their distinct energies and voices, it soon becomes clear that they emerge from different realms. Our other correspondences may be like this too — sometimes surface-level or shallow, sometimes deep. They can be illuminating or mysterious, joyous or frustrating. And at times, they feel sacred, as though they come from another realm — even another world.
My purpose here is to write a little about the suits Seena Frost offered for our SoulCollage® deck as a way of mapping the psyche — not as rigid categories, but as interconnected domains through which the imagination speaks. I will share some cards from my own deck along the way, so you can see a personal version of what I am describing, and it is my hope that this will help you to conceive of the possibilitities of this gentle modality for self-remembering.
Committee card: ‘Seening, and being seen’.
At the immediate personality level, SoulCollage® offers us neters that represent parts of our habitual self-expression. In this suit, it’s often easy to see the Enneagram of Personality expressing itself too, from the passions and fixations, all the way through to the virtues and holy ideas. If you’ve come across IFS (Internal Family Systems), you might also recognise protectors, allies, and managers: the parts that constellate to serve, and sometimes conceal, an integrated self that can be present and responsive to life unfolding. Your inner critic might appear in a collage you make, or your perfectionist, people pleaser. When these cards arrive intuitively, they can be deeply helpful, since it may not have been obvious previously that they were exerting unwanted control over your life. Or, you might choose to make a card for an aspect of your inner world, quite purposefully. Once they take form in your deck, it becomes possible to listen to what they have to say and to ask them questions. This suit is known as the Committee. It is the psychological imagination that supports us here, as it conceives of parts of ourselves that live beneath the surface, shaping our habits and responses.
Community card: ‘One foot in Portugal’
Growing up in the world means that other humans influence our unfolding lives, and they can arrive in our decks too, sometimes by accident (when you realise you’ve made a card representing your mother or neighbour), and sometimes on purpose (when you just know you need to make a card for Ursula Le Guin, Einstein, or a childhood friend, because of the significant way they’ve shaped your life). These humans on our cards are another one of the ways our SoulCollage® deck offers deep dialogical counsel. They can be grounding presences to include, and were actually the first way SoulCollage® found expression. Seena Frost, who brought SoulCollage® into the world, was on a course with her teacher Jean Houston2, whom she credits as a major influence. At the end of the course, Seena made a card representing each of her classmates and gave it to them. This inspired what became the community suit in SoulCollage®, and might include family, friends, writers, artists, thinkers, and teachers. It expresses the environmental and relational influences on us. They don’t need to be limited to people either; trees, places, and pets can belong here too. This suit recognises our relationships as living presences within us.
Companion card: Owl
Instinct, sensation, and the body entered SoulCollage® for Seena through her deep work with the chakra energy centres. In ‘SoulCollage Evolving’3 she offers a beautiful visualisation for discovering seven animal companions as imaginal embodiments of each energy centre: symbols that root imagination in sensation, breath, and vitality. Through this suit, known as the Companion Suit, Seena honoured the body as a sacred field of knowing, where imagination and sensation meet. Some people come to experience these animals as spiritual guides, especially when they later encounter their real-life counterparts — though not everyone does. Her approach anticipated today’s somatic and trauma-informed practices: rather than analysing the body, she invited us to listen through image. Journeying to meet these companions offers an embodied understanding that imagination, coupled with breath and sensation, can open portals into inner worlds where energetic soul fragments can be retrieved and integrated.
Council card: World Dancer
Now, while the Companion Suit stands as a threshold between the known and the unknown realms of imagination, the suits that follow stretch us further still.
The Council Suit is significant because it offers space for energies beyond the psychological, communal, and instinctual to come forth — if they wish to. Sometimes a neter arrives speaking in a different register or with a deeper authority than your other cards. It may call an energy from beyond ordinary human experience, such as an archetype, a saint, a spiritual being, a deity, a symbol, or an ancestor communicating directly. When one of these arrives, the meaning of its message often extends beyond the individual who it arrived for, and one of the beautiful gifts of SoulCollage® community is that we can share and witness these messages together.
Transpersonal Card: Witness
And finally, we have the Transpersonal Cards. There are typically three of these: Source, representing divine unity and the infinite; SoulEssence, your spark of Source expressed through your individual soul; and Witness, the sacred observer who sees all parts of you without judgment or attachment. These cards hold the SoulCollage® space. They don’t speak — instead, they remind us that whichever aspect of Self is speaking, it does so within a field of unity and grace. They carry a sense of vast spaciousness and peace.
The imagination is both the field and the bridge in SoulCollage®. It is the field because every card, whichever realm it comes from, arises through the imagination. The more we ground and connect with ourselves as three-centred beings, the deeper the resonances and alignments we find with the imagery that calls to us. It’s as though the meaning-making of the imagination feels held within our self-containment. It is also the bridge, connecting the different layers of our experience, psychological, relational, somatic, and spiritual, allowing them to communicate symbolically through imagery. In this sense, SoulCollage® doesn’t just use imagination as a creative tool; it invites us into relationship with the imaginal realm itself.
Imagination gets a workout! Through this journey, SoulCollage® trains your imagination to become a trusted inner organ of perception — not for art’s sake alone, but as a faculty for guidance, healing, and connection with yourself and others.
One more way to think of imagination in SoulCollage® is as the air and light moving through your ecosystem of imagery, with each suit representing a different habitat within that landscape. The Committee Suit is an inner forest of voices, a place to journey into like Hansel and Gretel, to find or retrieve, to meet, accept, and celebrate your many parts. The Community Suit is your village, where relationships and influences become manifest and alive. The Companion Suit represents the wilder terrain of the body’s knowing, and the Council Suit is a mountainous region, bringing forth neters that can elevateyour awareness to the frequency of archetype and spirit.
Now, if this way of working with imagination stirs something in you; a sense of curiosity, or the call to listen more deeply; you might like to explore SoulCollage® within the community of The Soul Shed. There are many ways to begin: Local day retreats, online gatherings, or one-to-one deep dives designed to help you listen through image and story. There’s also a free monthly online session for paid subscribers here, (This month its on 25th October and will be a deep-dive into Hansel and Grete) and is bookable as a one off too, if you’d simply like to experience the atmosphere and see how it feels. You’re warmly invited to step in wherever you are drawn. It’s my heartfelt belief that as we reclaim our imaginal capacity and bring balance to these parts of Self, we gain greater choice in how we participate in the unfolding human story. My belief is that by reclaiming our imaginal capacity and tending to these inner habitats, we open new possibilities for choice, connection, and becoming the person we want to be within the unfolding human story.
Here is where you can learn about Soul Shed current offerings:
Footnotes.
neter: In Soulcollage® a neter is the being, voice or energy that each card represents. The term comes from ancient Egyptian spirituality, where it was used to describe divine principles or forces of nature, the archetypal powers behind all existence.
Jean Houston was a teacher to Seena Frost. Her work included the book, ‘The Possible Human’, and in many ways SoulCollage® is a practical expression of Houston’s inspiring vision for humanity.
SoulCollage Evolving is Seena’s excellent book about this creative process, published by Handford Mead in 2010, and readily available.