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| | About Us: The Story of the Bird Cards
Our ten year journey with the birds has been a co-creative partnership, both with one another across two hemispheres - Jane as author and Joyce as artist - and with the bird kingdom, and it has been the most extraordinary, magical unfolding of a whole new reality. For each of us the process of either writing the texts, or drawing the pictures has been like going through our own private mystery school, and our encounters with birds have been raised to the level of sheer magic and mystery. This is the story of how it came about........
On New Year's day 1999, while in a deep meditation, Jane was told to listen to her inner voice and write down what she heard - she had been wondering about the metaphysical nature of bird energy and what it offers to the planet. She listened and wrote what she heard (none of it was information she knew consciously) - and the result was the first Bird Card - the Pigeon. Jane then went through a transformational process where the subtle healing qualities of 55 birds were revealed to her, over a period of about a year, and these were written as the text of Bird Cards: The Healing Power of the Bird Kingdom.
In the course of that year, 1999, Jane, who lives in Cape Town, South Africa, was put in touch with Joyce, who lives in Spaarnwoude, the Netherlands, and there was instant recognition that she was the right artist to illustrate the cards. Joyce then began her own transformational process, as she beautifully illustrated each card, using metaphysical symbols to illustrate the quality that each bird is expressing. Joyce and Jane only met physically at the end of the process when Joyce had finished all the pictures, but from the beginning it has been a wonderful partnership across the northern and southern hemispheres!
|  Second set of Bird Cards - due May 2010
The next step of the journey occurred in 2003, once Jane had submitted the manuscript to the publisher - it became clear that this was by no means the end of the process, and that there was another set of Bird Cards to write! Over the next year 66 more birds were described, some well-known and some not so well-known, and Joyce then took 5 years to illustrate them, a real labour of love. This is the second set of Bird Cards, published as 'Ascension to Paradise: the Transcendent Power of the Bird Kingdom'. At the end of the second set is a Glossary, which covers almost all the birds of the world, and if you look up a bird that interests you, it will tell you which one of the 121 cards you should read that is closest to its energy. This means that people all over the world can enjoy the Bird Cards and relate them to the birds that they encounter in daily life. The last bird, number 121, is the beautiful Bird of Paradise, featured on the front cover.
Like other oracle cards, the Bird Cards can be used as a way of mirroring back to one the issues that are current in one's life, to help one to transcend and transmute them, but they can also be used to understand the meaning of a bird that has appeared in a dream, a meditation, or a significant encounter.
Jane Toerien lives in Cape Town, South Africa, She has experienced a connection with birds since a very young age.
Joyce van Dobben has also always had a strong connection to birds and nature. She lives and works as an artist in the countryside, Spaarnwoude, The Netherlands. She takes orders for handpainting nature designs on porcelain, and on feathers.
Jane or Joyce can be contacted on info@birdcards.net
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