The Vagus Nerve / Leo Light Tarot Art Project
Vagus Nerve Art Project / Leo Light Tarot Art Project
Performance art video recordings published on YouTube, for the duration of 3 Years (The YouTube channel do not exist anymore), on Patreon for short period of time (November 2020 - May 2021), and on Vimeo - you can find the link at the bottom of this text.
Official Art Project©All rights reserved
The Leo Light Tarot art project is The Vagus Nerve art project –here we are talking about the same project.
The title Leo Light Tarot had to be used, for the wide public, as not everyone is scientifically educated and this terminology is not in use widely. Special Thanks to the jazz singer and astrologer Maya Nova, who came up with this name inspired from the zodiacal sign that I am born under – Leo, helping me finding the right terminology for catching the public’s eye with the title.
This is my latest art project that I was working on very hard since 12 July 2018, when the YouTube Chanel has been created.
But The Vagus Nerve Art project includes not just performance art videos, there are also monotype original layered gel prints, created in the summer of 2016, when this art project actually has been started and the ideas build up in the following years. For the creation of them I’ve used the unique technique that my art became recognised with. Some of the Vagus Nerve images together with my portrait (photo (2018) taken by the photographer Mona K Art) has been used for the YouTube video’s intros. These artworks have not been exhibited yet.
The video series part of this Official Art Project includes:
- Story-Tales for Good Morning;
- Story-Tales for Good Night;
- Story-Tales for the Person your Mind (What is He*She thinking and feeling?);
- Story-Tales for the Twin-Flames;
- Story-Tales for Year’s Energies (2019, 2020, 2021);
- Story-Tales for Soul Mates, Year’s Energies (2019, 2020, 2021)
- Also for the duration of 3 Years, many videos on different topics and themes, including presentations of my previous artworks and art projects that I’ve been working on.
Some of the videos are with the use of the traditional Celtic tarot spread, but just the basic Celtic cross. Everything else - All the layouts (tarot spreads) of the tarot cards in my videos are my own original artistic creation.
The project started in English language as I am London based artist, but very soon after that the videos have been recorded in Bulgarian language as well (my native language), and in the last one year of the project, all the recordings happened in Bulgarian language as the Bulgarian audience expressed great interest in my work. At the moment I am working on adding English subtitles, so my English-speaking fans to be able to enjoy my performance art as well.
Some of the stories I’ve titled Scheherazade’s Tales, but not 1001 as in the famous tales from the Arabian World, but without a number as I do not want to put limits to my creativity.
From the beginning I must say that my whole art, despite the media I am using, is to break the prism in the audience’s minds while they watch a video or observe an artwork, or immerse in an art installation. The aim is to give the audience different point of view on a given subject or a topic, to expand the consciousness and to open new horizons in front of the viewer.
Inspirations
My inspirations are from research in the field of neuroscience and psychology, brain and consciousness, the role of emotions and feelings for life processes, the regulation of mental activities - interactions between the mind and body and processes through which cells receive information. Following the Psychology of the Paranormal network publications at The Skeptic - reading the experts analysis of pseudoscience, conspiracy theory and claims of the paranormal; also visiting most of the GV Art & Mind Symposiums (artandmind.org) for almost a decade (since 2013) where artists and scientists get together presenting and discussing their work. For this art project I draw intertwined mixed inspiration - my usual fields of interest listed above with my curiosity about the paranormal activities in connection to the arts and mysticism. Researching the scientific papers published in different journals and magazines; reading Freud and Jung’s theories; expressing great interest in the movement of the celestial bodies (being a mother of an Astrophysics’ student who is researching the Black Holes), and in the contrary also looking more closely at the astrology, myths and the mystic tarot cards used from the followers of the occults, I have decided to create an art project that will enable me to mix all together. I have to say also that I have very strong sixth sense (Vagus nerve as I am explaining in the text bellow), intuition that I find very useful. It helped me in very difficult situations in my life. I wanted to blend it with this project and to be of help to my audience sharing wisdoms that I’ve learned going through my life.
The idea
The idea came to me observing the visitors of the gallery when I have an exhibition. Every single person assimilated my art in different way, and not just, every one of them started creating a story around the picture they were observing, and the most interesting is that my art stimulated the visitors mind to create new images out of main, like a continuation, extension to the picture and also, they have started to project their stories in to my art. It is truly fascinating. I’ve decided to work on this project without announcing it, as my aim was to get as much as possible honest and sincere feedbacks and most of all the project to be the exploration of the truth. As you know probably, not everyone is honest when looking at the artist’s work. Most of the people pretend that they understand it or that they like it and speak nice words to the artist, and after going out of the gallery they speak different things. Also, the exhibitions are visited by people connected to the art in some way, either business or marketing professionals, who mislead the artists pretending that they will help them to have wider exposure, or to help them manage their art business wisely, and like spiders, sometimes very poisonous, catching its prey in a cobweb, making money on the artist’s back. They kill the whole idea of art by turning everything into a money machine. In the end, the artist receives a ridiculous pay for their work and ideas, and lives in misery, struggling to survive. I’ve been observing such a behaviour many years in a row, and many times when I was trying to say something about this I was faced with answers such as “This is the Art World, you can’t change it” or “O, don’t you know that the art is for the rich people?”. Off course not everyone is like what I’ve just described above. There are many good people working in the business and marketing sphere, but the negative experiences and disappointments I had, gave me the courage to be brave and with the risk of being too controversial, to follow my heart and be determined to work on this project facing the cruelty, jealousy and judgemental behaviour of some people from the masses. I am repeating in my videos, that “nothing happens by accident”, going through all this, there was a lesson that I had to learn, and I believe that all this is for good. There is a popular saying – “When you help the other people, you help yourself”.
Nowadays internet gives the artists many opportunities to present their work worldwide, and with this art project I’ve aimed to see what can be achieved for a period of 3 years showing and promoting my art online.
Strongly believe that when everyone stands up and fight for justice, then the world could change for better. The Golden Middle - Balance must be found.
I’ve decided to announce the project when the work is completed in order not to influence the audience responses for the duration of 3 years.
My target
Something very important, I’ve put myself a target – to increase the value of the artist’s work in the minds of today’s materialistic humanity that value just the work of the money makers in the big financial corporations and institutions. The artistic community have to rise up and fight to achieve equal material give and take with the rest of the society. There must be balance and harmony achieved, justice for the uniqueness of every single artist on this planet Earth who work being true to themselves and brave in expressing their authenticity. I have strong believe in that nowadays contemporary artists deserve to be valued and paid for their hard work as they are different and the art is no more as much about entertainment, decoration or illustration the way it used to be. Artists today think outside the framework that society has created and their work encourages a much-needed dialog within society. They are mostly free and honest individuals whose artwork is a statement of their own authentic truth seen through the lens of a ground-braking and often underrepresented perspective.
This project is the most significant to me until now, not just that the duration of the project was 3 years, quite a long period of time, but also because it helped me personally in many different ways and on many different levels, pushing through all the aspects of my life, shaking it as an earthquake many times. I’ve been able to see through the curtain of the false kindness and politeness of some individuals and also the society that we live in and most of all to see who and what truly deserve to be present in my life. Fortunately, there are many good people out there in this world and I will continue to create new art projects for them.
The most important thing to me is always to be myself and always to be able to express my artistic creativity in original and unique way. Nothing else matters! This is the meaning of Freedom!
The Vagus Nerve
As most of my fans already know, I am fascinated by the vastly complex network of nerve endings and touch receptors in the skin that define the way we perceive the material dimension of this world. The brain gets an enormous amount of information about the texture of objects through our fingertips as their ridges are full of sensitive mechanoreceptors. Everything in the human body is controlled by the nervous system, sending signals to the brain and then the brain sending signals to the blood flow to your muscles and so on. To me the neurones are very significant part of the human body that enables the relationship with the human spirit. Consciousness arises when there is electrical activity between the neurones, everything depends on a group of neurones that work together and the communication between them is crucial. Imagine people as neurones. To understand that single human being cannot exist alone, as we are humans are interdependent. Here comes into play the vagus nerve.
The vagus nerve is the longest and the most complex of the 12 cranial nerves, extending from the head to the abdomen, it carries an extensive range of signals from the digestive system and the organs of the brain and vice versa. Vagus means “wandering” in Latin. The vagus nerve detects the energies between the people. They are not visible, but everyone is able to feel and sense the energies of the other. The Vibe!
The electrical impulses between the neurones could be seen as an exchange of words or physical movement between humans. Can you imagine a world where there is a perfect synchrony in the network? When the brain is lacking good orchestration of electrical impulse exchange between neurones, people are often being diagnosed with depression or mental illness of a certain kind. So… what happens in our contemporary world? How do people communicate with each other? How do people interact with the others to create wars? There is a lot to be learned from the inside world of the human body.
I really like the explanation of the vagus nerve by Edith Zimmerman in her article at The CUT New York, Science of Us from 9 of May 2019, titled “I Now Suspect the Vagus Nerve Is the Key to Well-being”:
“I liked this idea that we have something like a secret piano key, under our skin, to press internally to calm us down. Or like a musical string to pluck. At this point I was envisioning the vagus nerve as a single inner cord, stretching from the head to the stomach. In reality, the vagus nerve is a squiggly, shaggy, branching nerve connecting most of the major organs between the brain and colon, like a system of roots or cables. It is the longest nerve in the body, and technically it comes as a pair of two vagus nerves, one for the right side of the body and one for the left. It’s called “vagus” because it wanders, like a vagrant, among the organs. The vagus nerve has been described as “largely responsible for the mind-body connection”, for its role as a mediator between thinking and feeling, and I’m tempted to think of it as something like a physical manifestation of the soul. Also: “When people say ‘trust your gut’, “as one Psychology Today writer put it several years ago, “they really mean ‘trust your vagus nerve’.”
When the person breathe slowly and deeply in equal intervals of time immediately relaxes the body because it stimulates the Vagus nerve. This explains how the meditation works and acts as a brake on the stress response.
This art project interacts with the public via internet. Aware of how an online information, be it in an art form or not, could affect the viewer, I’ve decided to be as helpful as I can to the society using the most popular video platforms.
What I am recommending mostly in my videos is the practice of meditation.
The meditation may be an ancient tradition, but it is less about faith and more about altering consciousness, awareness and piece. It is the process of training yourself, your mind particularly to focus and redirect thoughts using the physical sensation of the breath in the body. This helps calming and relaxing in stressful situations, reduces anxiety, chronic pain, depression… and develop concentration.
From my research during the years I came across many scientific evidences that mental and physical stress cause increased levels of the stress hormone cortisol, which effect over the human body is harmful, affecting the sleep, increasing the blood pressure and promoting depression and anxiety. Meditation helps reducing all the negative inflammatory chemicals called cytokines which are released in response to stress.
And most of all I recommend the use of meditation in order to help one to develop a greater understanding of themselves and how to relate to the people around. Also, it gives people more creative solutions for dilemmas that occur in their life and increase the problem-solving skills. The effect of the meditation can generate kindness, particularly increase positive feelings and actions toward oneself and others. It can help break dependencies and fight addictions, increasing self-control and awareness of triggers for addictive behaviours.
Nowadays, living in lockdowns caused by deadly virus, most of the people can’t work and staying at home alone is causing depression. The meditation is something that everyone can practise by themselves it doesn’t matter where they are, without the need of a special equipment, with the use of music, or not; guided by someone or not; in special position of the body or not, it helps to improve people’s mental and emotional health.
Contemporary performance art
This is a multimedia art project, as I am using different artistic media, such as performance art, video and music, visual art, sometimes poetry and all this with interaction with the public online via internet public video platforms. Let's mention few of my inspirations from the performance art contemporary world.
The most inspirational for me from the contemporary art world at the moment, working in the performance art media is Marina Abramovic, which is known from the masses mostly with her performance at MoMa “The Artist is present”, but to name few more artists that I admire: the Japanese artist Yoyoi Kusama working with a great variety of media exploring the subjects of psychedelia, repetition and patterns; Gilbert and George that have reputation as live-sculptures, making themselves works of art; and I cannot leave this sentence without mentioning the collaboration called The Other by Ulay and Marina Abramovic exploring the ego and artistic identity.
Tarot cards
For this art project I had to learn the meaning of the tarot cards and how to read them as I am using them in my performances. I didn’t enrol in any study course, but researched the subject online and red few books that accompanied the tarot decks I’ve purchased for the start of the project.
Working on this project I’ve became very interested in how the mystic of the tarot and the universal architypes can help people with their everyday life.
My research in Psychology and particularly Carl Jung’s theories about the principles of the synchronicity that explains the guiding forces in the universe became the base for the philosophy I am practising. According to Jung, things we might see as coincidence are actually signs that can help us make decisions and guide our lives if we recognise them. Also, the theories of the Quantum Physics that explain the relationships of particles and their random interconnectivity, with behaviours being probabilities rather than certainties.
Finalising the art project, I can conclude that tarot cards can give guidance if they are red in the best positive way possible, but even red in the negative way, they could help people to avoid some unpleasant situations in their lives. If the tarot reader has strong intuition (The Vagus Nerve) they could help the other people with the tarot reading, but to be really helpful they must have a genuine good heart, strong moral and ethical principles.
What I am explaining in my videos is that I am not predicting the viewers future, as the popular believe about tarot cards is. What I am doing is to give them different possibilities for unfolding situations in the future, and because they are seeing this in my videos, they are capable of changing the outcome, if they do not like it. Everything depends from the person’s choices, and this is where the power of every single individual is – The Conscious Choice that is taken in every single moment of their life. The Tarot cards play the role of showing the paths and the patterns of particular situation, and once the person sees the possible outcomes, they can change their decisions and the future probabilities for outcomes are automatically changed.
In the description under all of my videos I am stating that All tarot readings are for entertainment purposes only. Valeriya N-Georg/Leo Light Tarot Art Project should not be used to replace the advice of doctors, lawyers or other professionals. Everyone is responsible for their own life choices and decisions, or any action taken after communication with the artist, public or private, verbal or written, or by watching any videos.
Taking a closer look into the history of tarot cards, we see that the first tarot decks were created as a game, and were used to play a game called triumph. After that, followers of the occult discovered the tarot cards and started using them as divination tool.
The Illustrations
Different tarot decks are illustrated in different way. As an artist I find it really fascinating how different artist’s imagination works with the mystical interpretations of the tarot cards. I’ve became a collector of tarot cards, and this is my input for the wellness of my artists colleagues, as I am spending quite a lot to purchase tarot cards. I am using the illustrations in my storytelling’s pointing to the public different details from the picture and reading the symbols used by the artist illustrator. Every adult, the same as a child likes to see visual representation of the story. Every little child would choose a book with illustration, rather than without.
The “Little Prince” Tarot Deck based on the novel written for adults by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry is my favourite and I do recommend everyone to read it often. I will use just a small quote from the philosophical novel here:
“All grown-ups were once children... but only few of them remember it.”
Finalizing the project now, I can say:
What the people need now, in these difficult times, is someone to tell them Story-Tales. In every human, doesn’t matter the age, there is an inner child, that want to play, that wants to hear a kind word from someone, to feel loved. The most common feedback for the duration of 3 years I was working on this project is that people play my videos in the evening before going to sleep and they are sharing with me that my voice is relaxing them and they sleep well. This makes me happy and I feel satisfied from the hard work I’ve put on here.
“And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye." - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince
What I am doing actually? – I am telling stories for adults and giving them various scenarios of how one situation could unfold, and with this I am helping them to see one situation from different points of view, so they to be able to find a creative new way of solving the problems they have in their life.
And as Albert Einstein said:
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them”
Special Thanks to:
Djocko (Djochkoun Sami) for the creation of the Leo Light Tarot LOGO
Maya Nova for the intro music (Feels Like Making Love)
Mona K Art for the professional photography
Aleks Georgiev for creating the video intros and the technical support during the years
Thanks to everyone who took part in this project by interacting with comments under my videos! Without the participation of the public this art project wouldn’t be such a successful as it is! (Doesn’t matter that I’ve disabled the comments under most of my videos and hided the subscription countdown. I had to do that in order to stop the social war.)
I am very happy that I’ve managed to engage over 14300 subscribers (in the pick they were nearly 15000) on YouTube to participate actively for 3 years period of time!
I am adding here the following sentences on 9 August 2021:
For the duration of a month after the project was finalised, the number of YouTube subscribers continuing to rise up. Many people are writing to me, asking if it’s possible to continue with the Scheherazade’s Tales. My heart melts from the Love I am receiving from the public! I might consider the continuation of some video series.
Sending everyone Love and Light!
Valeriya N-Georg
Leo Light Tarot Art Project©All rights reserved
(I would like to say that I am dyslectic, as most of the artists worldwide, and my writings are not great as much as my art. I am working constantly on improving the written presentation of this project. There is really a lot to say here. Thanks for the understanding in advance.)
Link to Valeriya N-Georg's Art on Vimeo
Performance art video recordings published on YouTube, for the duration of 3 Years (The YouTube channel do not exist anymore), on Patreon for short period of time (November 2020 - May 2021), and on Vimeo - you can find the link at the bottom of this text.
Official Art Project©All rights reserved
The Leo Light Tarot art project is The Vagus Nerve art project –here we are talking about the same project.
The title Leo Light Tarot had to be used, for the wide public, as not everyone is scientifically educated and this terminology is not in use widely. Special Thanks to the jazz singer and astrologer Maya Nova, who came up with this name inspired from the zodiacal sign that I am born under – Leo, helping me finding the right terminology for catching the public’s eye with the title.
This is my latest art project that I was working on very hard since 12 July 2018, when the YouTube Chanel has been created.
But The Vagus Nerve Art project includes not just performance art videos, there are also monotype original layered gel prints, created in the summer of 2016, when this art project actually has been started and the ideas build up in the following years. For the creation of them I’ve used the unique technique that my art became recognised with. Some of the Vagus Nerve images together with my portrait (photo (2018) taken by the photographer Mona K Art) has been used for the YouTube video’s intros. These artworks have not been exhibited yet.
The video series part of this Official Art Project includes:
- Story-Tales for Good Morning;
- Story-Tales for Good Night;
- Story-Tales for the Person your Mind (What is He*She thinking and feeling?);
- Story-Tales for the Twin-Flames;
- Story-Tales for Year’s Energies (2019, 2020, 2021);
- Story-Tales for Soul Mates, Year’s Energies (2019, 2020, 2021)
- Also for the duration of 3 Years, many videos on different topics and themes, including presentations of my previous artworks and art projects that I’ve been working on.
Some of the videos are with the use of the traditional Celtic tarot spread, but just the basic Celtic cross. Everything else - All the layouts (tarot spreads) of the tarot cards in my videos are my own original artistic creation.
The project started in English language as I am London based artist, but very soon after that the videos have been recorded in Bulgarian language as well (my native language), and in the last one year of the project, all the recordings happened in Bulgarian language as the Bulgarian audience expressed great interest in my work. At the moment I am working on adding English subtitles, so my English-speaking fans to be able to enjoy my performance art as well.
Some of the stories I’ve titled Scheherazade’s Tales, but not 1001 as in the famous tales from the Arabian World, but without a number as I do not want to put limits to my creativity.
From the beginning I must say that my whole art, despite the media I am using, is to break the prism in the audience’s minds while they watch a video or observe an artwork, or immerse in an art installation. The aim is to give the audience different point of view on a given subject or a topic, to expand the consciousness and to open new horizons in front of the viewer.
Inspirations
My inspirations are from research in the field of neuroscience and psychology, brain and consciousness, the role of emotions and feelings for life processes, the regulation of mental activities - interactions between the mind and body and processes through which cells receive information. Following the Psychology of the Paranormal network publications at The Skeptic - reading the experts analysis of pseudoscience, conspiracy theory and claims of the paranormal; also visiting most of the GV Art & Mind Symposiums (artandmind.org) for almost a decade (since 2013) where artists and scientists get together presenting and discussing their work. For this art project I draw intertwined mixed inspiration - my usual fields of interest listed above with my curiosity about the paranormal activities in connection to the arts and mysticism. Researching the scientific papers published in different journals and magazines; reading Freud and Jung’s theories; expressing great interest in the movement of the celestial bodies (being a mother of an Astrophysics’ student who is researching the Black Holes), and in the contrary also looking more closely at the astrology, myths and the mystic tarot cards used from the followers of the occults, I have decided to create an art project that will enable me to mix all together. I have to say also that I have very strong sixth sense (Vagus nerve as I am explaining in the text bellow), intuition that I find very useful. It helped me in very difficult situations in my life. I wanted to blend it with this project and to be of help to my audience sharing wisdoms that I’ve learned going through my life.
The idea
The idea came to me observing the visitors of the gallery when I have an exhibition. Every single person assimilated my art in different way, and not just, every one of them started creating a story around the picture they were observing, and the most interesting is that my art stimulated the visitors mind to create new images out of main, like a continuation, extension to the picture and also, they have started to project their stories in to my art. It is truly fascinating. I’ve decided to work on this project without announcing it, as my aim was to get as much as possible honest and sincere feedbacks and most of all the project to be the exploration of the truth. As you know probably, not everyone is honest when looking at the artist’s work. Most of the people pretend that they understand it or that they like it and speak nice words to the artist, and after going out of the gallery they speak different things. Also, the exhibitions are visited by people connected to the art in some way, either business or marketing professionals, who mislead the artists pretending that they will help them to have wider exposure, or to help them manage their art business wisely, and like spiders, sometimes very poisonous, catching its prey in a cobweb, making money on the artist’s back. They kill the whole idea of art by turning everything into a money machine. In the end, the artist receives a ridiculous pay for their work and ideas, and lives in misery, struggling to survive. I’ve been observing such a behaviour many years in a row, and many times when I was trying to say something about this I was faced with answers such as “This is the Art World, you can’t change it” or “O, don’t you know that the art is for the rich people?”. Off course not everyone is like what I’ve just described above. There are many good people working in the business and marketing sphere, but the negative experiences and disappointments I had, gave me the courage to be brave and with the risk of being too controversial, to follow my heart and be determined to work on this project facing the cruelty, jealousy and judgemental behaviour of some people from the masses. I am repeating in my videos, that “nothing happens by accident”, going through all this, there was a lesson that I had to learn, and I believe that all this is for good. There is a popular saying – “When you help the other people, you help yourself”.
Nowadays internet gives the artists many opportunities to present their work worldwide, and with this art project I’ve aimed to see what can be achieved for a period of 3 years showing and promoting my art online.
Strongly believe that when everyone stands up and fight for justice, then the world could change for better. The Golden Middle - Balance must be found.
I’ve decided to announce the project when the work is completed in order not to influence the audience responses for the duration of 3 years.
My target
Something very important, I’ve put myself a target – to increase the value of the artist’s work in the minds of today’s materialistic humanity that value just the work of the money makers in the big financial corporations and institutions. The artistic community have to rise up and fight to achieve equal material give and take with the rest of the society. There must be balance and harmony achieved, justice for the uniqueness of every single artist on this planet Earth who work being true to themselves and brave in expressing their authenticity. I have strong believe in that nowadays contemporary artists deserve to be valued and paid for their hard work as they are different and the art is no more as much about entertainment, decoration or illustration the way it used to be. Artists today think outside the framework that society has created and their work encourages a much-needed dialog within society. They are mostly free and honest individuals whose artwork is a statement of their own authentic truth seen through the lens of a ground-braking and often underrepresented perspective.
This project is the most significant to me until now, not just that the duration of the project was 3 years, quite a long period of time, but also because it helped me personally in many different ways and on many different levels, pushing through all the aspects of my life, shaking it as an earthquake many times. I’ve been able to see through the curtain of the false kindness and politeness of some individuals and also the society that we live in and most of all to see who and what truly deserve to be present in my life. Fortunately, there are many good people out there in this world and I will continue to create new art projects for them.
The most important thing to me is always to be myself and always to be able to express my artistic creativity in original and unique way. Nothing else matters! This is the meaning of Freedom!
The Vagus Nerve
As most of my fans already know, I am fascinated by the vastly complex network of nerve endings and touch receptors in the skin that define the way we perceive the material dimension of this world. The brain gets an enormous amount of information about the texture of objects through our fingertips as their ridges are full of sensitive mechanoreceptors. Everything in the human body is controlled by the nervous system, sending signals to the brain and then the brain sending signals to the blood flow to your muscles and so on. To me the neurones are very significant part of the human body that enables the relationship with the human spirit. Consciousness arises when there is electrical activity between the neurones, everything depends on a group of neurones that work together and the communication between them is crucial. Imagine people as neurones. To understand that single human being cannot exist alone, as we are humans are interdependent. Here comes into play the vagus nerve.
The vagus nerve is the longest and the most complex of the 12 cranial nerves, extending from the head to the abdomen, it carries an extensive range of signals from the digestive system and the organs of the brain and vice versa. Vagus means “wandering” in Latin. The vagus nerve detects the energies between the people. They are not visible, but everyone is able to feel and sense the energies of the other. The Vibe!
The electrical impulses between the neurones could be seen as an exchange of words or physical movement between humans. Can you imagine a world where there is a perfect synchrony in the network? When the brain is lacking good orchestration of electrical impulse exchange between neurones, people are often being diagnosed with depression or mental illness of a certain kind. So… what happens in our contemporary world? How do people communicate with each other? How do people interact with the others to create wars? There is a lot to be learned from the inside world of the human body.
I really like the explanation of the vagus nerve by Edith Zimmerman in her article at The CUT New York, Science of Us from 9 of May 2019, titled “I Now Suspect the Vagus Nerve Is the Key to Well-being”:
“I liked this idea that we have something like a secret piano key, under our skin, to press internally to calm us down. Or like a musical string to pluck. At this point I was envisioning the vagus nerve as a single inner cord, stretching from the head to the stomach. In reality, the vagus nerve is a squiggly, shaggy, branching nerve connecting most of the major organs between the brain and colon, like a system of roots or cables. It is the longest nerve in the body, and technically it comes as a pair of two vagus nerves, one for the right side of the body and one for the left. It’s called “vagus” because it wanders, like a vagrant, among the organs. The vagus nerve has been described as “largely responsible for the mind-body connection”, for its role as a mediator between thinking and feeling, and I’m tempted to think of it as something like a physical manifestation of the soul. Also: “When people say ‘trust your gut’, “as one Psychology Today writer put it several years ago, “they really mean ‘trust your vagus nerve’.”
When the person breathe slowly and deeply in equal intervals of time immediately relaxes the body because it stimulates the Vagus nerve. This explains how the meditation works and acts as a brake on the stress response.
This art project interacts with the public via internet. Aware of how an online information, be it in an art form or not, could affect the viewer, I’ve decided to be as helpful as I can to the society using the most popular video platforms.
What I am recommending mostly in my videos is the practice of meditation.
The meditation may be an ancient tradition, but it is less about faith and more about altering consciousness, awareness and piece. It is the process of training yourself, your mind particularly to focus and redirect thoughts using the physical sensation of the breath in the body. This helps calming and relaxing in stressful situations, reduces anxiety, chronic pain, depression… and develop concentration.
From my research during the years I came across many scientific evidences that mental and physical stress cause increased levels of the stress hormone cortisol, which effect over the human body is harmful, affecting the sleep, increasing the blood pressure and promoting depression and anxiety. Meditation helps reducing all the negative inflammatory chemicals called cytokines which are released in response to stress.
And most of all I recommend the use of meditation in order to help one to develop a greater understanding of themselves and how to relate to the people around. Also, it gives people more creative solutions for dilemmas that occur in their life and increase the problem-solving skills. The effect of the meditation can generate kindness, particularly increase positive feelings and actions toward oneself and others. It can help break dependencies and fight addictions, increasing self-control and awareness of triggers for addictive behaviours.
Nowadays, living in lockdowns caused by deadly virus, most of the people can’t work and staying at home alone is causing depression. The meditation is something that everyone can practise by themselves it doesn’t matter where they are, without the need of a special equipment, with the use of music, or not; guided by someone or not; in special position of the body or not, it helps to improve people’s mental and emotional health.
Contemporary performance art
This is a multimedia art project, as I am using different artistic media, such as performance art, video and music, visual art, sometimes poetry and all this with interaction with the public online via internet public video platforms. Let's mention few of my inspirations from the performance art contemporary world.
The most inspirational for me from the contemporary art world at the moment, working in the performance art media is Marina Abramovic, which is known from the masses mostly with her performance at MoMa “The Artist is present”, but to name few more artists that I admire: the Japanese artist Yoyoi Kusama working with a great variety of media exploring the subjects of psychedelia, repetition and patterns; Gilbert and George that have reputation as live-sculptures, making themselves works of art; and I cannot leave this sentence without mentioning the collaboration called The Other by Ulay and Marina Abramovic exploring the ego and artistic identity.
Tarot cards
For this art project I had to learn the meaning of the tarot cards and how to read them as I am using them in my performances. I didn’t enrol in any study course, but researched the subject online and red few books that accompanied the tarot decks I’ve purchased for the start of the project.
Working on this project I’ve became very interested in how the mystic of the tarot and the universal architypes can help people with their everyday life.
My research in Psychology and particularly Carl Jung’s theories about the principles of the synchronicity that explains the guiding forces in the universe became the base for the philosophy I am practising. According to Jung, things we might see as coincidence are actually signs that can help us make decisions and guide our lives if we recognise them. Also, the theories of the Quantum Physics that explain the relationships of particles and their random interconnectivity, with behaviours being probabilities rather than certainties.
Finalising the art project, I can conclude that tarot cards can give guidance if they are red in the best positive way possible, but even red in the negative way, they could help people to avoid some unpleasant situations in their lives. If the tarot reader has strong intuition (The Vagus Nerve) they could help the other people with the tarot reading, but to be really helpful they must have a genuine good heart, strong moral and ethical principles.
What I am explaining in my videos is that I am not predicting the viewers future, as the popular believe about tarot cards is. What I am doing is to give them different possibilities for unfolding situations in the future, and because they are seeing this in my videos, they are capable of changing the outcome, if they do not like it. Everything depends from the person’s choices, and this is where the power of every single individual is – The Conscious Choice that is taken in every single moment of their life. The Tarot cards play the role of showing the paths and the patterns of particular situation, and once the person sees the possible outcomes, they can change their decisions and the future probabilities for outcomes are automatically changed.
In the description under all of my videos I am stating that All tarot readings are for entertainment purposes only. Valeriya N-Georg/Leo Light Tarot Art Project should not be used to replace the advice of doctors, lawyers or other professionals. Everyone is responsible for their own life choices and decisions, or any action taken after communication with the artist, public or private, verbal or written, or by watching any videos.
Taking a closer look into the history of tarot cards, we see that the first tarot decks were created as a game, and were used to play a game called triumph. After that, followers of the occult discovered the tarot cards and started using them as divination tool.
The Illustrations
Different tarot decks are illustrated in different way. As an artist I find it really fascinating how different artist’s imagination works with the mystical interpretations of the tarot cards. I’ve became a collector of tarot cards, and this is my input for the wellness of my artists colleagues, as I am spending quite a lot to purchase tarot cards. I am using the illustrations in my storytelling’s pointing to the public different details from the picture and reading the symbols used by the artist illustrator. Every adult, the same as a child likes to see visual representation of the story. Every little child would choose a book with illustration, rather than without.
The “Little Prince” Tarot Deck based on the novel written for adults by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry is my favourite and I do recommend everyone to read it often. I will use just a small quote from the philosophical novel here:
“All grown-ups were once children... but only few of them remember it.”
Finalizing the project now, I can say:
What the people need now, in these difficult times, is someone to tell them Story-Tales. In every human, doesn’t matter the age, there is an inner child, that want to play, that wants to hear a kind word from someone, to feel loved. The most common feedback for the duration of 3 years I was working on this project is that people play my videos in the evening before going to sleep and they are sharing with me that my voice is relaxing them and they sleep well. This makes me happy and I feel satisfied from the hard work I’ve put on here.
“And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye." - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince
What I am doing actually? – I am telling stories for adults and giving them various scenarios of how one situation could unfold, and with this I am helping them to see one situation from different points of view, so they to be able to find a creative new way of solving the problems they have in their life.
And as Albert Einstein said:
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them”
Special Thanks to:
Djocko (Djochkoun Sami) for the creation of the Leo Light Tarot LOGO
Maya Nova for the intro music (Feels Like Making Love)
Mona K Art for the professional photography
Aleks Georgiev for creating the video intros and the technical support during the years
Thanks to everyone who took part in this project by interacting with comments under my videos! Without the participation of the public this art project wouldn’t be such a successful as it is! (Doesn’t matter that I’ve disabled the comments under most of my videos and hided the subscription countdown. I had to do that in order to stop the social war.)
I am very happy that I’ve managed to engage over 14300 subscribers (in the pick they were nearly 15000) on YouTube to participate actively for 3 years period of time!
I am adding here the following sentences on 9 August 2021:
For the duration of a month after the project was finalised, the number of YouTube subscribers continuing to rise up. Many people are writing to me, asking if it’s possible to continue with the Scheherazade’s Tales. My heart melts from the Love I am receiving from the public! I might consider the continuation of some video series.
Sending everyone Love and Light!
Valeriya N-Georg
Leo Light Tarot Art Project©All rights reserved
(I would like to say that I am dyslectic, as most of the artists worldwide, and my writings are not great as much as my art. I am working constantly on improving the written presentation of this project. There is really a lot to say here. Thanks for the understanding in advance.)
Link to Valeriya N-Georg's Art on Vimeo
