BloomO! The Soulful Flower Card Game
By Jyoti Khare and Chetana Deorah
Flowers speak to us when we know how to listen to them; it is a subtle and fragrant language.
The Mother
The What
BloomO! A soulful flower card game is a card game that helps sharpen memory, observation, and reflexes with the art of attention. It helps grow visual perception and aesthetic with the attention to detail in every flower.
The game consists for a deck of 80 illustrated flower cards (large) with the spiritual message from The Mother. Smaller deck of 80 cards with the spiritual, common and botanical names for each flower.
The game can be played in groups of 4 to 9 people or experienced solo for reflective insights and guidance, similar to tarot cards. We have noticed people play the game in various ways after exploring the first few sessions by the rules, we encourage you to break them and explore endless possibilities with BloomO!
Flower: Joyful Companion for the Soul book for a deeper dive into the flowers.
The objective of this game is to help sharpen memory, observation, and reflexes with the art of attention. Grow your visual perception and aesthetic with the details in every flower. BloomO! is an invitation to go deeper with reflective insight, based on the messages and significance given by The Mother.
Launch
BloomO! was launched Feb 22, 2024 at the aptly chosen venue in Auroville, ‘Mother’s Flower Garden’. The event included a sharing on The Art & Design of making of BloomO!, collective game play sessions, the game and book available for purchase (discounted price for event attendees only) and an opportunity to mingle with the flowers 🙂 and the community over some light snacks and beverage.
The Why
The Mother has given spiritual names to nearly 898 flowers revealing their deepest aspiration. Flowers have been an intrinsic part of life in the Sri Aurobindo Ashram. Tara Jauhar has documented this experience and inspired by her dedicated hard work, passionto make this accessible to all we created BloomO!. The Mother created the “The Game of Flowers” and took great interest in developing it over time with the artists and students at the ashram. Playing with them regularly, taught them the significance of each flower easily. Through this game, The Mother taught how to love flowers and understand them.
Happy is he who can exchange his qualities with the real qualities of a flower…
I give you flowers so that you may develop the Divine qualities they symbolise.
The Mother
Initially the “Flowers: Joyful Companion to the Soul” 177-pages book was created and launched on August 15, 2022 containing 80 exquisite, water color paintings by Jyoti.
The Mother instilled in us a keen interest in the spiritual significance of flowers. She Herself has a deep contact with flowers all her life; they were her friends and She understood them. She could know all about a flower by identifying Her consciousness with it. In the way She names many flowers according to their inner significance. We, in the Ashram, grew up knowing many of the names the Mother gave to flowers.”
Tara Jauhar (Excerpt from “Growing up with The Mother”)
The How
With the making of BloomO! Jyoti and Chetana explored and brought together the role of art and design in manifesting the vision and objective of this project.
Art (n.)
The expression or application of human creative skill and imagination, typically in a visual form such as painting or sculpture, producing works to be appreciated primarily for their beauty or emotional power.
For me, art has always been a thirst for beauty.
The Mother and Sri Aurobindo have said IT IS the
material manifestation of the Divine.
Jyoti
Design (v.)
decide upon the look and functioning of (a building, garment, or other object), by making a detailed drawing of it.
“While working on my thesis uring my Masters design program, I came across this anonymous quote on Design and ever since it is has been a guiding force for most of my work and role as a Designer…
Design is a verb.
It is the process of active discovery,
investigation, analysis, order, insight and creation.
From scattered data comes information,
From subjective opinion emerges a focused idea.
Begin with the will to discovery who you are,
design extracts Truth.”
Chetana
We conducted usability studies for the game play and based on the feedback from children, adults and solo play sessions, iterated and refined the experience design.
The Who
“Supporting the BloomO project is part of the larger effort that is flowersong.in website where the idea is to build a comprehensive multimedia database for each of the flowers given a significance by the Mother and also to hopefully build an online community in due course. Currently work is going on for a major update.”
Narendra Gehlaut, Savitri Foundation
Team
Watercolor illustrations: Jyoti Khare
Design: Chetana Deorah
Pre-press production: M.Alagesan
Printed at: Sri Aurobindo Ashram Press, Puducherry, India
Packaging: Vanaville, Auroville, India
Publisher: Savitri Foundation, New Delhi
Distributor: Auroville Press, Auroville
Editorial excerpts for research and content “Flowers and their Spiritual Significance” by Auro Publications.
Jyoti Khare
Jyoti grew up in the ashram school and has been an artist, educator, dancer amongst many creative pursuits.
She has written and illustrated many children’s visual story books. Currently she is a teacher at the Nandanam School in Auroville and continues to experiment and explore her sadhana by painting.
Chetana Deorah
Chetana grew up in Mumbai with a Bachlor’s in Science and a Masters in Graphic Design from San Francisco, USA. Her professional career has been in leading teams delivering User-Experience Design and is also a graphic designer and aspiring artist! Her master’s thesis was on the visual interpretation of 3 of Sri Aurobindo’s poems. She is currently based in Auroville.
For enquiries, suggestions, comments, reach out to
Love of flowers is a valuable help in finding and uniting with the psychic.
The Mother
Testimonials
“Each card is a masterpiece in itself and I could sit for hours simply admiring the beauty and thought that has gone into creating this game. Enjoyed witnessing the 11/12-year-olds in my class engage with the game meaningfully and share what a particular flower name, color, or form evoked in their heart. It seemed effortless to connect to the divine presence through this game. With deep gratitude to the beautiful souls that co-created this labour of love offering. BloomO!”
Shaalini, Deepanam School
The way we are using right now is for our office team, most mornings before our meetings we just spread the cards out and each person is invited to take on. We invite people to take a card. Everyone shares their message. We take it as a direction for the day. And I always find somehow I get something generally what I need.
Bridget, Thamarai Educational Center
“I was introduced to BloomO! a few months ago when the product was still being designed. I was instantly drawn to these cards by the beautiful watercolor paintings of the flowers. As I interacted with the cards and the flower’s significance described by Sri Aurobindo and The Mother, I felt centered and connected. I have used it during my training programs as a tool of self-reflection and I have also used it personally for self contemplation. Would recommend it to teachers, parents, therapists, and individuals in their self-growth journey.”
Gopa, Maatram
“We just played our version of the game now and received unbelievable answers that stunned us with their accuracy and grace. Thanks forever for this Divine oracle work you have gifted to Humanity.
B, Author