I came upon this picture and an article streamed by National Geographic and couldn’t resist.
The men in the top hats are Punxsutawney Phil’s Inner Circle. Every February 2nd, as soon as the sun is up far enough to cast a shadow, they proceed to Gobblers Knob in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania and yank Phil out of his hollow stump. If he sees his shadow, there will be six more weeks of winter.
I knew all this, but I didn’t know that, according to this article, these men speak with Phil and get his official prognostication, which they then deliver to the waiting multitude.
In case you missed it, this year they said that he said there would be an early spring.
1: Go over the OryCon critiques and rewrite the first three chapters of The Remaking of Molly Adair and Molly Adair, Beware.
Ron RootRon Root, a writer friend, gave me a valuable piece of advice about rewriting the first chapter of The Remaking. We were sitting in a bar at OryCon and I was whining to him about how I was having trouble figuring out how to fix the damn thing. “The reason the chapter is weak is because Tracy’s character is flat and no one understands who he’s supposed to be,” Ron said. “I’d go back and do an in-depth character profile on him before I even thought about rewriting.”
So I got out the trusty Character Template he’d sent me and filled it in for Tracy Bliss. It covers everything from physical description, to mannerisms, to fears, to desires, to religious philosophy, to strengths and weaknesses. By the time I was done, I knew just what I needed to change in the first chapter. Thanks, Ron.
I’m still working on the Molly Adair, Beware rewrite.
The ubiquitous “They” always say to start with a scene that will hook the reader, so I started with Molly waking up in the middle of the night to find that her best friend had been killed with Flick, her magic sword. I thought it was a smashing way to begin a novel.
M.K. HobsonM.K. Hobson, one of the pros who critiqued the manuscript, disagreed. She said, “I think you’re trying to do too much all at once—you’re trying to jumpstart the action (with Shandra’s death), introduce a mystery, and work all the background in at the same time. Unfortunately, all of these are conflicting with each other. Every moment Molly spends thinking about her past, I (as the reader) am wondering “why isn’t she thinking more about her poor dead friend?” But even if she DID spend all her time in this first scene thinking about her dead friend, I (as the reader) would be thinking, “who is this Molly character and why should I care about her dead friend?” See the problem here?” And “the technique (of starting in mid action) doesn’t quite work (here) because you start with her in a panic, and then she mostly sits around and thinks about stuff and then goes back to sleep. If you’re going to start in the middle of action, then the reader expects more action to follow that. You’ve got the reader all pumped up for action and then there isn’t any.”
The rewrite is coming along nicely. It’s easier to slip in back story and I can do a better job of character development when I begin a month earlier, on Molly’s first day of school.
2: Send the rewrite of the first chapter of The Remaking to my editor, Jessica Morrell.
Jessica MorrellJessica replied: “I like a lot about this rewrite, but I think you should reconsider the use of shit, Jesus, and Christ in her dialogue/inner thoughts. Some publishers, like Scholastic, don’t use much of this sort of language.
It seems to me that you’re trying really hard to capture a pissed-off teen voice, but in doing so, you’re overdoing it. Now, the voice is much more believable than what you had in an earlier draft, but we don’t need quite so much and it feels a bit intrusive. If you look at a book like The Hunger Games, in the opening, the story launches into a lot of intimate world building right away, but the voice doesn’t feel so intrusive.
Also, on page 10 when you mention the theme from “The Twilight Zone” playing in her head, I’m wondering if it’s a reference point for this generation–I would guess that it’s not.”
After a few more rewrites, Jessica was satisfied.
3: Send The Remaking of Molly Adair off to the agents who requested it at the Willamette Writers Convention last August.
I’ve sent off seven and I have one more to send. This agent is on vacation and won’t be back until February. It takes some doing to get each package just right. All the agents want different things. Some want the first three chapters, some want the first two, some want the whole manuscript. Some want a detailed synopsis, some want a short one, and some want a chapter by chapter outline. The cover letter needs to be addressed to the agent and include something that jogs his or her memory about who you are and where you met them.
4: Whimper softly when the rejections come in.
One agent was kind enough to actually e-mail a rejection letter:
“Dear Ms. LaVielle,” she wrote. “Thanks for your query. As to your material I’m afraid I will be passing — I’m just not enthusiastic enough about the concept of your story to feel that I’d be the right agent for the project. I realize it is difficult to judge your potential from a query; nevertheless please know that I give serious attention to every letter, outline, and writing sample I receive……”
Many agents won’t even do this. They simply say that if I haven’t heard back from them in three weeks to a month, I should consider myself rejected. The time has expired on one of these and I’ve moved it to my rejected list as well.
So, two rejections so far.
5: Chin up. Start sending out cold queries.
These are less likely to succeed because the agents don’t know me from Adam and I’m back to starting with a query letter instead of the first few chapters or the whole manuscript.
I’ve lost track of the number of times I’ve rewritten my query letter.
I’m excited about this contest. It’s for unpublished or self published novels and authors. They accept the first 5,000 entries they receive. To enter you upload a pitch, the first 3,000 to 5, 000 words of your novel, and the entire manuscript onto the contest website. The first cut is in March and is judged strictly on the pitch. They select the best 1,000. Then the panelists use the 3,000-5,000 word excerpts to select the best 250 out of the first cut. The panelists read the final 250 manuscripts and give comments. The winner gets his or her book published by Penguin Books and a $15,000 advance on royalties.
The site is easy to use and the entry process is fairly painless. Registration closes February 6, 2011—or when they have 5,000 entries.
Paul Huson, in The Devil’s Picture Book , mentions in passing that the “mysterious Merkabah….of the medieval Cabalists” fits in perfectly with the symbolism of The Chariot. The Merkabah, the throne/chariot of God, is mentioned 44 times in the Old Testament. It is a four-wheeled vehicle driven by “the likeness of a man” who is surrounded by four living creatures, each of which has four wings and the four faces of a man, lion, ox, and eagle. It is further surrounded by several other layers or angels. This was the vehicle Jewish scholars assume Ezekiel saw in his famous wheels within wheels vision, although the word merkabah isn’t mentioned in that particular text. Rabbis typically forbid the study and discussion of Ezekiel 1 and the merkabah to all but the most advanced Jewish scholars because it can be so easily misinterpreted. (Wikipedia, Merkabah entry).
Hasidic philosophy is more relaxed about the issue and explains that the Merkaba is “a multi-layered analogy that offers insight into the nature of man, the ecosystem, the world, and teaches us how to become better people……Ultimately, we should strive to realize how all of the forces in the world, though they may seem to conflict can unite when one knows how to use them all to fulfill a higher purpose, namely to serve God.” (Wikipedia, Merkabah entry).
According to Jewish mystics, Chet or Cheth, the Hebrew letter assigned to The Chariot, means light, life, or God hovering over His creation. This is an apt description of the Hebrew Merkabah, the throne/chariot of God.
Some modern esoteric schools of thought drop all pretense of allegory. They teach that each of us has a Merkabah or vehicle of divine light that can carry us through the dimensions. The word itself spans cultures. It is Hebrew (merkavah-chariot, or Merkabah-throne chariot), Egyptian (Mer – light; Ka – spirit; Ba – body) or Zulu (Merkabah, space/time/dimension vehicle). Two good Internet sources for Merkabah are Drunvalo and Crystalinks.
The MerKaBa is formed of two interlocking tetrahedrons of light, a three dimensional Star of David. The tetrahedron pointing up rotates clockwise, and the one pointing down rotates counterclockwise. When an adept aligns with the rest of the universe and spins the tetrahedrons at precisely the right speed, he/she transforms into a saucer shaped energy field about 55 feet across which can move through space, time, and every dimension. Could all those UFOs be the ultimate chariots, carrying ascended masters to the divine?
In a reading, The Chariot means: Victory or success through self-control or self-discipline. Successfully controlling some problem or situation by force of will. Having a plan or goal and directing energy toward achieving it. A journey, especially one of personal growth. Mastery of a system or practice.
In the Hero’s Journey, The Charioteer is almost always the hero, who uses his force of will to overcome obstacles, become a better person, and complete his journey. Ben Hur is the obvious example, but a Charioteer doesn’t always have to drive a vehicle. He does have to drive himself and the plot onward and upward.
Mentors are often Charioteers, like Jedi Master, Obi-wan-Kenobi, with his famous line, “Use the Force, Luke.” Darth Vader, the Jedi knight who went over the Dark Side, is a perfect shadow charioteer.
In the movie, Speed, Annie Porter, the reluctant driver of a bus that can’t go slower than 50 mph without exploding, is a Charioteer who is an ally.
The Chariot can also be a physical thing that challenges the characters and forces them to spiritually and sometimes literally move forward, overcome obstacles, and/or become better people. In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the raft and the Mississippi River are The Chariot.
In the book Into Thin Air, Mt. Everest is The Chariot.
The Chariot is also the Journey itself.
Whenever I look at key VII, I can hear Rod Stewart’s voice rasping, “Every picture tells a story, don’t it?” This picture definitely tells a story, if you pay attention to what’s actually there and read all the symbols. First, look at the chariot on the tarot card, and then compare it to the chariots pictured in the previous blog. The tarot card chariot would seem to be useless. It has wheels, but they won’t work because the body of the chariot is resting on the ground and is made of what looks like a block of stone. The two sphinxes that are supposed to be pulling it look as unlikely to be up to the job as Freya’s cats. They are lolling serenely in front of the chariot, playing with their tails. One is black and the other is white, which suggest that one has a yin temperament and the other is yang—not an ideal pairing for two steeds that are supposed to pull together. They aren’t even harnessed to each other or to the chariot, and the charioteer has no reins to guide them.
This vehicle is doomed to failure, and yet the meaning of key VII is victory, success. Clearly, the driver must have another way of making the chariot move.
To completely understand the symbolism that explains this other way, we need to look back at the previous keys.
Some readers find it useful to arrange the major arcana in three rows of seven, with The Fool, 0, or spirit above them. The layout looks like this:
Paul Foster Case, in The Tarot, A Key to the Wisdom of the Ages, suggests that the top row, keys 1 – 7, describe “powers or potencies”, and keys 8 – 14 describe “laws” and forces at work within us and around us. The last row describes “conditions” overcome or “effects” caused by the first two rows.
The Chariot is the final key in the “powers and potencies” row. The first six cards are pairs of opposites that complete each other.
The yang Will of The Magician, combined the yin of The High priestess’s innate knowledge make a well balanced practitioner of the magical arts.
The bounty and abundance of The Empress combined with the control, discipline, and farsightedness of The Emperor makes for a successful kingdom or household.
The Heirophant card is about the word of God as voiced by the leaders of earthly religions. This, combined with The Lovers, which is about choices inspired by out higher selves, serves to keep us on the path to spiritual enlightenment.
The Chariot is the symbolic shorthand for all of the previous pairs. To make this ever so obvious, the picture echoes all of the first six cards. The houses (Beth) and windows (Heh) of the city remind us of The Magician and The Emperor. The chariot itself is shaped like The Magician’s altar and the High Priestess’s throne. The river that runs from the High Priestess’s cloak flows behind the chariot and the black and white sphinxes remind us of the black and white pillars behind her. The park-like area behind the chariot is like the Empress’s garden. The charioteer and the two sphinxes in front of him echo the tableaus of both Hierophant and The Lovers, the yin-yang of the human psyche listening to either his/her higher self or the voice of God.
The card is also loaded with union-of-opposites symbols:
*The yin-yang duality of the sphinxes
*The chariot body representing the earth and wisdom, surmounted by a canopy representing the starry heavens of divine inspiration
*The red lingam-yoni, typifying life force, the union of positive and negative energies
*The golden disk of self consciousness (The Magician) born aloft by the intuitive wings of The High Priestess, symbolizing aspiration
*The waxing and waning moons on the charioteer’s shoulders
*The solar-lunar symbolism of the star on his crown and the moons
*The lingam-yoni symbolism of the chariot wheels and their axles
The way the charioteer drives his chariot is by harnessing the dualities of the first three pairs of keys, positive to negative, yin to yang, feminine to masculine, earthly to divine, into potent action, and directing it outward with his scepter.
The Chariot teaches the value of wholeness. Once we create wholeness within ourselves by recognizing and integrating the conflicting parts of our psyches and then link our psyches to the divine (the goal of most spiritual practices), anything is possible and we are victorious. To be continued….
This is the card of victory and success. The chariot was the transportation of choice for kings and emperors. In the Roman Empire, victorious generals rode them through Rome in huge parades to celebrate their victories abroad. All the top gods rode in chariots. Thor had a chariot pulled by two goats, Jupiter (Greek:Zeus) rode in a chariot pulled by eagles, and Indra, the head of the Hindu pantheon, had a chariot. But most impressive of all, Freya, the Norse Great Mother, but also goddess of love, beauty, fertility and war, traveled in a chariot pulled by two black cats. Getting two cats to go in the same direction, let alone pull a chariot is a feat worthy of a goddess.
Phaeton talked his father, Helios, the Titan solar diety, into letting him drive the chariot of the sun across the heavens. He wasn’t up to the job. The horses ran out of control and Phaeton crashed and burned. Phaeton Driving the Chariot of the Sun
And then there was Boudicca, the Warrior Queen of the Iceni, who nearly succeeded in driving the Romans out of Britain in 61 AD. The British love her and placed a statue of her and her daughters racing along in a chariot right across from Parliament. It’s one of my favorites. Queen Boudicca and Her Daughters
So what’s the big deal about a chariot? In the ancient world it symbolized wealth, power and mobility. If you had a chariot, you could afford to keep horses. You also had the skill to stand upright in a tiny box as it streaked along, bouncing over ruts and rocks, and the strength to control the team of mettlesome horses racing ahead of you. Quite frequently, you did this as you fought enemy chariots carrying men with swords and javelins intent on killing you and wrecking the fragile thing you were standing in. Charioteers probably had even more prestige than professional football players do today. A Roman Chariot The watery sign of Cancer, which is ruled by the Moon, is associated with the Chariot. But what does the cautious, intuitive, home-loving sign of Cancer have to do with chariots? The invention of the chariot was a giant step forward in the art of war. A charioteer (unopposed, of course, by enemy charioteers) could wreak havoc among foot soldiers and remain relatively safe, the chariot serving as a sort of armor. This is the Cancermodus operandi: go forth if you must, but remain safe. And Cancers will do almost anything to protect their homes and families, which is what wars and chariots are supposed to be for. The United States of America, with it’s monstrous defense budget, was born on July 4th, which makes it a Cancer. The other key words for Cancer are feelings and intuition. I’ve never driven a chariot, but I would guess that to remain balanced on that tiny platform and in communication with your horses requires amazing amounts of intuition and a close empathy between the driver and his team. To be continued….
Photo by Aaioaee EiniaThis year, Winter Solstice, December 21st, comes with a bonus—a full moon and an exceptional lunar eclipse, visible on the night of the 20th on the west coast, because full moon occurs at 12:13AM on the 21st. Since a full moon rises at sunset and sets at sunrise, a full moon on Winter Solstice, the longest night of the year, shines over us for a very long time. Almost 16 hours in Portland, Oregon.
It seems that Thor, the mightiest of the Norse gods, rides through the worlds in a chariot pulled by two goats, tanngrisnir (teeth barer) and tanngnjostr (teeth grinder). He periodically kills them and serves their delicious, nourishing meat to his guests. The next day he resurrects them with a stroke of his hammer. This explains why the goat is such an important part of Scandinavian Yule festivities and why we hang those cute little straw goats on our Yule trees. They are like the sun, or the God himself, that dies and is born again each Winter Solstice.
So we sat in a circle and called the Yule Goat, who soon appeared, sporting a long robe, a mask, and a set of impressive goat horns. “And what will you do to call back the light this Yule?” he asked each of us as he stalked around the circle. Fortunately, our answers satisfied him. If they hadn’t, the sun might not have returned. He went to his death bravely and was quickly resurrected. No, we didn’t eat him.
The Scandinavians build giant goats like this one every Yule; and although it’s illegal, they always seem to get set on fire. So we burned our own little straw goat just for good measure. The Sacrifice, Photo by Ross Taylor The Yule log and the Yule or Christmas tree also originated as part of the Winter Solstice celebrations of these countries. For millennia, pagans from Scandinavia to Germany to Rome to Egypt have brought in evergreen boughs and decorated them at Winter Solstice, but the first account of cutting down a tree, bringing it indoors, and decorating it occurred in what is now Estonia and Latvia in the 15th century.
The thing that hadn’t registered with me until just this year is that all of the above are sacrifices. Whether it is a goat or a tree, we take a life to bring new life. In this way we mirror the death and rebirth cycles in nature and assure their continuance.
If we didn’t make these sacrifices, would spring come again? Would the Wheel of the year still turn?
Yes, of course.
But would we feel as intimately connected with this cycle? Would we still be in sync with it? Or would we miss out on all the healing magic of the changing seasons?
This intimate connection to the Universe is as essential to our well being as vegetables, clean water, and fresh air.
The Lovers card’s astrology and Hebrew letter provide an understanding of its basic meanings of love, communication, and choices, but the pictures tell us more. From the Rider, Waite, Smith deck, first published in 1909
The Rider, Waite, Smith version is the most symbolically complete of the three we’ll be examining, so I’ll start with that. The card shows a man looking at a woman who is looking at an angel.
The man is Adam, The Magician, and The Emperor. He is the self-conscious, the left brain, the part of us that is logical, practical, and “sane”. It gets us from here to there on time and presents a consistent personality to the world. To make this really clear, Pamela Coleman Smith drew a tree with twelve flaming fruits right behind him. These are the twelve signs of the zodiac (not the twelve apostles). Each flame has three parts, one for each decan of the sign. So the tree behind the man is the twelve basic personalities and the thirty-six sub-personalities of humanity.
The woman is Eve, The High Priestess, and The Empress. She is the creative, intuitive, subconscious, right brain, part of us. The tree behind her has a serpent spiraling up it and five fruits. The serpent symbolizes the underworld and all the stuff that’s secret and hidden and dangerous. The five fruits are the five senses or feelings.
The angel is the Raphael, Archangel of air and the east. You can tell because he’s yellow, the color of air and the east. Gemini, the card’s associated sign, is an air sign, so that’s why Raphael is pictured and not one of the other archangels. He represents the super-conscious, Jung’s cosmic unconscious, the Akashic Records, and/or the divine.
So we have what looks suspiciously like a trinity. Those pesky things are everywhere. This one is the trinity of the human psyche: the conscious, the subconscious, and the super-conscious or divine. Yes, divine—most occultists teach that “There is no part of us that is not of the gods.” (Dion Fortune). The thing to notice here is the communication pathway. The man looks to the woman, who looks to the angel. What this card is telling us is that if we want to communicate with the divine, we must do it through the subconscious. Which means that the conscious mind, which formulates the question or desire must be on good speaking terms with the subconscious. If it’s not, the request never gets through or gets garbled, and things start going very wrong.
The mountain behind the two lovers is the peak of our aspirations, the symbol of what we are here on this earth to accomplish. It’s there to remind us that once the above three parts of our psyche are in harmony, we can achieve the seemingly impossible; but if they aren’t, we are lost. We may be very successful and wealthy, but if the thing that got us that wealth and success somehow short-circuited the above path of communication, we can never be truly happy and love will never stay in our lives. Victorian Romantic Tarot, card 2, c2008
The next card is from the Victorian Romantic Tarot. It is the second of two Lovers cards that come with the second edition. None of the other keys in this deck give the reader a choice of which card to use in a reading. Why does this not surprise me?
If we assume that the divine is implied, this card is telling us the same thing as the RWS card plus a few other things. Here we see a hunter (consciousness) and his mermaid quarry (subconscious) locked in an amorous embrace.
They are obviously in communication. The conscious mind has laid down his tools (notice the spear) and lovingly embraced the subconscious, because he has come to realize that the subconscious cannot be bullied or coerced into submission, she must be seduced and persuaded. This is one lesson the RWS card doesn’t teach.
The above scenario encourages the reader to speculate further. These lovers definitely have some choices to make. If they continue with their relationship it will result in either a drowning man or a fish out of water. A closer examination of the card reveals that the mermaid, or subconscious, has already chosen and is adapting. She is growing legs. The subconscious is infinitely resourceful and flexible and will bend over backwards to please if she is asked nicely. But he (the conscious mind) must be careful what he asks of her. If the mermaid does grow legs, will her every step be agony, like Hans Christian Anderson’s Little Mermaid? Will their love be changed forever? Marsailles deck, late 15th century
In the earlier tarot decks, A man and two women are pictured with cupid, or Eros, fluttering above them ready to shoot the man in the heart. In The Devil’s Picture Book, Paul Huson suggests that these cards were a depiction of the fateful Judgement of Paris, with one or two goddesses pictured instead of three.
Once upon a time, many years BCE, every one who was anyone on Mt Olympus was attending Zeus’s celebration of the marriage of Peleus, a Eris, goddess of discord, snatched from Adam Gorightly's Discordian blogmortal hero, and Thetis, a sea nymph. (Is this beginning to look familiar?) Unfortunately, no one was brave enough to invite Eris, the goddess of discord. She came anyway, of course, and threw a golden apple inscribed with the message “for the fairest one” into the midst of the revelers. All Hades ensued. In the end, three goddesses Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite laid claim to the poisonous fruit and turned to Zeus to make the final judgement. In a rare moment of perspicacity, Hera’s husband refused to choose. Instead he ordered Hermes to spirit the goddesses away to Mt. Ida and command Paris, a Trojan shepherd, to make the decision. Judgement of Paris, Lucas Cranach, 1472-1553. The guy standing next to Paris is Hermes.
The divine ladies immediately went to work on Paris. Hera offered him the kingship of Europe and Asia if he would but choose her. Athena offered him success in battle. But Aphrodite simply undid her girdle, and when the hapless young shepherd looked upon her beauty, her son, Eros, shot him through the heart. He fell madly in love with the Goddess of Love, and she promised him the most beautiful woman on earth for his bride if he chose her. Guess who won?
Unfortunately, the most beautiful woman on earth was Helen, wife of the Spartan King Menelaus. When Paris ran off with his wife, the Greeks attacked Troy and eventually burned it to the ground. And so the only good thing that came from The Judgement of Paris was The Illiad.
Hindsight being 20/20 and unaffected by the wiles of Aphrodite, it is obvious to us that the best thing for Paris to have done would have been to cut the apple into thirds, award each goddess a piece, and tell them that they were all equally fair. This is also the psychological lesson of The Lovers card. Remember that trinity? Hera, queen of the gods is the super-consciousness, Aphrodite is the subconscious, and Athena is the self-conscious. For a person to be healthy and happy, all three are equally important and must get along. The sly, side lesson of the Marseilles deck Lovers is that this is very difficult because our lusts and desires (the barbs of Eros) are constantly interfering.
In the Hero’s Journey, The Lovers are sometimes exactly that, two main characters in love. Of course, they must be in conflict or faced with a difficult choice, or the story will be boring. Romeo and Juliet and Peter Pan and Wendy come to mind. The card also represents a major plotThe Little Mermaid in Copenhagen harbor, by Edvard Eriksen, 1913 point; a place in the story where the hero is forced to make a decision that locks her into a specific course of action. Dorothy starts down the Yellow Brick Road. Frodo decides to return the ring. The Little Mermaid asks for human legs.
It is these decisions and the motivations behind them that give the story interest and poignancy; that give the reader insight into the characters; and that drive the plot.
And the motivation behind all good decisions is true, unselfish love.
Welcome to The Lovers! Like romance itself, this card is portrayed in a bewildering parade of images. The traditional Rider-Waite-Smith card is pictured above.
But it can also look like this: The Lovers, Marseille deck, late 15th century
Or this: Victorian Romantic deck, Lovers, card 2, c2008
I think that all of the above are valid, insightful ways of portraying this card, but IMHO, some others aren’t as successful. They get part of it right, but they don’t convey the whole message. Like its associated sign, Gemini, the card contains multitudes and is very hard to pin down to one simple meaning. It has layers, like an onion or an ogre.
To get a grip on this tricksy card, let’s begin with its astrological and Hebrew letter attributions.
The astrological sign, Gemini, the twins, is attributedMercury design by Murray Robertson to The Lovers. Its element is air, so it’s a mental, logical, verbal sign whose key words are “I think.” Since Gemini is the sign of the twins, it means duality; and since it’s ruled by Mercury, the trickster, it can mean duplicity. Mercury—and therefore Gemini—are all about communication.
So, “Where is the love”? The words that help us find it are “duality” and “communication”. It takes two to tango (or tangle); and love goes scurrying off into the shrubbery when communication breaks down.
Zain, or Zayin is the letter attributed to The Lovers. It means “weapon” or “sword”. Aside from the adage, “All’s fair in love and war,” what do swords and love have in common? Well, what do swords do? They cut things in two. They make a “this” and a “that”, which gives you a choice. Another term for lover is “chosen one.” Because of their logical, binary, “this or that” quality, swords are associated with the element air. And notice the similarity between sword and words. Which brings us back to Gemini.
So, surprise, surprise, The Lovers has at least two meanings in a reading. Depending on where it falls in the spread and the cards around it, it can indicate a decision/choice or a love affair. Because it is a trump card, you, as a reader, can be fairly certain that the decision won’t simply be about what to have for dinner. And the love affair won’t be a one-night-stand, or if it is, it will be a spectacular, life-changing one-night-stand. The card may also indicate a situation which will require the querent to communicate and/or negotiate, or to recognize the yin-yang dualities within herself and others, or to improve communication between her self-conscious and subconscious.
But wait. There’s more. Like I said, this card’s not simple. And it deals with duality, so The Lovers blog entry will be in two parts.
This is the key that pushes all my buttons. It’s the “I’m right because God told me so” card.
Pope Pius XII (1939-1958) wearing the three tiered papal crown and giving the sign of benedictionIt’s definitely a picture of a pope. There’s the three tiered papal crown and the triple cross, which symbolizes his influence in all three worlds—formative, creative, and material. He sits between the pillars of duality and gives God’s blessing or benediction to the two priests kneeling before him.
But the history of key five, The Hierophant or The Pope, goes way back, centuries before Jesus was even a gleam in Jehovah’s eye. Way back in the day, Zeus/Jupiter, the great father god of the Mediterranean world, was the only god who could release someone who had committed a great sacrilege from the torment of Furies that pursued him. But that person couldn’t just do the rites and ask Zeus for mercy himself, he had to find someone to do the rites for him, hopefully someone knowledgeable. Because the Furies were old gods, and the new Hellenistic gods like Zeus didn’t mess with the old gods without a very good reason. (Paul Huson, in The Devil’s Picture Book) Is this beginning to look familiar?
Centuries later, the pagan High Priest of Rome was called the pontifex maximus, from the Latin pons, or bridge, and facere, to make. In other words, he was the top guy, the bridge-maker between the gods and men. Today, the Roman Catholic pope is also called the Pontif.
Wikipedia defines hierophant as “a person who brings religious congregants into the presence of that which is deemed holy. The word comes from Ancient Greece, where it was constructed from the combination of ta hiera, “the holy,” and phainein, “to show.” In Attica it was the title of the chief priest at the Eleusinian Mysteries. A hierophant is an interpreter of sacred mysteries and arcane principles.”
I can’t think of any god or goddess to associate with The Hierophant because he is a human being whose purpose is to present the messages of the gods to his people. He’s very different from the High Priestess, who is the archetypal keeper of the mysteries, the inner or hidden realms of religion.
Vav is the Hebrew letter attributed to this card. It means hook or connection. Every column of the Torah begins with the letter Vav, which “hooks” the word of God to the parchment, or material world.
The sign of Taurus, the bull, is associated with The Hierophant and lends its practical, earthy nature to the meaning of the card, whose number is 5, the number of man.
And so what we have here is someone who delivers the messages of the gods to people who, for a multitude of reasons, can’t hear them for themselves. This is very convenient when you are setting up a religion (from the Latin re-ligare, to reconnect), because in most organized religions, the priests reconnect to the divine and interpret what they hear for their flocks. It keeps things neater that way. Everyone is on the same page and arguments are minimized. And besides, priests are specialists in the field of religion and have spent years reconnecting with God. They’ve developed short cuts to the divine and are experts on the problems that beset humanity. Organized religion’s take on the matter is that it’s best to leave these things to the experts.
Even the Protestant sects, who broke away from the Catholic Church because they believed that anyone could talk to God and interpret his words in The Holy Bible. still go to church and sit and listen to a minister (or Hierophant) tell them about Gods word and what it means.
But this is also the card of personal revelation. We are all capable of connecting with the gods and hearing the small, clear voice of the divine. The first trick is to have the faith to believe in what we hear and not relegate it to the dust heap of delusion and wishful thinking. The second trick is to find the courage to act on what we hear.
The ancient Greeks believed that the gods often spoke to them through the mouths of ordinary people. The crazy guy who sat on the corner might have a message for you from Hermes. I am fond of this idea and believe it holds true even today. I know that I’ve often felt moved to say something to a complete stranger for no apparent reason, and the message seemed to be helpful to them. At least they said it was, but maybe they were just humoring me so I’d go away.
Michelangelo's Moses from "Under the Influence", Lowrider TattooThis is also the card for someone who is on a mission from God. The religious fanatic who believes they, and they alone, have a direct connection with the true diety. Moses spoke with God frequently. He communed with him up on Mt Sinai and returned to his people with the Ten Commandments. A candidate for fanaticism if ever there was one, and Michelangelo must have agreed. He gave his statue of Moses a marvelously fanatical expression.
When The Hierophant appears in a reading, it could mean that the querent has a message to give to the world in general or to someone in particular, or that an authority figure has a message for her. It could suggest conformity and a need to fit in, or a preference for the outer forms of organized religion. It might even signal the querent’s need to think about his own religion and whether or not it is feeding his soul. If it is reversed, it could mean problems with authority, fanaticism, or nonconformity.
In fiction, The Hierophant should never be confused with the wide-eyed mystic with a vision unless that mystic begins to preach about his vision or takes steps to make it a reality. Ray Kinsella, the farmer in Field of Dreams, sees a vision of a baseball diamond in his cornfield and a voice informs him that “If you build it, he will come.” But he only becomes The Hierophant when he plows under his corn, builds the diamond, and has the courage to not replant it when his mortgage comes due.
The Wizard, in The Wizard of Oz, was a crooked Hierophant. When his balloon landed in Oz, he set himself up as the servant of a powerful, godlike, wizard and took over control of the Emerald City. Oz, The Great and Terrible
Can you think of other Hierophant characters? They can be a main character like Ray Kinsella, a mentor/trickster figure like the Wizard, or any of the other archetypes.
The men in the top hats are Punxsutawney Phil’s Inner Circle. Every February 2nd, as soon as the sun is up far enough to cast a shadow, they proceed to Gobblers Knob in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania and yank Phil out of his hollow stump. If he sees his shadow, there will be six more weeks of winter.
</Most of our Winter Solstice or Yule traditions come from Scandinavia and Germany. Even the name,
