II - La Papesse

[chiscotheque]

P.S. I don't understand what Blake means when he says "Which was Born in a Night to perish in a Night".

who the hell knows what Blake is yammering on about? but i would suggest this: we are taken from the One - God, some would say - where we slept in beams of Light (God's light), and were born into this world, which is a world of darkness. we will die too in this world of darkness. God comes to us and is seen as light in this darkness, just as light appears at Night, to light up the darkness. Those who see this world as it appears to be only - materially - see it as one sees things in the bright noonday sun - obvious, exposed, nothing more than what is. This is the true blindness, the real darkness, the Lie. (cf. the Sun card, where one of the humans is blind and both are suffering heat exhaustion). God appeared as the Son of Man to save those who were blind - he entered the world of materiality, of form and indenture as the Christ - the word made flesh. yet he remained the Life, the Truth, The Light (Logos) in the darkness. in the realms of Day he was the shepherd leaving the herd to look for one lost sheep, the one offering the other cheek, the one not interested in the pious but in the sinners.

[Diana]

This is the true blindness, the real darkness, the Lie. (cf. the Sun card, where one of the humans is blind and both are suffering heat exhaustion).

Your take on Blake sounds reasonable enough. Thanks. It made more sense actually when I read it again this morning.

But what on earth do you mean by the fact that both of the humans are suffering heat exhaustion ? I've never heard this and I can't figure out how you reach this conclusion. And are we certain that one is blind? I know this is talked about but why would this be so ?

We're moving away from the Papesse now. I suppose all dialogue does by nature extend always to other related subjects.

There is neither a first nor last word and there are no limits to the dialogic context (it extends into the boundless past and the boundless future). (Mikhail M. Bakhtin)

[chiscotheque]

Marigold, no, we are not certain s/he is blind. we're not really certain of anything. but how does one depict a blind person in illustration? I would suggest the Dodal deck does:

soleil-web.jpg (40.94 KiB) Viewed 1796 times

of course, s/he may just be wincing. but what has often been suggested is that one of the people is helping the other - why? they have been hurt. what from? I suggest from too much Sun. Just as the darkness of the Moon can mean insanity, self-delusion, and addiction, the "darkness" of the Sun threatens its own destruction. Note there is a wall, keeping the humans in or out of somewhere. that somewhere is barren. all trace of water - the essence of life and female symbol - is being sucked up by the Sun. even the Sun himself looks beleaguered. It's like that Twilght Zone episode where the earth is knocked off course and is heading into the sun. i find blindness an apt metaphor for the person's ailment - blackness caused by too much light, ignorance caused by knowing too much. Imagine if there were no darkness, no respite from glaring light and pounding heat? In many ways, this is the world we live in - the wonderfully successful male-built world of commerce and science. Its darkness is human atomization and the destruction of Mother Nature... A kind of blindness, no?

as I suggested with our discussion of the Papess (but which also relates to the Star and Temperance cards):

The quality of mercy is not strained.
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest:
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.


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[Diana]

of course, s/he may just be wincing. but what has often been suggested is that one of the people is helping the other - why? they have been hurt. what from? I suggest from too much Sun. Just as the darkness of the Moon can mean insanity, self-delusion, and addiction, the "darkness" of the Sun threatens its own destruction. Note there is a wall, keeping the humans in or out of somewhere. that somewhere is barren. all trace of water - the essence of life and female symbol - is being sucked up by the Sun. even the Sun himself looks beleaguered. It's like that Twilght Zone episode where the earth is knocked off course and is heading into the sun. i find blindness an apt metaphor for the person's ailment - blackness caused by too much light, ignorance caused by knowing too much. Imagine if there were no darkness, no respite from glaring light and pounding heat? In many ways, this is the world we live in - the wonderfully successful male-built world of commerce and science. Its darkness is human atomization and the destruction of Mother Nature... A kind of blindness, no?

I would think those drops of whatever they are falling from the sky would be sufficient water. Something in the line of "Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life."

Actually, in my short story "A few days in Tarotia" that I posted on these boards, the two humans are kids that are dressed as sumos and are playing "vital energy points". I didn't choose that analogy by accident. I wish more people would read my story. It sounds silly - absurd - it's not of great literary value - - but it's loaded with references, some very obscure, one particularly I doubt few people will get, others less. I couldn't resist even a reference to Trump. It's actually a serious study of the Tarot cards however absurd it may seem.

I agree that the Sun can blind. Important to remember for a tarot reader. Too much light can be harmful - which gets back to our mention of mystical experiences - it could drive someone mad. I have a young acquaintance who went off to South America on one of those retreats organised for westerners where mushrooms and stuff are taken. Since he got back, he's been in and out of psychiatric hospitals - he's never been able to return fully to reality. He must have gone very unprepared.

[chiscotheque]

we've obviously strayed a far way from the Papess, and should maybe get back on course. but i'd just like to address a couple things -

I would think those drops of whatever they are falling from the sky would be sufficient water.

putting aside the idea that the dots on the card are yods, the teardrop shape of liquid is bigger on the side in which direction it is moving, like a pear falling to the ground. note that in the Dodal card I posted, the drops are moving toward the Sun - the ball of fire is sucking all the water from the earth. Of course, the sun does evaporate water up into clouds, which then falls as rain; but here on the Sun card there are no clouds and the earth is becoming like Mars. the clouds appear on Judgment, where Gabriel's music is a rain trumpeting a new reign.

the other thing is, again, when I say things like male power & man-made Western success, I don't mean men per se but those attributes which we use "male" to describe. in short, male in this sense is left-brain thinking, materialism, the belief that Truth can be attained through Logic. this is why the Sun card is arid. the sun is a violent ball of fire which will destroy itself (as we saw in the "male" minor suits) and us along with it and is, like the unreflective-self, solipsistic.


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[Diana]

we've obviously strayed a far way from the Papess, and should maybe get back on course.

Yes, let's get back on course. I think a new thread on The Sun would be appropriate. Any relevant info from this thread could be copied there.

[chiscotheque]

a way forward may be to consider the Papess reversed (for the record, I don't ascribe to reversals, properly speaking, but consider the negative or darker elements of a card to exist implicitly, as they do in a person or object).

She may represent false knowledge, spuriousness, and fakery, as in the church's view of pope joan.
she may represent devotion, subordination, and sacrifice, as the life of a nun signifies and the duties of a wife to her husband.
she may indicate book-learning and a lack of experience in the world.
she may represent small-mindedness, insignificance, and a schoolmarm-like preoccupation with the letter of the law.
she may represent moodiness, inscrutability, obfuscation, preciousness, inexactness, and secrecy.
she may represent a sexual hang-up, shame about the body, and a contempt for the physical world.


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[Diana]

Great list chischoteque.

How about hypocrisy and lies ? Also aloofness (although you touched on that with the secrecy and inscrutability) and I can also almost sense an air of superiority with a hint of smugness.

[chiscotheque]

a question persists - why the name "the popess"? there is no such thing, therefore what is the title telling us? i think the fictitious story of pope joan tells us symbolically - that is, it points to the fact that women are discredited by the church and that the church patriarchs are horrified of women invading their ranks and, well, period. who is the pope? peter, the rock. who is this popess? someone who claims to be a religious authority, and more importantly: someone a religious authority claims to be making this false claim. in other words: it's the title the hegemonic power gives to someone, rather than their actual name. again, joan is a symbol of that person. a deeper symbol of who this person is, and arguably actually is rather than just symbolically, is mary magdalene.

we may doubt its authenticity (and the church fathers encourage us to do so) that mary was a consort of christ, whom he loved more than the others and openly kissed which angered the other disciples, notably peter. we may doubt she was the first apostle, because she was the first to see the risen christ - when she went to tell the others, they didn't believe her, notably peter. this same peter who denied christ 3 times when he was betrayed, and the same peter to whom christ said "get thee behind me satan." anywho, we may doubt mary magdalene travelled to france and continued to spread the gospel, influencing the cathars and others. but whether or not we doubt it, we cannot doubt that these were widely disseminated stories and beliefs, and so the people who created the tarot may well have known them, may have been representing them, and may have even believed them. the onus is on us, then, to try to understand what these ideas meant to those people, not whether or not it was verifiable fact or existentially True.

why is the popess number 2? some might argue because she's insignificant, not a large number. those people forget great things come in small packages and that less is more. in hebrew, 2 is beth, meaning house. bethleham, where jesus was born, is from beth el, the house of god. bethel was where jacob dreamed of the ladder to heaven and where solomon constructed his temple to house the ark of the covenant. the stone on which jacob laid his head is called a baetylus, or bethel; in greek it is an omphalus (meaning navel); a baetylus is an anointed stone (often meteorites), said to contain a spirit - this is a symbol for the human soul, trapped in the earthly body. inside the ark of the covenant are 2 stone tablets, inside the ark which is like a womb or tomb - the covenant is god's promise to Man. when christ came, he ushered in a new dispensation, and his gift to Man was the holy spirit, the angel between Man and God (like jacob's ladder). who, then, is the stone the peters of the world claim is a false pope (stone)?

one final thought one the stone metaphor: recall how rhea dressed up a stone as zeus to trick cronos. zeus, the son of god, shares similarities with jesus - a new dispensation. the stone was preserved at delphi, the center of the world. we might recall the dome of the rock and the well of souls, the holy of holies. in the gospel of mary magdalene, she says "the body is a corpse and yet it lives for a while. while it is alive, it is the temple of great presence, for your soul is in it and the Annointed indwells your soul."

with regard green language: magdalene means from magdala. in mag we see magician and magus. dal means many things, including a husk, an arch or cavity, a valley (dale), an eye, to bloom and thrive, to give, a song, and a flagstone.


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[Diana]

Good lord, chiscotheque. What an amazing post. Must have taken some time to get it all down. Thank you.

I'll be back to comment in due time, but I had to give a written thanks, not just a click.