We had a lot of great insights tonight, and I found myself sharing something that I didn't even know I truly felt. We were discussing the Star trump in the Tarot deck, which is Tzaddi, the 28th path. This is the path between the Sephiroth Netzach (Victory) and Yesod (Foundation). It relates to words like hunt, capture, and adversary.
I'll be honest - I'm not terribly good with Tarot. I'm trying to learn, and honestly the Qabalah has taught me more in a month and a half than I have picked up in years of ardent (well, relatively ardent...okay, sort of ardent) study. But looking at Tzaddi in relation to the Star trump really brought up this fountain of understanding I didn't even know I had.
In the Rider-Waite tarot deck, The Star is the image of a young woman kneeling, half on land and half in a pond. She is pouring out two vessels of water, one into the water and one onto the earth. I have seen other decks where she is a white-skinned huntress, with a quiver strung across her back. She is leaping across a stream, with one foot on each side. To me, this card represents the singular and independent strength of femininity - she needs no sun to light her, and no other celestial influences cross her path. She hunts alone, and is terrible and beautiful in her solitude. Her strength is built on a foundation of the most primal intuition, the rawest form of a woman's sense.
Though she embodies the powers of woman, she is not a nurturing character. Nor is she actively cruel - she represents an independence that is awesome and lonely, the pinnacle of feminine power. But she is lesser than her other feminine counterparts, because no part of the universe can exist apart from all the other parts - her solitude, to me, is her only weakness, but also her greatest strength.
2 comments:
How cool is the Tarot? I've been studying it, whatever the opposite of "ardently" is, for years, and it always has something to teach, a new insight to offer, a new perspective, a new mental prod. So thought-provoking and so interesting to me. Good stuff. You're lucky to have a group to study with. Maybe I'll check my local yellow pages and see if there's a Qabala group around here somewhere.
Hmm, new mental prods--dare I mention the Ox goad-Lamed? haha! That was the path we worked on, Cakelet, how'd you know?
My new coven is represented by the Star card. I guess that's some of my personal interest with the card.
Thanks for all you shared in class, you're background knowlege and synthesis of the material is really helping those that are still unsure of how this stuff has any relavance with Pagan magickal practice.
But, that's what 200 level courses are all about. Cheers!
Post a Comment