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Schattenspiel Tarot is a work in progress. It consists of 15 digital images derived from original photography, to date including, DEATH , The WHEEL , The FOOL , The Magician, The High Priestess , Lovers , The Sage, The Sacrifice, PAN , The TOWER , The STAR , The Moon, The SUN , Resurrection and The World. The series was first presented in 1996 under the thesis title, Imaginary Homelands, at York University in Toronto and subsequently re-titled, "Schattenspiel", meaning "Shadow Play" in German. The appendix below refers to the thesis, which is now contained on the pages relating to each card. To return to original text, please refer to Tarot Main Page or the individual cards above.
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These universal themes are the basis of all philosophical thought
as we try to form individual beliefs within the context of the
structures established for us at birth. These structures tends to be
rigid as they are used to regulate the behaviour of its citizens and
maintain order, and it is difficult and sometimes dangerous to choose
a divergent path from that prescribed by society. We are all born
into roles based on our gender, race and social standing, and these
roles determine to a large degree both our aspirations and perceived
limitations. The Tarot offers us an alternate structure from where
we can redetermine our position in relation to these roles. The
structure is fluid in that it doesn't assume a straightforward path
from A through Z. Although the cards are numbered and there is an
apparent progression along the path to higher consciousness, the
order in which the cards literally fall into place becomes important.
This reflects our internal life, for while the physical progresses
along predictable lines, leading us from youth to old age without
exception, our spiritual progression is less linear and hence
unpredictable. I find myself rejecting the High Priest simply because "He" has
denied females equal standing in terms of religious power. I
therefore give precedence to his female equivalent in my version of
the cards and require him to wait his turn. Temperance cannot help
but represent repression, guilt and denial of the instincts for me,
although its given meaning in the cards is closer to that of
equilibrium. ) If the seven absent cards indicate elements of my shadow, this
must then be an inversion of what is normally considered the shadow
in our society. In my experience, most of the people with whom I've
conducted readings would not be disturbed by the cards I omitted,
whereas the Devil, Death or The Tower cards almost always inspire
trepidation. I am compelled towards an examination of Death as the
juxtaposition intensifies life and makes it seem that more tangible.
The opposite of Death may be conception, but what fills the gap in
between can become terribly banal and insignificant if one never
courts danger in the form of transgressions. I seek redemption for
the underlying sexuality I see lurking beneath the uglified form of
the Devil. The moon draws me to her as I flaunt the old adage that
she releases madness. The tower beckons as I leap into blackness,
suspended in anticipation of the impact which never comes. On the
lighter side, I choose the sun and can approach it with the necessary
optimism as I have involved my own son in the project. Von Franz discusses the model of an archetype in what could be in
direct reference to the Tarot cards of, for example, the High
Priestess, The Magician, Emperor, High priest. The descriptions of the
polarizations reflects the inversed meanings of the cards: "All the
complexes and general structures- that is, collective complexes which
we call archetypes-have a light and a dark side and a polarized
system. A model of an archetype can be said to be composed of 2 parts,
one light and the other dark ... With the archetype of the Great Mother you have the witch, the
devilish mother, the beautiful wise old woman, and the goddess who
represents fertility. In the archetype of the spirit there is the
wise old man and the destructive or demonic magician represented in
many myths. The hero can be the renewal of life or the great
destroyer, or both. Every archetypal figure has its own shadow. We do
not know what an archetype looks like in the unconscious, but when it
enters the fringe of consciousness, as in a dream, which is a half-conscious phenomenon,
it manifests the double aspect. Only when
light falls on an object does it cast a shadow." While the goddess seems to have found a secure place in The Tarot,
within Greek mythology she was eventually undermined. Highwater
describes the parthenogenic birth of Dionysus as an example of an
attempt to remove female authority even in this domain: "As for Dionysus, his role in Greek life is even more complex. In
his birth from Zeus' "immortal fire" and "Male womb", the Greeks used
Dionysus to act out, in Segal's [Charles] view, "a fantasy of the
male's independence from the female cycle of menstration and birth,
with their attendant uncleanness, and achieves that independence from
the female which recurs wishfully throughout early Greek literature."
His father, Zeus, was a symbolic catalyst in the shift of power in
ancient Greece from matriarchal to patriarchal rule. According to
Highwater's account, Greek men feared women as symbols of chaos and
disorder, whereas they saw themselves as representative Appolonian
ideals of rationality and enlightenment. Dionysus and Pan were not
popular among male believers, who viewed them as unsophisticated
rural gods In ancient Greece, Gaia was the Earth and life began through her.
[Note:It is in her honour that I am depicting a pregnant woman as my
central figure in The World. Even though it seems an obvious choice,
it is rarely used.] In the late eighth century B.C. ,the Theogony, a re-writing of
mythology appeared. Highwater claims that Zeus had not always been
"...native to the Hellenic world but was brought into Greece by
invaders. He was then named Zeus and integrated into Greek myth as if
he had always been a central deity... with this drastic revision of
the oldest myths of the Aegean, Gaia and Rhea were now reduced to the
status of consorts. What resulted was the domination of the
male/ Apollo over the matriarchy, as represented by the moon serpent.
Both of these figures appear in the Tarot as, appropriately, The Sun
and The Moon. "Located on the Greek mainland, Delphia was ruled by a serpent and
a prophetic priestess who served Gaia. The she-snake, Python, dwelled
in the omphalos, the navalstone shrine named... after the stone Rhea
gave Cronos." Delphys means "womb". The navalstone is the one which
represents the life of Zeus, as his mother Rhea had substituted it
for her baby to prevent Cronos, her husband, from swallowing him as
he had her previous five offspring. The snake as a symbol of female power can equate also to the snake
in the garden of Eden, who possessed great knowledge of God, in
addition to her role as an accomplished corrupter of "virtue". The
snake is an ancient symbol of the goddess' regenerative powers, in
its ability to shed its skin and hence experience "rebirth". Apollo
was obliged to kill the serpent in order to rule Delphi, and shot her
with his sun-arrows... " Apollo defeats the moon serpent and vanquishes
nature so that reason may prevail." In yet another confrontation with Nature, this time in the form of
Dionysus, Reason did not prevail. In Euripedes', The Bacchae,
Dionysus (Bacchus) enchanted the women of Thebes. King Pentheus, in a
futile attempt to restore order, was tricked into dressing in women's
clothing and animal skins and infiltrating the revelry. Instead, he
was ripped apart by his own mother who mistook him to be an animal,
and he was then devoured by the crazed women. "King Pentheus, like
Creon and Agamemnon, is doomed because he fails to recognize the
irresistible nature of the irrational elements of the unconscious;
those impulses that Carl Jung called "the shadow side" of human
mentality." This structure of consciousness has never known what to do with
the dark, material, and passionate side of itself, except to cast it
off and call it Eve. James Hillman Pan is another Greek god who is related to the composite known as
the Devil and is depicted as having the upper body of a man and the
lower torso of a goat. Both he and Dionysus were known to represent
and inspire disorder and sexual abandonment among their followers,
the majority of whom were women. As rural gods identified with
agrarian practices (Dionysus in particular), they crossed boundaries
considered to be the domain of the goddesses. For the Greeks, women
personified uncontrolled passions and intuition as a substitute for
reason. As goddess worship was generally associated with agrarian
civilizations, where the cyclical nature of society was reflected in
women's ability to create and nurture, these qualities were
diminished in standing by the superseding male-dominated cultures
which emphasized instead, "...private property, class structure, and
patriarchal heirarchy. Considering the close association of the gods
we have discussed with females, it is interesting to note that many
Tarot cards depict the Devil as having male genitals and female
breasts. This could be an attempt to assign female characteristics to
a symbol of evil, or in honour of the male gods' affinity with
goddess worship or, (not so) simply, be a representation of a
hermaphrodite. If it is the latter, our understanding of what this
implies may also demand a revision: "The tension in the Greek world between the Apollonian masculine
ideal and the irrational and "feminine" Dionysian mode can be seen as
a metaphor of a battle that persists within males of the West: a
contest between feminine /masculine, order/disorder,
civilization/barbarism... Curiously, its most active manifestation is
a dreamlike sexual paradox- an abhorrent and fascinating figure in
whom the sexes are fused. The androgyne is the symbol of this
ambiguity, in which the distinction and therefore difference between
male and female is metaphorically resolved. The androgyne, however,
does not represent a resolution of sexual dualism in the West as it
does, for instance, in the Asian concept of Yin and Yang, which are
not opposites but complements of one another." The central figure in The World, generally a hermaphrodite, is
seen standing or stepping from within a circle, which is often a
snake swallowing its own tail- the Taoist symbol of eternity. The
image may indeed be of Eastern origin. Like the Devil, the central
figure represents both male and female . An example of this fusion of
the male and female can be found in the Hindu god, Shiva: "Shiva and
his consort are sometimes represented as a single androgynous human
figure, as in the famous male-female sculpture in the Elephanta caves
near Bombay. For many Hindus, Shiva and his consort are not opposites
but interchangeable beings who are sacred precisely because of the
tensions of masculine and feminine spirits" Another androgynous Indian deity, Ardhanari,"...combining the
right half of the god Siva with the left half of his consort Devi, is
sometimes depicted holding a cup, a sceptre, a sword and a ring,"
which lends credence to the theory that the Tarot originated in the
East. The skeletal form of Death, another card which inspires panic when
drawn, is often revealed to be that of a female. The choice of gender
makes sense as in earlier goddess oriented cultures, woman is the
giver of life and so to complete the circle, also takes it away. The
notion of unity among the sexes is not known in Western cultures,
where men and women often regard themselves as so remote from each
other, they may as well represent seperate species. I suspect that
this applies to the East as well, in spite of symbols to the contrary
(such as Shiva). According to Highwater, "Cross-cultural studies do not support such a dualistic vision of
human sexuality. The subjugation of women does not occur in all
societies, especially those which are not built upon the division of
the sexes. In other cultures,the tension between men and women
escalates in proportion to the breadth of the mythic chasm which is
socially constructed between the sexes." In our polarized societies, women are often categorized as
belonging to either the "mother" camp or that of the "whore, although in
reality they are required to perform both functions. Neither are men
exempt from confining roles. The following passage is from an Irish
story, The Crock of Gold. The god Angus óG battles with words
to win a shepherd maiden's affections from Pan. He speaks of the
chasm between men and women: "A man has said Commonsense and a woman
has said Happiness are the greatest things in the world. These things
are male and female, for Commonsense is Thought and Happiness is
Emotion, and until they embrace in Love the will of Immensity cannot
be fruitful. For, behold, there has been no marriage of humanity
since time began. Men have but coupled with their own shadows. The
desire that sprang from their heads they pursued, and no man has yet
known the love of a woman. And women have mated with the shadow of
their own hearts, thinking fondly that the arms of men were about
them...The fingertips are guided by God, but the devil looks through
the eyes of all creatures so that they may wander in the errors of
reason and justify themselves in their wanderings. The desire of a
man shall be Beauty, but he has fashioned a slave in his mind and
called it Virtue. The desire of a woman shall be Wisdom, but she has
formed a beast in her blood and called it Courage, but the real
virtue is courage, and the real courage is liberty, and the real
liberty is wisdom, and Wisdom is the son of Thought and Intuition;
and his names also are Innocence and Adoration and Happiness." Removing power from matriarchal societies even in retrospect has
been a long-time pursuit of the conquering patriarchies, and women
have been further undermined by the fact that until recently men were
the sole chroniclers of history. Before women began to demand a
revision, it wasn't even apparent that matriarchal systems had
existed other than in mythology. As in mythology,The Tarot is then
somewhat of a refuge and a testament to the power of the goddess,
where she at least holds equal representation. In balance with the
Hierophant is the High Priestess. To complement the Emperor, one
encounters the Empress. Females hold dominion over two celestial
bodies, the Moon and the Star. They represent Justice, Temperance,
Strength, and Death and appear as components of the Devil and The
World. A female is depicted in unity with the male in the Lovers,
although in some versions the male is torn between the choice of two
women- the universal dilemma being the transference of love from the
mother to the beloved as one achieves adulthood. We were leaving England on a ship bound for my country of birth- Canada- of which I
knew next to nothing. Out of snippets of information my own mythology was created,
which I related to the transfixed friends I was
leaving behind;
hordes of ravenous mosquitos would greet us upon arrival at the port,
and bears would attack the back door of our little cabin in the woods, which my father
would ably defend. I was rather excited by the notion- the reality was a decided let down.
What awaited instead was an apartment building complex called
Thorncliffe, located in the suburbs of Toronto. I never quite
recovered from the shock of such a banal and alienating reality and began to submerge myself in
fairy tales and memories of my idyllic childhood in Kent. I felt that
the fairies I'd believed in in England were lost to me,
condemned to a land of ugly brown snowsuits, box-like buildings and
aggressive children who mocked my "proper English". If anything
drew me to situate my Tarot deck in the land of memories, it was
the realization that I can never go back. It no longer
exists. I did try once- returning to the playground in Kent, to see if I could recognize the
spot we'd referred to as a fairy ring, where I'd
danced with my friends in the shelter of a grove. All I saw were some
spindly trees and no trace of the circular path our feet had tramped
into the ground. I suspect that children don't play games there anymore.
I have long considered Christianity to be nothing more than a
supplanted religion in the British Isles. I was far more interested
in the Celtic history of the Druids (without wishing to engage in
human or animal sacrifices,of course) I was always intrigued when
bits of information would come my way, identifying the pagan origin
of rituals and practices I'd taken for granted as being Christian. I
had believed in the Christian God as a child but later came to feel
betrayed as I had no sense of feeling protected by my beliefs.
Instead, I thought that any transgressions would be punished and my
experience of religion was limited to feelings of guilt and fear. As
I became older, I grew to resent any belief structure which inspired
fear in little children in order to modify behaviour or imposed
itself upon other systems without recognizing their validity and
right to exist alongside it. Seeking the Symbol "The illumination is the recognition of the radiance of one eternity through all things, whether in the vision of time these
things are judged as good or as evil." Joseph Campbell In order to convince the believers of pagan gods to shift
alliances, the common practice was to present the new god as sharing
characteristics and a similar mythology with the one being
supplanted, in addition to appropriating or destroying the place of
worship generally associated with the old deity. The Romans were kind
enough to provide the only written accounts of Druid rituals before
they decimated the tribes, systematically destroying sacred groves
and the Druid priesthood. What little remained of Celtic culture was
eventually assimilated by the Christians: More than a few present-day
sites of Christian churches were formerly Druidic groves in which
were located stone shrines or magic trees, wells or fairy mounds..."
Wells in Britain were considered holy- a portal to the underworld and
a way of bringing the moon to the earth. (Inspired by its reflection on the surface of the water)
The habit we have of
dropping coins in a fountain * actually comes from this source. People
used to drop offerings into the local well, such as pins, produce and
even gold. This was done in order to attract the favours of the gods and goddesses,
in particular Selene, goddess of the moon. They
eventually became the site of Christenings and were re-named in
honour of individual saints. * [Note: As I am intending to make a reference to Merlin in my
portrayal of The Magician, I was intrigued to learn of this as there
is a round indentation in the table upon which I placed the sacred
objects-a sword, a chalice and a coin. The magician, who represents
Merlin, is holding the rod. The table was a solid teak mortar. I felt
that there was a reason for this choice, and now I have decided that
it should be filled with water, the moon reflecting in it, to
represent Merlin's fountain] Many of the Devil cards show a figure with antlers- in direct
reference to Cernunnos. The Christian Devil is a composite of this
Celtic god and was created to attribute negative qualities to the old
gods in order to obtain convertions. Cernunnos is usually seen in
squatting position, as is The Devil in the card, grasping a
ram-horned serpent in his left hand - the serpent, goddess symbol of
re-birth, is an old Christian symbol of vice. In our society, the
left hand continues to be held in disfavour over the right. The
prejudice may also be a carry-over from this source. He was at times
accompanied by a female consort. Cernunnos held particular influence
in Northern England, "... within the context of pastoral societies,"
where he is referred to in present day more commonly as Pan. Cernunnos is also depicted on carvings and in relief on cauldrons
in association with a wheel , which appears as a Tarot card, The
Wheel of Fortune). The wheel is connected with goddess worship.
Highwater quotes Campbell as saying that in earlier times of"...the
cosmic order of the Mother Goddess ", the wheel had once been,
"...symbolic of the world's glory ." This was subsequently altered,
"...And in the classical world the turning spoked wheel appeared also
at this time as an emblem rather of life's defeat and pain than of
victory and exhilaration. " The chariot existed among the Celts prior
to the arrival in the British Isles of the Romans, with whom it is
more popularly identified. In Stuart Piggott's book, The Druids, it
is stated that Celtic chariotry was of, "...ultimately oriental
roots, and was an integral part of warfare in such documented
engagements as that of Sentinum (295 BC) or Clastidium (222) and
among the Arverni (121). Posidonius, writing mainly of the second
century BC, describes chariot warfare as a Gaulish practice, but by
Caesar's time, from 58 BC onwards, it had been given up in the
continental territories with which he was concerned, probably as a
result of the Celts trying to adopt defensive measures in accordance
with Roman techniques of war. Caesar was however to encounter it (to
his surprise) in Southern Britain in 56 BC, and it survived in
Caledonia into the third century AD, forming also the characteristic
background of the early Irish hero-tales of later date." This means
that the cards, The Chariot and The Wheel of Fortune need not
necessarily point exclusively to Roman influence, although it is true
that the earliest documented Tarot cards originate in Italy. In terms
of the origin of the Horned god, it is, according to Ross," ...in
question how long it had been in existence here prior to the coming
of the Romans." The Druids were reported by the Romans to sacrifice victims by
encasing them together with animals inside large wicker structures,
built in the form of humans, and burning them alive.The victims
represented the "spirit of vegetation" and were meant to ensure the
fertility of the crops. The practice of creating these large giants
continues and they still appear as part of spring and midsummer
festivities. Contemporary enactments sometimes include simulated
sacrifices. Considering that the ritual originated with the Druids
and that the snake was an animal of veneration, of interest is the
"annual favourite ceremony for Luchon" [in the Pyrenees, reported
1869] which took place on Midsummer Eve, and involved the
construction of a 60 foot figure made of wicker, filled with as many
snakes as could be gathered. The bonfire was lit and, "...The
serpents, to avoid the flames, wriggle the way to the top, whence
they are seen lashing out literally until finally obliged to drop,
their struggles for life giving rise to enthusiastic delight among
the surrounding spectators." The result is a confusing display of
veneration combined with an exorcism of the old pagan gods. In Pliny's (A.D.79) description of Druid rituals, one can
recognize similarities to the cult of Dionysus (or Bacchus,god of
wine, as he was otherwise known) which in turn resembles elements of
the story of Christ: "...The priest, clad in a white robe, is described as climbing the
oak tree, and after cutting the sacred plant, two white bulls are
sacrificed and a feast ensued." The plant referred to is the mistletoe, which was rarely found
growing on an Oak tree, the discovery of which would lead to this
ceremony. A date would be set in accordance with the cycle of the
moon and the plant would be cut ritually with a golden scythe or
scissors. This also occurred during solstice, and explains the
inclusion of the Christmas tree and mistletoe in Christian
festivities, as "...the winter solstice celebration ...became
Christmas in the Christian calendar... Dionysiac rites also held the evergreen sacred and included the
sacrifice of bulls. Dionysus was the god of trees- pine and ivy in
particular. His image bears a resemblance to Christ on the cross in
the description Frazier gave of, "...an upright post,without arms,
but draped in a mantle, with a bearded mask to represent the head,
and with leafy boughs projecting from the head or body to show the
nature of the deity." The bull was selected as a sacrificial victim
as Dionysus was often represented as a horned white bull and, on
occasion, a goat.": ...it was in bull form that he had been torn to
pieces...in rending and devouring a live bull at his festival his
worshippers believed that they were killing the god, eating his flesh
and drinking his blood." This brings to mind the Catholic ritual of
the consecration, where the ceremonial taking of wine and unleaven
bread (the host) become the blood and the flesh of Christ. Dionysus
also suffered, died and was resurrected, although this was not
uncommon amongst gods. However, to complete the picture, he too was
the result of a parthenogenic birth, in this case emerging from the
thigh (or member) of a male, the god Zeus. The image of the bull enters into the Tarot deck in another card-
The World, and it is similarly represented in the Book of Kells ,
where it is an evangelist symbol representing Christ's death, but in
the form of a calf rather than a bull. This is perhaps a bid to
de-emphasize the phallic connotations of the horned deity. The Book
of Kells, c 800, is a Scottish/Irish manuscript relating the story of
the gospels. There are three pages within the text, (folios 27v,129v
and 290v), where the four evangelist symbols appear to explain the
life of Christ: " Christ was a man in his birth, a calf in his death,
a lion in his resurrection, and an eagle ascending to heaven, so
that, in representing the evangelists, the symbols were also
representing Christ." These identical four figures surround the
hermaphrodite figure in The World. If one reflects upon the image as
it appears in the Book of Kells, there is no central figure needed as
Christ manifests himself through the combination of the symbols. In
the Tarot version, one can then see a return to a place for the
goddess or, at the very least, the female in unity with the male.
According to Campbell, the androgyne god was also part of
Christianity Campbell referred to Ch.1 of Genesis and the creation of Adam and
Eve. In this version, God created them together, in the image of
himself as male and female. There God is himself the primordial
androgyne." In which case it would not be a transgression to cast an
androgyne as the central figure. It is obvious that there is a connection between the symbols in
the Tarot and the Book of Kells, but it is difficult to establish the
origin due to a confusion of cross cultural exchanges, as we have
seen. Of the four symbols of the Tarot cards- the cup, the sword, the
pentacle(or coin) and the wand (or rod), two are seen throughout the
Book of Kells- the grail, from which Christ drank at the Last Supper
and which was a never-ending source of nourishment, and the eucharist
host, which represents the platter from which he ate. In the stories
of the Holy Grail written by Geoffrey de Monmouth in 1130, the four
symbols come together as the "Grail Hollows" , which Douglas
claims,"...were in part descendants of the Four Treasures of Ireland,
the magical emblems of the Tuatha dé Danaan, or people of the
goddess Danu, who were the gods of the Celts in pre-Christian
Ireland." It is important to note that the cauldron of The Dagda,
"Eochaid Ollathair, Father of All", also represented a never-ending
source of food for his people in that it "could never be emptied."
Instead of a coin or host, the disc is the stone of Fál
"...which cries out loud when trodden on by the lawful King of
Ireland." And we continue in this work selflessly, in spite of being cast in
our main role as "economic deadbeats and welfare leeches ", and then
happily don our laurels and leathers to occupy the secondary role of
"cultural shaman" when we're the 10 minute filler on "City Beat"( A
Montreal news show). What is forgotten, is that the ancients used
leeches to suck the poison out of festering wounds. It is neither the duty nor the inclination of all artists to take
on this mantle but many of us do, and without the respect one would
wish accorded such an honourable position. In our society, to belong
to a fringe group or have an alternate vision of reality means that
one is regarded a liability, rather than the performer of a sacred
function. The regenerative qualities of disruption are sadly
undervalued. In a discussion on dreams, the artist and the unconscious, Marie
Louise Von Franz states, "... "But if we begin to look at dreams, or the works of artists
who draw their inspiration genuinely from the unconscious without
much reflection, then we get another image of the situation; we get
the mirrored image, a kind of photograph of how the unconscious looks
at the conscious situation. All dreams, you could say, have this
aspect. In a dream situation you may behave like a fool or a hero,
and then you might say that is not the way you see yourself , but how
the unconscious sees you- it is the photograph of your ego taken from
the unconscious.That is one aspect where this photograph is generally
the opening situation in fairy tales; it depicts the conscious
situation , but as seen from the unconscious." In Susan Sontag's essay, Aids and Its Metaphors, she quotes a
selection of religious and political authorities who ascribe to a
Divine Retribution theory... "The fact that Aids is predominantly a
heterosexually transmitted disease in the countries where it first
emerged in epidemic form has not prevented such guardians of public
morals as Jesse Helms and Norman Podhoretz from depicting it as a
visitation specifically aimed at (and deservedly incurred by) Western
homosexuals. [and she cites]...the Cardinal of Rio de Janeiro,
Eugenio Sales, who wants it both ways, describing Aids as "God's
punishment" and as "the revenge of nature." In reference to the fusion of these myths, F.Marian McNeil, in The
Silver Bough, calls it "one of the most striking instances of the
fusion of Druidical and Christian beliefs, for it derives in part
from the magic cauldron of Celtic paganism and in part from the
sacred chalice of Christianity." She is known as Artemis, or her Roman counterpart Diana, and was worshipped in primitive matriarchal
societies as an orgiastic goddess, yet she chose to remain unmarried. She is also known as Selene the moon goddess, whom Pan "was also said to have seduced..."
(From Greek Myths and Legends Pears Cyclopedia 76th Edition H35- ), offering further suggestion that the status of "virgin"
signified an unmarried state. (See Appendix O)
Artemis was associated with Selene. Selene was
a rural divinity. In 600 BC her cult went to Marseilles from Asia
Minor. As Diana she carries the bow, quiver and spear, "as Selene,
she wore a long robe and veil, and a crescent moon on her forehead."
A friend refused to allow me to use an image of his pet monkey in
association with this card because he viewed my friend as "violent" and was
afraid that by associating the monkey with a wheelchair, something
bad would happen to his animal...
not long after this the monkey ran into the road and was killed by a car. "According to the Judeo-Christian premise, if the evil of evil
persons should come to an end, then all evil would cease, even
natural evil such as disaster and catastrophe... This is a confounding
premise, but it nonetheless exists at the core of Western mentality
and is reflected in many of our attitudes: the belief that illness is
some sort of cosmic punishment for misconduct and the fear that
misfortune is the result of evil behaviour." The High Priestess is sometimes said to represent a virgin. It
should be remembered that in biblical times, "virgin"
referred to all unmarried woman, regardless of sexual experience. In Greek, PARTHENOS = UNMARRIED
but NOT necessarily VIRGIN.
The screen behind The High Priestess often contains images of pomegranates and refers to
her as the mother of Attis, whom she conceived through
parthenogenesis by placing a pomegranate blessed by the lord of the
skies between her thighs. In the Roman myth, Attis died, was
resurrected and became immortal. His death was the result of a
self-inflicted castration. Connections between parthenogenesis,
castration and resurrection are also elements of the story of Osiris. (see Appendix V)
"The habit of killing bad criminals by hanging them on trees is a
very archaic one. It was originally practiced as a sacrifice.:
Germans in Olden days, for instance, hanged prisoners as sacrifices
to the god Wotan. They hanged not only prisoners but also enemies
captured in battle... Wotan himself is the god who hangs on the tree,
for he hung on the oak Yggdrasil for nine days and nights and then
found the runes and acquired secret wisdom." "The symbolism of the suspended god on the tree , the gallows, and
the cross is very profound. Such a fate normally overtakes that part
of the Divinity most interested in man; the philanthropic part of the
Godhead falls into the tragedy of suspension and has to do with the
bringing of civilization- as in the Wotan myth, where after the
suspension on the tree Wotan discovers the runes, an implication of a
progress in human consciousness." "...he consequently discovered the runes of writing by which
civilization based upon the written word was founded." The Celtic faith contained references to the stag as an animal of
reverence. The origin of "Stag parties" is from one of these rites of
reverence to the animal for the sacrifices it had made in allowing
them to capture it in hunt. This was known as "The Running of the
Stag", in which a male member of the tribe would be selected .
Throughout the course of the year he would be given sexual access to
any female member of the tribe, but when the year was over, he must
dress in the skins of a stag and go into the woods to invite the
leader of the herd into combat. Should the man survive, he was then
allowed to return to the tribe and a new man would be selected for
the coming year. ...The ravens have a more general quality of being neither good
nor bad, but pure nature; they express the truth in a way similar to
that of the expression of the unconscious. Death symbolizes beginnings inherent within an apparent yet
uncertain end. Many fear the embrace of Death, but were Death to come
in the form of a beloved denied, would one then go willingly and
without regrets? Would one wish one's inert body reaped by this
apparition wielding a scythe, the metaphorical scraping of the tool
reminiscent of ragged furrows once traced into one's breast and pit
and then left fallow of the seeds of requited love. Cold winds
curling through a bitter and scarred land. No solace there. If I create the image of Death, I am not saying that this is what
he, she or it looks like, but trying to evoke the fear and the
seductive pull of what death represents to me- the end of a cycle of
existence as we know it. All life must eventually cease and what
follows is a plunge into the unknown. Most of us spend our lives
attempting to fuse with other beings to assuage our fears of
isolation. We create families and form friendships and convince
ourselves we're not alone. But ultimately, we must acknowledge the
truth that death is to be faced individually. There is a terrible
loneliness in this. "...Moisture is also one of the properties of the moon. The moon
was believed to control the waters of the earth, the tides, as well
as the fluids, or humors , of the body. The crescent moon with horns
upturned, as on the Mayer Tarot, was believed to augur either flood,
with the moon bearing water, or drought , with the moon retaining
water. The decks that show no moisture have the horns upturned..."
"So specifically is this metaphor of corrupted and redeemable
nature that in the descriptions of the Fall and Expulsion from Eden
the calamity in nature is represented iconographically by the decline
and death of the Tree of Life from which the forbidden fruit was
picked. In Christian iconography, that same metaphor is retained and
transformed when Christ is crucified on the dead tree and the drops
of his blood bring it back to life... Christianity thus inherited a
Judaic concept: that evil and redemption are functions of human
activity." I included this card in spite of my hesitation about its more
Christian connotations. I dislike the polarization of a final
judgment which will seperate "sinners" from the "innocent" and
"believers" from "disbelievers", sending them in opposite directions.
Heaven as a reward for the denial of earthly pleasures. Nevertheless, I have been dreaming about it, as my dreams
indicate. We are reaching the end of the Millenium and there are many
who speculate that we are also reaching the end of the world as we
know it. I am not one of them, but if my dreams ever become
prophesies, I shall find comfort in my belief that morality is not
something which is dictated to us from above, or from a pulpit, but
something we find by digging deep within our respective souls and
bringing its contents into the light. It is only for us to judge if
what emerges reflects a life well lived. Although Osiris is represented in the Hierophant rather than the
Devil, his story intertwines with the others. He is the Egyptian god
of vegetation, who introduced his people to the cultivation of corn
and the vine. Osiris was resurrected after being betrayed by one of
his own, murdered, and encased in the trunk of a conifer, thereby
becoming a tree spirit. The ritual honouring him involves the
"...erection of the Tatu, Tat or Ded pillar. This pillar appears from
the monuments to have been a column with crossbars at the top..." .
In one of the legends of Osiris, Isis, who is a symbol of the High
Priestess, and his consort, hovers as a kite "...over the god's body
to bring life to it. She succeeds and becomes pregnant with Osiris'
son and heir, the god Horus. {Isis had.}.. retrieved the coffin with
the body of Osiris, which she brought back to Egypt and hid in the
marshes, Unfortunately, Seth found the body and tore it to pieces,
throwing them in the river. Isis found all but one of the pieces- his
genitals had been eaten by a fish. The other parts were collected
together and bandaged to form the first mummy, and then transformed
into an akh, which travelled down to the underworld, where Osiris
became King of the Dead. Since Court de Gebelin's book, Le Monde
Primitif (1781) was published claiming Egypt to be the source of the
Tarot, many people have looked to its mythology for connecting links,
and decks such as the Egyptian Tarot and Crowley's The Book of Thoth
reflect this ongoing belief. Briggs, Katherine Mary, The Vanishing People; A Study of
Traditional Fairy Beliefs, (B.T.Batsford Ltd.,London 1978) Butler, Bill, Dictionary of the Tarot, (Schocken Books N.Y. 1975)
Calvino, Italo, Trans. William Weaver, Invisible Cities, (Harcourt
Brace Jovanovich Inc. ,1974) Knight, Gareth, Tarot and Magic, (Destiny Books, Rochester, Va.
1986) Calvino, Italo, Trans. William Weaver, The Castle of Crossed
Destinies, (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich Inc. ,1976) Campbell, Joseph, The Power of Myth with Bill Moyers,(Doubleday NY
1988) Crowley, Aleister, The Book of Thoth (Egyptian Tarot), (U.S. Games
Systems, Inc., Stamford, Ct. 1969) DeLaurentis, Teresa, Alice Does-N'T, (Bloomington, Indiana U.
Press, 1987) Douglas, Alfred, The Tarot , ( Penguin Books, Middlesex,England
1972) El Mahdy, Christine, Mummies,Myth and Magic,(Thames and Hudson
Ltd. ,London, 1989) Frazier, James G., The Golden Bough, (Gramercy Books, N.Y.1981)
Highwater Jamake, Myth and Sexuality (Penguin Books Canada Ltd.
Markham Ont. 1990) Jung, C.G. , The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious,
(Bollingen Series XXXX. Princeton U. Press, 1959) Kaplan, Stuart, The Encyclopedia of Tarot, Vol.1,11,111, (U.S.
Games Systems, Inc., Stamford, Ct. 1978) Knight, Gareth, Tarot and Magic, (Destiny Books, Rochester, Va.
1986) Meehan, Bernard, The Book of Kells, (Thames and Hudson,Ltd.
London, 1994) Mitchell, William J., The Reconfigured Eye: Visual Truth in the
Post Photographic Era, (MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1993) Moore, Thomas, Dark Eros:The Imagination of Sadism, (Spring
Publications, Woodstock, Conn., 1994) Nichols, Sallie, Jung and Tarot/ An Archetypal Journey, (Samuel
Weiser,Inc., York Beach, Maine, 1980) Pepper, E. and Wilcock, J., Magical and Mystical Sites (Harper and
Row Pub. N.Y. 1977) Piggott, Stuart, The Druids,(Thames and Hudson Inc., N.Y. 1985)
Rushdie, Salman, Imaginary Homelands, (Granta Books, London, 1991)
Rolleston, T.W., Celtic Myths and Legends, (Bracken Books, London,
1967) Ross, Anne, Pagan Celtic Britain, (Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd.,
London, 1967) Sadhu, Mount, The Tarot, (Wilshire Book Co., Hollywood, Ca. 1962)
Sontag, Susan, Illness as Metaphor and Aids and its Metaphors
(Doubleday NY 1989) Stephens, James, The Crock of Gold, (Pan Books Ltd. London, 1981)
Von Franz, Marie Louise, Shadow and Evil in Fairytales,
(Shambala,Boston, 1995) NOTE: All images and text on this site are protected under International copyright laws. Inquiries regarding current and
future exhibitions and purchase orders of this series and others can
be made at the following Email Address: BACK TO Main Tarot Page:
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Bibliography
Linda Dawn Hammond, 2003.
