The Prodigal Sun

[Diana]

Chiscotheque's "phant" is a very nice addition to this whole issue of La Pance. He's the first ever I think in Tarot history to have brought this up. And darn... am I glad that he did.

Now the actual etymology in French of the word "pance" is most definitely "belly". Today it is only used for the stomach of ruminants. It doesn't have another etymology in all the places I went to search. However, I did discover that the VERB "panser" is (but I think was - they didn't say) also a regional word - not dialect, but regional - and it means to heal with the "healer's secrets". I didn't yet find out from what region this comes from. I found a few examples in literature, in particular in one of George Sand's most famous books, La Petite Fadette (Sand was a French author - like George Eliot, she used a man's name for her writing - and was also Chopin's lover for a time).

[La mère Fadet] pansait du secret, c’est comme qui dirait qu’au moyen du secret, elle guérissait les blessures. I didn't find an English version of the book online, so this is my translation: "Mother Fadet healed (pansait) in secret, almost as if by means of the secret, she was able to heal wounds".

One still uses the VERB panser in common French today, when we talk of dressing or binding a wound, we say "panser la plaie". We use this also in a more metaphorical sense, to say that we are healing psychic wounds - our emotional hurts. Also when we groom a horse, we would way "panser un cheval".

The Papesse, as the great Druidess Priestess, surely knows the secrets of healing.

I remember also that there is a theory that the word may be of the language of the birds. "To think" in French is to "Penser". It's pronounced the same way as "panser". So "to think" and La Papesse makes sense. Along with the "belly" which could be a reference to the womb, this makes sense too. And the full sense of George Sand's Mother Fadet healed (pansait) in secret, almost as if by means of the secret, she was able to heal wounds".


The Papesse is the holder of knowledge. In French, there are two words for knowledge. One is "savoir" which is to know things about facts. I know that John will arrive soon, would use the word "savoir" and not "connaître" which is the verb. CONNAISSANCE, the noun, is the other word for "knowledge". For instance to "know a language" would be "connaître une langue" and not "savoir" (the "avoir which takes up most of the word means "to have".) The word savoir is both a noun and a verb, contrary to the other which has a different word but the same origin.

So Connaissance and this is important : The prefix "co" is obviously "with" but what is interesting is that the word "naissance" means "birth". So there we have the belly/womb which gives birth.... to knowledge.

Also, the Papesse is the first initiatoress of the Tarot. An initiation requires a rebirth. So her belly/womb would also point to the idea of birth - of a spiritual nature.

The Papesse of course never speaks. That is the role of the Pope/Hierophant.

There, I think I'm through. Did I make it clear or did I make it all confused ?

[Aoife]

Brilliant!

[chiscotheque]

I remember also that there is a theory that the word may be of the language of the birds. "To think" in French is to "Penser". It's pronounced the same way as "panser". So "to think" and La Papesse makes sense. Along with the "belly" which could be a reference to the womb, this makes sense too. And the full sense of George Sand's Mother Fadet healed (pansait) in secret, almost as if by means of the secret, she was able to heal wounds".

The Papesse is the holder of knowledge. In French, there are two words for knowledge. One is "savoir" which is to know things about facts. I know that John will arrive soon, would use the word "savoir" and not "connaître" which is the verb. CONNAISSANCE, the noun, is the other word for "knowledge". For instance to "know a language" would be "connaître une langue" and not "savoir" (the "avoir which takes up most of the word means "to have".) The word savoir is both a noun and a verb, contrary to the other which has a different word but the same origin.

So Connaissance and this is important : The prefix "co" is obviously "with" but what is interesting is that the word "naissance" means "birth". So there we have the belly/womb which gives birth.... to knowledge.

Also, the Papesse is the first initiatoress of the Tarot. An initiation requires a rebirth. So her belly/womb would also point to the idea of birth - of a spiritual nature.

great series of thoughts here, Diana. I would like to point out that the word Gnosis is akin to connaissance in its meaning - that is, intimate and personal knowledge (wisdom) rather than facts. isn't it interesting how similar the words naissance and gnosis are. as you say, pance means belly/womb and does not cognate with phant, except that as a term it was chosen by someone and the reasons that person chose it are unknown. as it happens, i think language is a little like sympathetic magic - to expect it to behave like mathematics is self-evidently foolish. green language doesn't occur just after the fact - that is, after words have been invented and used - but before and during the fact - in the words people choose, and what they think words mean, be they right of mistaken. sometimes the best meanings come from the mistaken! consider the term papess - is it a coincidence that pap means breast, and so the papess' function in part is to feed with the milk of wisdom? breasts are to feed newborns after women (womb/man) give birth. I happened to be reading Jung's Answer To Job this morning, and in it he refers to the Song of Solomon, where Sophia's "womb is as an orchard of pomegranates" - cf. the pomegranates on the RWS HP card. the pomegranates are on a veil like the rent veil in the temple and the hymen (named for the god of marriage) as i mentioned in the Papess post. The HP between the pillars of Solomon's temple is herself like a baby being born from a womb. what i'm getting at is all these ideas are swirling around, mixed with the images and mixed with the language in ways that exceed ascertainable facts or etymologies. or, in other words, connaissance is far more fair, informative, and wise than simple savoir.

PS - why i often throw a period in at the end of a post is purely aesthetic: i don't care for the way a chunk of text looks - blunt and heavy -at the end of a post.


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[Diana]

Thanks for all those thoughts, chiscotheque.

The verb "know" in English comes from "gnosis".

The sanskrit root "jna", and therefore the word "janati" gave the proto indoeuropean root "gno" (which means "connaître" in French), from which followed the Greek "gignosko", the Latin "gnosco" which evolved later to "nosco" which gave rise later to word "to know" in English.
l'anglais "to know".

There is also the Latin "agnoscere" which means 1) recognize, realize or discern 2) acknowledge or claim. Other languages also have different words for "know" like in German, the "wissen" and "kennen".

I wonder how we came from the Prodigal Sun to La Pance. Who would have thought that this thread would go on for so long ?

[Monk]

The tarot itself is actually a lot bigger than that. I'm afraid I've been hypnotised by Enrique Enriquez into thinking of the deck as primarily a work of art before it is anything else. We can see in it whatever idea the imagery supports. I'm speaking as a reader of cards here, but I suppose in this section of the site I should be behaving more like a historian, speculating on what these mysterious images might have meant to a French Catholic of the 17th/18th century.

isn't it exactly because the tarot is a work of art why it works also as a divinatory tool, and why it seems to allude to myth and mysticism from Egypt to Greece to pagan to Gnosticism to eastern thought? all these things are aspects of the same thing are they not? call it perennial wisdom or the collective unconscious or metaphysical Truth - there is no particular right interpretation, just as the finite can never fully understand the infinite; instead, it taps into what bit of it it can. the mistake is delineating it as True in some absolute sense and excluding everything else, a chronic malady of the west - from Christianity to capitalism to science - albeit such a tendency is a primal human defect.


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I'll be staying out of this discussion as it is way above my head, but you said something here Chiscotheque that I want you to know I deeply-deeply approve with! I find looking at the/any cards from a historic/scholastic/cult/systemic/whatever perspective interesting. But, above all I see it is the effect on the creative part of our brains through which the cards do their most valuable thing. Cards merely need to show me the door.

M

[chiscotheque]

I think the "phant" part comes from the past tense of the Greek word "phemi" which simply means "to speak".

as so often, Dodalisque, you're wrong. to quote wiktionary -
Hierophant: From Ancient Greek ἱεροφάντης (hierophántēs), from ἱερός (hierós, “holy”) + φαίνω (phaínō, “I show, make known”)
to quote the online etymology website -
Late Latin hierophantes, from Greek hierophantes "one who teaches the rites of sacrifice and worship," literally "one who shows sacred things," from hieros "sacred," from PIE root *eis-, forming words denoting passion (see ire) + phainein "to reveal, bring to light" (from PIE root *bha- (1) "to shine")

[dodalisque]

I think the "phant" part comes from the past tense of the Greek word "phemi" which simply means "to speak".

as so often, Dodalisque, you're wrong. to quote wiktionary -
Hierophant: From Ancient Greek ἱεροφάντης (hierophántēs), from ἱερός (hierós, “holy”) + φαίνω (phaínō, “I show, make known”)
to quote the online etymology website -
Late Latin hierophantes, from Greek hierophantes "one who teaches the rites of sacrifice and worship," literally "one who shows sacred things," from hieros "sacred," from PIE root *eis-, forming words denoting passion (see ire) + phainein "to reveal, bring to light" (from PIE root *bha- (1) "to shine")

"Ponce" is the word that irresistibly springs to mind as I consider your remarks.

[Diana]

Are the two of you pouncing on each other here ?

[dodalisque]

I found a few examples in literature, in particular in one of George Sand's most famous books, La Petite Fadette (Sand was a French author - like George Eliot, she used a man's name for her writing - and was also Chopin's lover for a time).

Thank you for those wonderful ideas about La Pance. But I'm mainly writing to congratulate your subconscious for making an odd connection. We were talking earlier about Robert Graves and "The White Goddess". Georges Sand and Chopin shared a house together in the little village of Deja on the island of Majorca where Graves lived for 50 years. Graves wrote a translation of her memoir "Winter in Majorca". Strange that you should unknowingly make this connection.

She hated the place and Graves loved it, so his notes, which are scattered through the translation, are sometimes quite rude and funny. Graves great-grandfather on his mother's side was the German Otto von Ranke, often referred to as the father of modern European history, so Graves inherited a scholar's meticulous precision. But his relations on his father's side were all either influential Irish clergymen, poets, or writers of fairy stories. His books reflect that mix and drive most serious scholars crazy. He assembles billions of facts in his serious prose works about mythology and so on, but speculates on connections between those facts that strain credibility to the limit without collapsing entirely into nonsense. It's best not to worry too much about whether what he says is "true" or not and just enjoy the ride, watching his imagination in action.

He makes a very useful distinction: "Facts are not truth, but facts have the ability to veto untruth." His point, I think, is that there are two types of truth: factual truth and poetic truth. If I tell you a story about my bus being attacked by a gang of Hell's Angels, it really doesn't matter if there were 20 of them or 23 of them, or what the colour of the third motor bike was, or whether the bird flying overhead was a robin or a sparrow - the correct details are "facts". But in relating all this information, if my account does not give the flavour of the actual experience, then I have not captured the "poetic truth" of the story. Wild exaggeration and mistakes or even lies can often take us closer to the truth than strict accuracy. A strictly factual telling of a story will often distort and falsify the actual experience. An exciting event needs to be told in such a way as to capture some of that excitement. Graves is always more faithful to the poetic truth of his argument, but he can also, infuriatingly, be a stickler about verifiable facts and historical precedent.

[dodalisque]

Are the two of you pouncing on each other here ?

We both deserve a kick in the pants.

[Diana]

Thank you for those wonderful ideas about La Pance. But I'm mainly writing to congratulate your subconscious for making an odd connection. We were talking earlier about Robert Graves and "The White Goddess". Georges Sand and Chopin shared a house together in the little village of Deja on the island of Majorca where Graves lived for 50 years. Graves wrote a translation of her memoir "Winter in Majorca". Strange that you should unknowingly make this connection.

Oh thanks so much for telling me this !! The connection I made is 100% fortuitous. Thanks also for all the snippets you shared about Graves and that the best thing is to enjoy the ride. I like it when people make strange connections. The truth is often found in strange places.

He makes a very useful distinction: "Facts are not truth, but facts have the ability to veto untruth." His point, I think, is that there are two types of truth: factual truth and poetic truth. If I tell you a story about my bus being attacked by a gang of Hell's Angels, it really doesn't matter if there were 20 of them or 23 of them, or what the colour of the third motor bike was, or whether the bird flying overhead was a robin or a sparrow - the correct details are "facts". But in relating all this information, if my account does not give the flavour of the actual experience, then I have not captured the "poetic truth" of the story. Wild exaggeration and mistakes or even lies can often take us closer to the truth than strict accuracy. A strictly factual telling of a story will often distort and falsify the actual experience. An exciting event needs to be told in such a way as to capture some of that excitement. Graves is always more faithful to the poetic truth of his argument, but he can also, infuriatingly, be a stickler about verifiable facts and historical precedent.

Which reminds me that I still haven't made a reading in the Plato's Cave thread about honesty and hypocrisy.

I agree that the "poetic" retelling of a story or an account is often more accurate. They dry telling removes the flavour and the noise and the aromas. That's how stories become myths I think that endure.

There are lots of stories in my family history that are full of poetry. It doesn't make them less true. Less factual perhaps, but in the end it is the essence of the story that remains - the facts will always vanish and be distorted. But it is what remains of the story - the music and the echo that the music leaves behind, the vibrations that extend further and further due to the ripples in the water that the stone has caused when it was tossed in that really go up to make up the story.

My past on the paternal side is full of exiles, people fleeing and returning, and then fleeing again with their little suitcase that they manage to salvage. The facts of many of these exiles are either unknown, or guessed at, or distorted through the telling. War and politics are the cause of all these exiles. But regardless - the theme of the Exile is present and made such a lasting impression that it is this Essence that has been passed on to me. I think I may be the last generation who experiences this. I was able to choose so it was self-exile - my ancestors less so. I think this part of the family history will die with me. The echo will soon be lost and will probably end when my time on this earth is up. My son will remember it, but I don't think it will affect him as it did me. It will just be a page in a book. One day forgotten. I wonder what will remain... or will even the Essence be so distilled one day that it will be imperceptible.

[Diana]

Thank you for those wonderful ideas about La Pance. But I'm mainly writing to congratulate your subconscious for making an odd connection. We were talking earlier about Robert Graves and "The White Goddess". Georges Sand and Chopin shared a house together in the little village of Deja on the island of Majorca where Graves lived for 50 years. Graves wrote a translation of her memoir "Winter in Majorca". Strange that you should unknowingly make this connection.

Oh thanks so much for telling me this !! The connection I made is 100% fortuitous. Thanks also for all the snippets you shared about Graves and that the best thing is to enjoy the ride. I like it when people make strange connections. The truth is often found in strange places.

He makes a very useful distinction: "Facts are not truth, but facts have the ability to veto untruth." His point, I think, is that there are two types of truth: factual truth and poetic truth. If I tell you a story about my bus being attacked by a gang of Hell's Angels, it really doesn't matter if there were 20 of them or 23 of them, or what the colour of the third motor bike was, or whether the bird flying overhead was a robin or a sparrow - the correct details are "facts". But in relating all this information, if my account does not give the flavour of the actual experience, then I have not captured the "poetic truth" of the story. Wild exaggeration and mistakes or even lies can often take us closer to the truth than strict accuracy. A strictly factual telling of a story will often distort and falsify the actual experience. An exciting event needs to be told in such a way as to capture some of that excitement. Graves is always more faithful to the poetic truth of his argument, but he can also, infuriatingly, be a stickler about verifiable facts and historical precedent.

Which reminds me that I still haven't made a reading in the Plato's Cave thread about honesty and hypocrisy.

I agree that the "poetic" retelling of a story or an account is often more accurate. The dry factual telling removes the flavour and the noise and the aromas. That's how stories become myths I think that endure.

There are lots of stories in my family history that are full of poetry. It doesn't make them less true. Less factual perhaps, but in the end it is the essence of the story that remains - the facts will always vanish and be distorted. But it is what remains of the story - the music and the echo that the music leaves behind, the vibrations that extend further and further due to the ripples in the water that the stone has caused when it was tossed in that really go up to make up the story.

My past on the paternal side is full of exiles, people fleeing and returning, and then fleeing again with their little suitcase that they manage to salvage. The facts of many of these exiles are either unknown, or guessed at, or distorted through the telling. War and politics are the cause of all these exiles. But regardless - the theme of the Exile is present and made such a lasting impression that it is this Essence that has been passed on to me. I think I may be the last generation who experiences this. I was able to choose so it was self-exile - my ancestors less so. I think this part of the family history will die with me. The echo will soon fade and will probably stop resonating when my time on this earth is up. My son will remember it, but I don't think it will affect him as it did me. It will just be a page in a book. One day forgotten. I wonder what will remain... or will even the Essence be so distilled one day that it will be imperceptible.

[Diana]

The original question in the thread was : Are you ethically obliged to improve yourself ?

Last night I listened to a talk by Alan Watts who posits that it's not possible to improve oneself. The talk is entitled "Why the urge to improve yourself ?"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vlNVQ- ... ex=27&t=0s

[Diana]

Concerning again La Pances, which I just realised is written with an s - but spelling was not fixed in those days - (still it's odd, another mystery maybe), I just read something about the Witch of Endor. The story is related in the First Book of Samuel.

In the Hebrew Bible, the Witch of Endor is a woman Saul consulted to summon the spirit of prophet Samuel in order to receive advice against the Philistines in battle after his prior attempts to consult God through sacred lots and prophets had failed. All the witches and wizards had apparently already been got ridden of in the kingdom so they didn't abound - and he had to act cautiously. He couldn't get caught out consulting a witch !!

Now what is interesting that this Witch of Endor is also known as the Belly-Myther. I see this term in many places when I google it, but I cannot find out the origin of the word in this context - why she is called thus. A woman who knows secrets and the Belly. (Belly-myther in Greek means ventriloquist - to speak from the belly.) Can't help relate this to La Pances somehow, can one ?

The verse is here. It's a very interesting story - a bit like one that one tells around the fireside.

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?s ... ersion=KJV

[Aoife]

Just an aside - the Dodal Devil

[chiscotheque]

neat. belly-myther suggests the origin of the term ventriloquist, from Latin venter - to speak from or through the stomach. what was called gastromancy, used famously at the Delphic Oracle of Apollo. in venter we can see the word vent, a hole or window, cognate with ventus meaning wind. the wind of god - or the spirits (spiro = breath). all the result of indigestion. in all this, we might well see bellows, the same word as belly, meaning a bag that can swell, and by extension, the words blow and bellow - to howl from the gut. in many languages, words for belly imply anger, or perhaps just ire (passion), for obvious allegorical reasons but also association with Bellona, goddess of war, and the fire down below.

i'm reminded of the film The Sacrifice, by Tarkovsky who was an Anthroposophist (along with fellow Russian Andrei Bely). In it, a war starts and a man consults a witch. speaking of russians, I used an image of the Witch of Endor by Nickolai Ge in my Banquo card for The Shakespeare Tarot.

to partake of some green language: endo is Greek for within, where the belly is. the ghost of Banquo, whose name suggests a banquet, upsets Macbeth's dinner party. Macbeth is ended by Macduff, who was "untimely ripped" from his mother's womb/belly. the Beth of Macbeth is the second letter of the Hebrew alphabet, representing the Papess.

[Diana]

That's very interesting, chiscotheque. Thanks for all that info and research.

You know, in Switzerland and in particularly in the Jura mountains, there are still many healers - layers of hands, or people who have the secret and other healing methods. The big university hospital held a list of ones who have the secrets for burns until up to a few years ago. I used one once. They discontinued a few years ago. Idiots. Donkeys in white coats I call them.

The Jura mountains have always been the refuge of a variety of people who were fleeing persecution. It is possible that the people accused of witchcraft were left a bit more alone there. And the tradition has been passed on and at least not discouraged.

Now about the gastromancy. I had a pain in my back a few years ago and a friend recommended a healer, sort of a chiropracter but not really. Someone who fiddled with whatever she fiddles with. They said she had a secret of some sorts. And she told me that I must just be warned that the woman burped all the time and very very loudly and continuously throughout the session. I didn't make the appointment as my osteopath managed to fix it nicely.

I didn't know that originally ventriloquism was a religious practice. Who would have known ??

I can't imagine our Papesse burping though. But she's of the same lineage.

The obvious allegorical reasons but also association with Bellona, goddess of war, and the fire down are not so obvious to me. But they will be before the night is through because I'll go and read up about Bellona whose name is unfamiliar to me. That's what's nice about CoT, there's always something to nourish oneself with. (Apparently it is now acceptable to finish a sentence with a preposition. It's not grammatical but it's much easier. I like grammar. I think the Emperor likes grammar too - that's one thing we have in common.)

That's an absolutely gorgeous card there. Wow. I'd never looked at closely. In how much detail does the Little White Book (it must be big in that case - a BWB) go into when describing the cards ? If one is not a Shakespeare scholar or enthusiast, it must be really difficult to understand and to read with. Or not ?

But that card is truly truly stunning.

[Diana]

Just an aside - the Dodal Devil

Aoife, what are you talking about ? My neurones or synapses or whatever are not making the necessary connections.

[chiscotheque]

The obvious allegorical reasons but also association with Bellona, goddess of war, and the fire down are not so obvious to me. But they will be before the night is through because I'll go and read up about Bellona whose name is unfamiliar to me. That's what's nice about CoT, there's always something to nourish oneself with. (Apparently it is now acceptable to finish a sentence with a preposition. It's not grammatical but it's much easier. I like grammar. I think the Emperor likes grammar too - that's one thing we have in common.)

what i was getting at is that words concerned with "the belly" have become synonymous or metonyms with passion, ire, and anger, ie - someone who is gutsy, or having a gut feeling, or feeling gutted. it's one of those cross-pollinations where words with apparently no directly shared etymological origin meld or otherwise share characteristics, here belly, bellows, and bellicose. for instance, the online etymology site isn't sure why bellows (old english belg) became a figurative term for anger, except they posit the bulge aspect implies an inflation of emotion. yet there is an obvious phonetic connection with bellicose, latin bellicosus, meaning fierce and bellum meaning war.

That's an absolutely gorgeous card there. Wow. I'd never looked at closely. In how much detail does the Little White Book (it must be big in that case - a BWB) go into when describing the cards ? If one is not a Shakespeare scholar or enthusiast, it must be really difficult to understand and to read with. Or not ?

the LWB is 400 pages. the simple answer to your question about familiarity with Shakespeare is, akin to familiarity with the esoteric meanings embedded in the tarot itself, the more you know about it the more you get out of it. if all the tarot syzygy cylinders are firing, one would get a certain amount of info instinctually from the imagery, but in the end it's impossible for me to answer since i do know shakespeare inside and out, so i can't say with any exactness what approaching the deck without that knowledge would be.

.

[Diana]

what i was getting at is that words concerned with "the belly" have become synonymous or metonyms with passion, ire, and anger, ie - someone who is gutsy, or having a gut feeling, or feeling gutted. it's one of those cross-pollinations where words with apparently no directly shared etymological origin meld or otherwise share characteristics, here belly, bellows, and bellicose. for instance, the online etymology site isn't sure why bellows (old english belg) became a figurative term for anger, except they posit the bulge aspect implies an inflation of emotion. yet there is an obvious phonetic connection with bellicose, latin bellicosus, meaning fierce and bellum meaning war.

I think first of the expression "to feel something in my gut", i.e. the gut instinct. Intuition. Which is more fitting actually when it comes to La Papesse than ire and anger and passion.

Edited to add: There is also maybe a reference in La Pances to Panacea, the Greek goddess of universal remedy. Which would fit with the idea of The Healer.

Have you always been interested in Shakespeare ? Did you study him at university or just private studies ?

[Aoife]

Just an aside - the Dodal Devil

Aoife, what are you talking about ? My neurones or synapses or whatever are not making the necessary connections.

Mind wandering... so sorry.
Just thinking about the lesser value placed on the guts as a 'seat of intellect'. Also wondering whether this is in part about 'womanly instincts'... y'know, the idea of the wandering womb, womanly irrationality and suchlike. Moving onto 'man's' anxiety about women's intellect leading her to devilry. I wonder if the face in the belly of the Dodal Devil is a mockery of conventional wisdom and whether 'pances' might reflect a misogynistic idea of womanly wisdom.
Unfortunately, with my mind-mapping style of thinking some links can be tenuous at best.

[Diana]

Mind wandering... so sorry.
Just thinking about the lesser value placed on the guts as a 'seat of intellect'. Also wondering whether this is in part about 'womanly instincts'... y'know, the idea of the wandering womb, womanly irrationality and suchlike. Moving onto 'man's' anxiety about women's intellect leading her to devilry. I wonder if the face in the belly of the Dodal Devil is a mockery of conventional wisdom and whether 'pances' might reflect a misogynistic idea of womanly wisdom.
Unfortunately, with my mind-mapping style of thinking some links can be tenuous at best.

Oh of course ! Should have realised. You explain it very well and also I like that idea very much. Although the Devil is more paired with the Pope. It could be the Pope's "evil twin" or doppelganger doing the mocking then.

I think all this mind-mapping style of thinking is how we understand the TdM. We have to make all sorts of connections and links - we need to dare to make them. We have to find out ourselves what the Tarot means - the original creators have taken their mysteries with them to the afterlife. And that's how it should be. Conver and Dodal and Vieville and all the others - they gave us the cards - up to us now to figure them out.

[chiscotheque]

I think first of the expression "to feel something in my gut", i.e. the gut instinct. Intuition. Which is more fitting actually when it comes to La Papesse than ire and anger and passion.

yes, i understand and agree in general, but would qualify it somewhat. what's wrong with passion? it compels one to action, is a component of compassion, and signifies love. consider the term scintilla or spark used as a metaphor for the soul - if we were too literal or PC even we might argue a spark is fire - chaotic, destructive, the element of Hell. consider, too, ire - from Sanskrit, meaning to "drive on". we see it in the word fire. more, from the PIE root eis, it creates numerous words meaning zeal or passion, notably Greek heiros, from which we get Hierophant. it's a "false friend" with iris - of the eyes, the messenger of the gods, and sign of god's covenant with man. christ, after all, came to bring not peace but the sword - as wet as she is, the HP surely has a bit of spunk in her.

Have you always been interested in Shakespeare ? Did you study him at university or just private studies ?

no, I developed an interest in Shakespeare in my 40s. In school I couldn't stand him. an example of why i distrust the reflexive notion that a person just likes what they like - we don't know what we like, why, and - to paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld - we don't know what we don't know or often even that we don't. i couldn't see what Shakespeare was saying, or hear what he was doing, so judged him by inappropriate criteria.

[Diana]

yes, i understand and agree in general, but would qualify it somewhat. what's wrong with passion? it compels one to action, is a component of compassion, and signifies love. consider the term scintilla or spark used as a metaphor for the soul - if we were too literal or PC even we might argue a spark is fire - chaotic, destructive, the element of Hell. consider, too, ire - from Sanskrit, meaning to "drive on". we see it in the word fire. more, from the PIE root eis, it creates numerous words meaning zeal or passion, notably Greek heiros, from which we get Hierophant. it's a "false friend" with iris - of the eyes, the messenger of the gods, and sign of god's covenant with man. christ, after all, came to bring not peace but the sword - as wet as she is, the HP surely has a bit of spunk in her.

I've been thinking about your post a lot today. But something doesn't sound right to me there in relation to the High Priestess/Papesse.

The Papesse isn't fiery. She's a water element - she gives birth. The waters break before the birth. If she were fire as well, the water would put out the fire. Water always wins over fire - which is something to keep in mind when one is looking at the cards in a reading we've done. The fire must always watch out...

She may though be guardian of the eternal flame. Which is an important role. But it's not an active one. Fire is active. The Papesse is reflective.

The spark would come from the Magician/Bateleur and be passed by transmission of some sort by the Papesse to the Empress. The Empress would be the fiery one, the passionate one. I think. I've always had some difficulties understanding the Empress arcanum. I don't like most of what people parrot about her . And it's a card strangely enough that is one of the least discussed.

[chiscotheque]

thanks Diana. Again, i agree in general. but also again I would quietly stress that we often err by over-simplifying and polarizing a card's meaning. the element of water surely does represent the HP, but symbolically, just as it is feminine without being an actual female. water is the essence of life, but it is very powerful and can be very destructive. likening that power to fire was maybe misleading, but again i was using the term symbolically. Imagine it another way - what if i claimed the suit of cups being emotion was only love, hope, joy, and compassion? it is of course also hate, fear, sadness, and spite. similarly, what if i claimed the HP is water and female and so therefore cannot partake of thought or action because those things are of "air" and "male"? to wit: consider the alchemical wedding of fire and water - something not literally possible, but only possible symbolically, spiritually as it were. I think the HP, being a core spiritual archetype, hints at something akin to this "impossibility".

arguably, the HP exists in and of herself, but her raison d'etre is in her communion with humanity. like the muse, one can cultivate or otherwise try to please her, but she responds to who she responds to when and how she chooses - that is more than simply reflective/reflexive. sticking with the analogy, maybe it would be better to liken her to the oil in a lamp, which feeds or "gives birth" to the flame (soul).

Added Edit: or, using the birth metaphor - being born is a harrowing experience for all involved. there is much wailing and gnashing of teeth. the life the baby is thrust into is one of conflict - the war of opposites to paraphrase Heraclitus. of course, the birth the HP facilitates is not exactly of the earthly plane - rather, she unites the natural and spiritual - yet such a birth can be violently upsetting, foreshadowing the Tower card. Jung, for instance, sees John's ugly and ecstatic vision of a woman giving birth in the book of Revelations as a metaphor for revelation itself: the woman is sophia, with the moon at her feet (cf. RWS HP); in here "darkness" is the masculine son (& son) of consciousness, rising out of the unconscious, metaphor of the soul's journey into the material world. she adds the dark to the light and symbolizes the hierogamy of opposites. like the alchemical wedding, revelation or enlightenment is a union of opposites - here, the conscious and unconscious, or fire and water. in the subconscious is everything that the conscious rejects; the journey at the start of the Major Arcana is one of consciousness; but by excluding the subconscious, a slavery (Devil) and cataclysm is coming (Tower). the birth-mother in Revelations is secreted away in the wilderness, but in a sense it is we who have entered the wilderness. in this way, the Star is something of a mother and child reunion.

I very much agree with what you suggest about the Empress. I feel she is misunderstood, in a Freudian way - idolized in a sense as a round-about way of people idolizing themselves. like if a cadre of muscle-bound martinets revered the Emperor card.


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