Priestess Widsom Reading

Priestess Wisdom Question: 

How can we get a look behind your veil of light, travel across the desert to a higher realm, and grow into what we are supposed to be?  (Take a look at the Priestess’s veil, camel, and potentially perfect seeds, fruits, and crystals.)

In other words, what is the best way to learn what is truly true by listening to wisdom within (without our needs and wants leading us astray)?

I don’t want to take us too far into Thoth (or Kabbalah) territory, but I am struck that we ended up with the two minor cards that are most closely tied to major cards in the Thoth. 

The Queen of Cups is very similar to the Priestess, as you can see.  Same colors, and she has her own veil of light (with a swirl and downward curve, instead of the Priestess’s lemniscates and upward curve).  In these readings, I have been removing the cards that don’t have stones land on them, but I automatically left the Queen in the reading, probably because subconsciously I saw that she belongs here!  More about her below.

The 9 of Wands is closely related to Art (the Temperance card of the Thoth).  It shows the kabbalistic path from the moon to the sun that Art is also assigned to.  And that leads us to:

5-Hierophant-Orange Calcite on 9 of Wands.  Organized religion and traditional scriptures and teachings are a very good place to start on our journey to the Truth.  They can take us on the straight path from the moon (Yesod) to the sun (Tiphareth), which is the middle of the Tree of Life, half way to the top, complete understanding of the Divine!  As I mentioned, that path is the path of Art/Temperance.  So we might need to take traditional religion with a small grain of salt (in moderation) in order to get that far.  Also, traditional material has to be worked with intentionally if you want to use it for self-transformation.  Singing hymns every Sunday, or reading lots of Zen koans, is not going to get you where you want to go!  Using those things as ingredients in your alchemical chemistry set just might!

It’s interesting that there is no straight path from Tiphareth to the highest place (Crown, Kether) on the Tree.  It is said that this non-path gap, the desert, can only be crossed by the Priestess’s camel.

So all this means that conventional means will get you somewhere, even half way there, but not to the top, not behind the veil of the Priestess.

 

Stepping back from the heights a bit, Queen of Cups says that sometimes the best spiritual quest is simply “know thyself.”  She is all about emotions, and reflecting on emotions.  (The entire bottom third of the card is a reflection of the top two-thirds.)  Knowing your own motivations and feelings--and shadow--might be the greatest truth that you need at any given time.

12-Hanged One-Sodalite on 10 of Swords.  10 of Swords is the shadow side of the Hierophant.  10 (too much) plus swords (ideas) equals fanaticism or at least fundamentalism, when concepts are more important than people--or the truth!  We’re all familiar with people who claim to know the truth, but their truth is simply what they want to believe.  They have made God in their own image.  A Hanged One experience might be just what the doctor (karma? fate?) ordered to help them/us let go of the fundamentalist illusion and see everything differently. 

13-Death-Mahogany Obsidian landed to the side near the middle row of cards.  I thought of this when thinking about the question:  Will we only know the Truth after death, or between lives, or after many lives?   Some say that humans are the only animals that know their own death is coming.  (I’m not sure that’s true.)  But that kind of self-awareness, and the ability to be aware of morality and compassion, knowing that everyone is going to experience this final(ish) destination, is an advantage that humans have over other animals.  Living without being completely driven by instinct or survival concerns is the baseline to begin our journey to the truth.

So the answer is:  Organized religion is not the devil in this piece, even though it has the potential to be.  It can only get us so far, but with the help of that experience, we might have the clues we need to go stronger, higher, faster toward the top, with the Priestess as our inner guide.