Here I am, back home. And as promised, I am going to write about the last two cards I pulled yesterday.
I was following a Thread, that took me to Eva Hesse, via Ariadne, my uni tutor V Corby; this linen thread asked me which one is the archetype that leads my calling, and requested I give up "something", an obstruction that's in the way of my connection. The I Ching confirmed all of this and I requested, specifically, what it is that I have to offer, to give up, in order for me to experience this connection, to fully live my calling (All of this in the previous post here). The two cards which jumper out were the Queen of Cups and the Hierophant. You can see them in the image above and I used the Jungian Tarot Deck on purpose.
The Queen asks me to use imagination and action, creativity and social engagement. She is all about unconsciousness, emotions, spiritual patterns, and channelling imagination and creativity into a valuable activity: a creative discipline. She will use all necessary steps to pursue the blending of consciousness and feeling. She represents the collective unconscious (all archetypes) expressed via the individual mind. She is the whole ocean turned into a wave. She embodies fluidity.
While looking at her I can see how the card points towards the HOW TO of my questioning and reinforces the ideas of this pacifying, blending, mixing, needing to connect which I explored previously. It felt like a confirmation, with a social agenda attached.
But the card that struck a chord within me was the Hierophant (here in the Rider Waite's version). The Major Arcana #5 is also known as The Pope or High Priest and is found between the Emperor and the Lovers. This is the Archetype of Inner Truth, which also includes initiation, education, and tradition. This figure is sitting there, as a connection to god, with the keys at his feet, interpreting god's laws to us mortals. Still, there are people out there who prefer to have laws and rules spelt out for them. But if I want to discover the God within, to re-experience what I felt, to live that experience again, I might need to refute any intermediary. To decide for myself what is right or wrong. The colours, so different for the card representing the High Priestess, indicate that the unconscious and whatever is hidden will remain so. This card screams surrender of responsibility, dedication as a form of obedience. Let's remember that I have asked the card what I have to give up, to offer, to relinquish so that I can connect to the experience of the past.
The Hierophant is also the Archetype of the Lesser Creator, the one who administers a power that does not really belong to him. He is the Demiurge. And Demiurge is a title given to any creator who is not God, the Ultimate. Basically, a Demiurge is a False God. Why is this important in my journey? Because not later that this Tuesday, at university, in our seminar with V Corby who wrote a book about Eva Hesse, we discussed an essay by G Deleuze who mentioned Plato's Timaeus, where for the first time, we encounter the dêmiourgos. Timaeus is a very cryptic and obscure book and you can find more info here and the whole text here. It is all about the Universe, its creation, its arrangement, etc. Basically, the Demiurge is a craftsman who produced the World as we see it. He makes sense of chaos, for us individuals, creates order and reason. Pls, note that most of the mysticism that we know of now stems from Plato. Well, the best part of Christianity can be understood as an extension of Platonic thought. The whole Gnosticism was influenced by his thinking. If we consider the Valentinian school of Gnosticism, we read of a Primal Father who produced an Abyss, out of which came Silence (the Thinking of this Primal Father). Out of this SIlence and this Father emerged a Divine Realm (Pleroma). And the Demiurge (Created by Logos and ruled by Mother) is the figure who mediates between the Pleroma (reality) and the Kenoma (phenomenal universe). In the melting pot of the years after the death of Christ, the Demiurge, the Fall, Christ and the God of the Old Testament were moved about as during a game of chess.
What we know is that for the Valentinian school, the God of the Old Testament was the Demiurge. He wasn't God as God the Ultimate Father, but he was simply an instrument of the higher power. He acts as Lord and Commander because we, as human beings, cannot comprehend God. The problem is that the Demiurge is ignorant, he doesn't know his reality and makes false claims to power. For the Kabbalah, instead, he is not ignorant. He is there pointing us to the right path through the darkness.
Regardless of whether he knows or he doesn't, the Hierophant is rigid, structured, representing a strict ruling power, an ordered hierarchy, but still only a reflection of the Truth.
It could also be possible that there is nothing. Or, better, Nothing. But our brain and psyche are not able to comprehend Nothing(ness) and hence we create understandable and manageable projections and we call them Gods. They become Gods as postulated by society and culture. Again, false Gods.
Whether this is true or not, we will know only at the moment of death. Still, any form of manipulation of reality, such as experiences like the one I had, do take place. I can testify for my experience. I read in "The Jungian Tarot and its Archetypal Imagery" by R Wang (here) the following:
There may be no encounter as difficult as direct spiritual experience which refutes important principles of a belief system. Certainly, in the case of such challenges, psychologists agree that something has to give.
Yap, you read correctly: something has to give. The Hierophant shows me the traps of a strict religious structure and the pitfall of surrendering to an ultimately nonexistent being; but also a reminder that the experience, the ecstasy, is not an end in itself.
The question now is: what is more meaningful, which goes beyond feelings and emotions, which is beyond the experience of the Self?
I am left more confused than when I started. Again, this sense of Inner Stupidity is predominant. I can see the words, I do understand the concepts, I can see the links (I also drew a pretty mind map, I have to admit) and still I feel ignorant, like if someone had to draw a proper map or list for me to see where I should go next. There is the gnosis of the words, but it's not felt, experienced.
I have asked what I have to give up. I believe I understood that I have to leave behind anything structured, organised; any mediation. This is quite "strange" because I don't belong to any organised religion, anyway. I call myself a devotee of Kali, but only as an understandable representation of a larger, un-named, whole, universal form of "God".
Therefore, I am left now with more questions. Which means that I will sleep, meditate, think, walk with it.
in the meantime, ad maiora!
mx
© mtomat 2021 - written on 21022021 - no reproduction without permission.