My mother is posting her own Birthday card, from the other side, where she has resided peacefully for ten years now, though it's hard to believe it's been that long. This image is scanned from her visual diaries during the period of her last illness, during which terrible time, her art truly flowered. It is quite amazing how relevant to me it is today, and how prophetic. I am working on building a site for her, but I'm not sure if I will ever upload it. A very selfish part of me wants to keep all her inspirational ideas for myself. But when you consider just how temporary we all are, perhaps it is a gift that has to be given to the world, rather than perish forever with me.
She was raised in an atheist family but insisted on being Christened at the age of ten, choosing for herself the middle name Magdalene. I don't think she ever really came to understand consciously the full implications of this choice. But I most certainly do, which is why I have adopted it for myself as well. Not hopefully, as some Messianic ego trip, but as a tribute to both my mothers, flesh and divine.
I have not revealed her full name or my own. I'm not sure why exactly, except that my Scorpio moon and rising make me very secretive. I have yet to even make her a watermark, but I think it would be a foolish and doomed act to steal her work. I have to admit my contact with Earthly reality is minimal at best, but I have found a benefit in even this very limited sharing. It seems to have brought on the inspiration. If you don't let things go out into the world they start to stagnate.
The Joyous, hexagram 58.
Haha, she doesn't look all that joyous. She looks a bit bored. But like all the cards she has a positive side and a negative side. She is receptive and reflective, open to all influences, and this makes her very popular, but also inclined to self indulgence. A glorious overdose of a card, as a friend of mine so aptly put it.
She is the Watery part of Water. As Crowley says:
"The characteristics associated with this card are principally dreaminess, illusion and tranquility. She is the perfect agent and patient, able to receive and transmit everything without herself being affected thereby...normally people of this type have no character at all of their own."
Well, this is always the problem with being very Yin. I suppose you could say she was a Siren, and the extent of her powers over any individual are inversely proportional to the acceptance and manifestation of their own Anima.
"The softest thing on earth
overtakes the hardest thing on earth.
The non-existent overtakes even that
which has no interstices.
From this one recognizes the value of non-action.
Teaching without words, the value of non-action
is attained by but a few on earth."
Tao Te Ching
(Wilhelm 47)
It is quite uncanny the correspondences between the Tarot and the I-Ching and the Tao Te Ching. It demonstrates the common core of human wisdom so perfectly. This common understanding really is like an ocean connecting us all together, which is why there is much power in this particular card. This wisdom does not originate in the plodding logical conscious mind but in the vast intuitive sea of the collective unconscious. This is why emotion should never be under rated as a force of nature or within the individual personality. I suppose I am being ironic calling her the Emo Queen. Embracing a derogatory label that is like a clue to the rationalist disease of Western civilization. The 666 of Yang unbalanced that has led us almost to the brink of destruction.
I am writing this here in the hope that I can make all this clearer in my own mind. Because it is high time I connected together the theory of my practice. The ocean is sweeping me on to the shore it would seem.
"The Queen of Wands represents the watery part of Fire, its fluidity and
colour. Also, she rules in the Zodiac from the 21st degree of Pisces to
the 20th degree of Aries. Her crown is topped with the winged globe and
rayed with flame. Her long red golden hair flows down upon her armour
of scaled mail. She is seated upon a throne of flame, ordered into
geometrical light by her material power. Beneath the throne the surging
flames are steady. She bears a wand in her left hand; but it is topped
with a cone suggestive of the mysteries of Bacchus. She is attended by
a couchant leopard upon whose head she lays her hand. Her face
expresses the ecstasy of one whose mind is well in-drawn to the mystery
borne beneath her bosom.
There is as much pride in this card as in the Knight, but it lacks the spontaneous nobility which excuses that error. It is not true pride, but self-complacent vanity and even snobbery.
The other side of her
character is that she may have a tendency to brood, come to a wrong
decision thereon, and react with great savagery. She may be easily
deceived; then she is likely to shew herself stupid, obstinate,
tyrannical. She may be quick to take offence, and harbour revenge
without good cause. She might turn and snap at her best friends without
intelligible excuse. Also, when she misses her bite, she breaks her jaw!"
Crowley
Book of Thoth
Personally I think Aleister is a bit of a sexist Beast, but there's no denying his vast scholarship. Of course I don't follow his guidelines religiously. Or even at all often, but for this card he was very useful.
To me this card is more about the intense suffering of creativity. Ya know, choosing to sit in the hot seat. Accepting the fire of "god" (sic) can be a very painful process. Though in a way the pain comes first and the creativity is just a way of processing it.
" The true division of humanity is between those who live in
light and those who live in darkness....But to talk of light is not
necessary to talk of joy. One may suffer in the light; its excess
burns....To burn without ceasing to fly, that is the achievement of
genius. When you have reached the stage of knowing and loving you will
still suffer. The day is born in tears. The enlightened weep, if only
for those still in the darkness."
Victor Hugo
