2 THE HIGH PRIESTESS
The symbol here shows how our own psychic intuition is the most powerful way in which the symbolic veil separating our conscious minds from the collective mind of humanity may be attained. In the inner depths of your own mind, this card is saying, you will find the knowledge that you seek. You must be guided by your own intuition, but not by mere emotional whim, which is not the same thing at all.
Seek within your own past experience the answer to the problem with which you are currently faced: somewhere back there you have been in pretty much the same situation as you are in now.
In this card, you are shown with your feet standing on the Moon, which is a symbol of the mirror of Hathor, the ancient Egyptian goddess of the night sky. This mirror is indicating the need to reflect upon what has happened up until now and the answer will float into the surface level of your mind.
The High Priestess is suppressed in this society, as she is in virtually the whole world at this time. She is the wise woman, who knows without lots of schooling. She has more wisdom and insight in her little finger than most men have in their entire heads. Hers is the ability to use foresight, and to make problems vanish before they grow and multiply. With her insight, we would be able to eradicate the problems of crime without massive expenditures on repressive measures which do nothing to punish the offender, to make him desire change or which give recompense to the victim. With more of her insight, we would be able to find solutions to problems that would completely bypass the ‘us versus them’ approach which characterizes so much of male-dominated society.
The High Priestess stands there, able and willing to guide us through the labyrinth of our own subconscious minds to the point where we can tap into our higher consciousness and begin to remold our own lives. But we must become more willing to be guided by our own intuition.
3 THE EMPRESS
This card is showing that at this point the way forward for you is to develop and put to use your own creativity, your own ability to make things grow.
We are shown here a representation of Venus, resting in her garden, allowing all the plants and creatures which she has brought into being there with her life-bringing force to grow stronger and take their place in existence. It is a message to you that you also have the ability to create, to bring into existence new things.
You may, for instance, have an artistic ability or sensitivity. If so, then now is the time to put it to use and increase output of whatever is your particular artistic skill.
If you paint, then create many paintings and promote yourself by holding an exhibition in your area. If your sensitivity runs in another direction, then locate it and consciously enhance that.
If you are a woman, this card can indicate that you are going through a period of exceptional fertility and that if you do not want to have a child, then you should take extra steps to ensure that you do not become pregnant.
This card also indicates that the harmonious quality of the planet Venus, which this card represents, is bringing into your life a very peaceful effect – you will observe that contacts with others flow more easily than before.
The Empress rules over our own personal creativity. This card comes up a lot for artists, musicians, actors and actresses. It is directly related to the emotions in which this creative potential is rooted. Without our ability to feel, to experience the different emotions of love, pain, fulfilment and rejection, we are as dead as doornails, at least as far as the Empress is concerned. Many people walk around in life like zombies, blocking themselves off from their own emotions with drugs, alcohol or just with their own insensitivity. The real challenge for them is to learn to accept all of their feelings. This isn’t necessarily an easy business. The entire industry of therapy and self-development has boomed over the last couple of decades, designed to help people do just this.
We live in a society in which the Empress is heavily repressed. Our culture is now so TV-based, we all of us, like robots, switch on these machines when we come in – and many of us remain thus transfixed all night. Before the advent of TV and radio, people would learn how to play musical instruments, to sing, to dance together. They would hold plays in the village hall just to entertain themselves. These are all Empress activities.
How would you like to learn how to play an instrument, to dance, to express yourself more fluidly? What about that book you’ve always wanted to write? Those poems, that play? What about that baby you keep thinking of having? Well, when are you going to switch off the TV and radio and make a start?
Make this the year in which you concentrate on cultivating your own creativity!
4 THE EMPEROR
The Tarot is showing you a card which is the epitome of independence, of resisting external influences and of moving in your own totally self-determined direction. Up until now, although you haven’t been happy about accepting orders from others, you have done so, feeling that one day you would be able to branch out in a totally independent direction, free from the external constraining influence of other people.
This may have ramifications on your work area, for example. You may have felt, over the last two years or so, that you could have done a lot better for yourself by starting up your own independent line of business than by continuing to serve those who were employing you.
On a relationship level, you may have felt limited, held back by the person that you are with, unable to get your life moving in the way that you felt it should have been.
Now is the time in which you can feel free to begin to tell these forces of limitation where to get off, so that you can live your life the way you feel it ought to be lived. This card is telling you to strike out!
The Emperor is about your own potential to say no to whatever you are unhappy with. It is he who breaks agreements in society about how things ought to be and challenges oppression. It is he who leads the revolutionary forces and suffers personally through his belief in the principles of equality, liberty and justice. But it is also he who, through his own excessive zeal for the cause in which he believes, can set in place of the preceding government a far worse dictatorship! In a society which has become so excessively centralized, with people feeling increasingly that they are unable to influence their destinies in any way whatsoever, it is the Emperor type who tends to emerge, first as rebel, then as opposition, then as alternative, and finally as the new establishment. Many who in life start off wanting to change the political system end up as members of an establishment which may well have a different symbol on its headed notepaper, but which pursues the same policies as its predecessors.
But the Emperor is also about your own assertiveness; about not looking for others to take the place of your own potential for leadership. Because whenever we do this we are copping out of precisely those issues which we most need to take responsibility for.
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