In a fragment from his c. 375 BC play Semele or Dionysus, Eubulus has the god of wine Dionysus describe proper and improper drinking:
For sensible men I prepare only three kraters: one for health (which they drink first), the second for love and pleasure, and the third for sleep. After the third one is drained, wise men go home. The fourth krater is not mine any more – it belongs to bad behaviour; the fifth is for shouting; the sixth is for rudeness and insults; the seventh is for fights; the eighth is for breaking the furniture; the ninth is for depression; the tenth is for madness and unconsciousness.
Isis assists with the embalming of a mummy, Kom El Shokafa, Alexandria, 2nd c
‘One becomes Two, Two becomes Three, and out of the Third
comes the One as the Fourth.’ ~ Pythagoras
In a previous post , we saw how this Cosmology of Pythagoras applies to Tarot. It is but one of the initial or initiatory, key concepts conveyed to us as a visual clue by our Master of Ceremonies, The Juggler/Le Bateleur (aka the Magician). Do you see it? Hint: It’s ‘dessous la table’, in every Marseille-type deck.
Vieville, Conver and Noblet cards
Of course, I am referring to the legs. People tend to write off his three-legged table as simply being of the portable sort that Bagatelles used. It’s true, three legs provide the most stable table for any surface. (Especially if it happens to be a tripod with a Pythia sitting on it). But his table in fact has four. Because one of his legs is behind or combined with one of the table legs, his other leg becomes the 4th leg; ‘the One as the Fourth.’ Another consistent feature is that the rectangular table top always extends beyond the picture border… just how long might it be?
Below are two images of Anubis, god of funerary rites and underworld guide, preparing the dead. His uncovered, lower legs are always visible beneath the embalming bed, and knees about level. This ritual table traditionally had a lion head(s) and legs, which we will return to in a moment.
Legs of AnubisEgyptian embalmer’s bed, 664-332 BC (Met Museum, NY)
The Juggler is often equated with Hermes/Thoth, initiator into the mysteries or the ‘in-between’ state itself who oversees the alchemical process. But he’s also seen as an initiate, who maybe doesn’t yet know what all these objects he’s selling are for. As others familiar with Osirian-Orphic mystery content in TdM imagery have noted, they likely allude to dismemberment or sacrifice. They also bear a resemblance to the tools used in the Egyptian ‘Opening of the Mouth’ ceremony, which according to belief, enabled the deceased to eat, breathe, drink and use their senses in the afterlife.
Religious equipment for ‘Opening of the Mouth’ ceremony, 6th dyn. (British Museum)
Naturally, the Juggler’s objects also symbolize the four Hermetic elements (ie, the suits of the minor arcana) and the four ways a body is returned to them in traditional funerary rites. The four ‘parts’ of us that are returned to their sources – body to earth, spirit to fire, soul to water, mind or breath to air – will again be drawn from them and remixed, for another round.
Four ways a body is returned to the elements
Now, let’s just for fun assume the Juggler’s table should have another wooden leg, that it is indeed modelled on an embalming table with leonine features and that it displays tools related to the ‘opening of the mouth.’
Where would we then look for the missing leg? Only the Conver-type decks give us a proper clue [addendum: Dodal also] – the Strength lion’s single leg having a distinctly wooden look and no paw. (Always thought it a rather canine-looking lion). In other TdM decks, it has normal, lion forepaws, which, nevertheless is a hieroglyphic feature, based on Horapollo.
The missing leg and the opening of the mouth
The Pythagorean rule informs us that every 4th card is also a first. 1 was considered masculine/solar and 2, feminine/lunar. 3, while odd, fiery and therefor technically ‘masculine,’ creates the first enclosed space (triangle/womb), so it is actually a combination of masc/fem (the Mercurial, creative magic of the trinity need not be re-explained here). 11 is two 1s or 1+1=2, the lunar partner to the solar Juggler.
I’ll discuss the 2s in my next post, but let the image below, from the Catacombs of Kom El Shokafa, where Egyptian and Greco-Roman mysteries meet, serve as a preview.
Where did you get that hat? Gorgoneion as ‘death face’ of the Sun
The crown/corona worn by royals represents the Sun’s rays. To be coronated means to be crowned with the Sun and become a god-like, solar figure. In alchemy, the Sun symbolizes both the material gold and the hidden, spiritual gold, which is only achieved after a long process. The Juggler holds a little yellow coin or roundel (material gold) and there is a small, yellow flame [aka ear of golden grain] beneath the table, in the distance (spiritual gold). They are separate, at this point in the game.
One/Four cards (Camoin-Jodo deck)
Notice that every card in the 1/4 place between Juggler and Sun depicts a crown, in various phases of transmutation, as well as solar wheels (Chariot, Fortune) and phallic symbols (all seven do, but in the last card it is a horizontal wall). The Sun is its own corona (unified, risen spirit), but what about the Juggler? He is only a 1, not a 1/4, and wears not a crown but a floppy hat with a spherical, red middle. Could this too be symbolic of the Sun?
Floppy discs
Answer is yes. The question of his hat had admittedly irked me a long time, until I saw these beautiful, French prints of Egyptian deities in the NYPL collections.
Winged solar disk, emblems of Thoth/Hermes Trismegistus (NYPL)
So the red sphere of the Juggler’s hat represents the solar disk, its brim being vaguely reminiscent of wings – or – perhaps symbolic of the funerary boat in which the Sun god Ra, and thereby Kings and Pharaohs traversed the Duat, when the sun set. The red sphere appears to sink into the brim, ie, setting below the horizon, corona faded. Meanwhile, on the distant horizon flickers that tiny, golden flame of spirit, which will become a bright Sun once again. Pythagoreans believed in reincarnation, Pythagoras himself was said to have remembered several of his past lives.
New take on retro fashion or just comparing scars?
On that note, I leave you with a vivid, childhood memory…
My father was a psychiatrist with a sense of humour (and with whom I often played cards). Hanging on our bathroom wall was a small, framed photo of Sigmund Freud, with a quote by Groucho Marx taped beneath:
“This may be a phallus, but gentlemen, let us remember, it is also a cigar.”
An old, close friend was here, today, visiting, for the full Moon in Aquarius. She uses the Thoth deck and had recently pulled the High Priestess, depicted with outspread arms, so different from the traditional image of her, sitting on a throne, holding a book. We got talking about what that signified. What is the Goddess or Deity, exactly?
Look upon me, you who reflect upon me, and you hearers, hear me…
In Tarot and numerology, 2 is considered receptive. The Arabic numeral is in the shape of an ear, because it has to do with hearing, listening. 1 embodies vision, literally a first ray or bolt of lightening. [As a side note, Taurus rules the second zodiac house. Though Aries rules the head in general, ear, nose and throat are more Taurus’ jurisdiction.]
Grimaud TdM
If one puts the Marseille Juggler (Magician) beside the Priestess, one could imagine him as listening to her. The wand he holds is parallel to the strap across her front, directed to the book she’s holding. That he is ‘merely’ a performer means he himself is not the source of this magic, but a trickster who, by listening and creating space, can ‘bring it.’ Interestingly, by casting cards, you yourself become the Magician, with four types of tools, while the vehicle of space, as personified in the Papess revealing sacred wisdom, is Tarot.
Hear me, you hearers and learn of my words, you who know me. I am the hearing that is attainable to everything; I am the speech that cannot be grasped. I am the name of the sound and the sound of the name.
In ancient times – as with any rock concert or belly dance performance or Baptist sermon, today – the performer or priest had to connect with and exchange energy with the audience. The uplifted audience then became as one, through synergy. The Deity was the collective spiritual experience, larger than the individual, but felt inside, by each. The sacred space being accessed (or summoned) for the spirit to flow through and become alive in – one could say that was the feminine principal, regardless of whether people considered the Deity to be male or female. She was/is present in connectivity itself. Sometimes psychogenic substances were used to enhance the experience (or maybe a forbidden fruit?), just as they are today, although now people use substances solely because they have lost the ability to open.
This ever-present, but invisible space was concretized as the temple or church, but nature was the original temple, and birds her priests.
We spoke of singing to both people and animals – my friend, to a Tibetan lama, me, to a crow – and how the subject inspires the song. For this giving, receiving and returning to occur naturally, a space needs to open, sesame. That is the threefold way of Goddess. Every time you open space to listen to and understand another living thing, or to receive inspiration with which to playfully create something (as opposed to having to do it for work, noble as that may be), you bring the Divine Feminine into being. The resulting creation then embodies spiritual aliveness, and can be a catalyst in opening space for others.
The modern world seems to be set on eliminating space and imposing will, in one form or another. Rather than listen to a tree, we think of it in terms of how it can be useful to us. We keep other living beings in cages or kill them for sport and raise our children in institutions, where the same lessons are imposed on everyone of a certain age. Few of us have any energy exchange with what we consume in the way of food – energy just means caloric intake. We want things how they ‘should’ be, not as they are. Silence is feared, space is the blackness ‘out there.’
I am the one whom they call Life, and you have called Death.
Merely replacing the male godhead with a female is a superficial and symbolic step, but unless we begin to re-open the space that is the living Goddess, through which the spirit flows between every living thing, we will continue on the path of death; eating dead food, wasting knowledge, being ignorant to the root of illnesses, plundering nature/each other, and so on. Then and only then will we finally experience space, for she is also the space between lifetimes and lifeforms, through which both karmic and genetic information is passed. And if we die without listening, we are in for more of the same. That is probably why the first words in the Tibetan Book of the Dead are ‘Oh nobly born, listen undistractedly.’ Passages are recited to the dead person’s soul, to which they must be receptive, instructing them on navigation of the in-between realms.
To the attached person (and we all have some attachments), space feels like a void, equated with Death, and must therefor be a-voided. Silence, stillness and aloneness must be filled with sound, motion and other people. Their experience of the Goddess space is finite – an empty vessel, from which one might hear an echo, but little else. Patriarchal religion sees the Divine Feminine only as a vessel for the male God, imposing will on that which has no form, but silently provides, sustains and returns life to all creation.
This is not to deny the importance of masculine energy in creation. Going back to Tarot, we see that the Juggler/Magician is the Mercurial spirit that exists in everything. He has all his tools set before him, and will use the appropriate one, based on what he hears and where the energy wants or needs to be directed. When spirit and the space are combined, we get the threefold return, a directed movement that is a reverberation and microcosm of the original.
In Tarot, cups are indeed feminine vessels, but the Ace is usually depicted as a threefold fountain, rather than just an empty cup, wherein the waters of life are flowing. It’s the natural space, depicted as a church or censer in the Marseille Ace of Cups (not to be taken literally).
And yes, of course the Goddess takes many forms – the Earth, the Moon, and everything in between – but ultimately this initial space is her ‘formless form,’ via which she gives birth to the infinite manifestations of herself.
I am the knowledge of my inquiry, and the finding of those who seek after me, and the command of those who ask of me, and the power of the powers in my knowledge of the angels, who have been sent at my word, and of gods in their seasons by my counsel, and of spirits of every man who exists with me, and of women who dwell within me. ~ Excerpts fromThe Thunder: Perfect Mind, Nag Hammadi Texts
On July 18, the New Moon will be in her own sign of Cancer (the New Moon is always conjunct the Sun, in the same sign, which is why we can’t see her). Cancer is the sign of the Universal Mother, and rules the breasts.
The symbol for Cancer looks like breasts, but it is actually two spirals spinning together, like the galaxy, or two nines, number of gestation and endings preceding birth, moving forward and backward…
The constellation was also seen as a cradle – the cradle (or gateway) of birth and death. In the same way, the Moon is presumed to be where souls await physical rebirth.
In ancient Egypt, the symbol for Cancer was the Scarab (where the word ‘crab’ comes from). The beetle rolled it’s dung like the Sun, traveling through the night or netherworld to be reborn.
Since Moon governs the tides of the ocean and body fluids, it is associated with the soul, which is watery (Cancer, Scorpio and Pisces form the water triad). In Tarot, cups are the soul element. Soul is the source of emotional memory and feelings and, being the source, is essentially no different than the ocean.
In astrology, the Moon, Pluto and the Lunar Nodes are the main indicators of the soul’s path/past lives. The Moon’s placement is also indicative of our ancient, matrilineal heritage and earliest emotional memories.
This Cancer new (dark) Moon, is a good time to begin revisiting our emotional memories and see whether we stopped evolving emotionally somewhere along the line, due to some tragic or disruptive event in our early or past lives.
For women, if the relationship with your mother was severed at some point, this is likely a microcosm of/clue to where and how your matrilineal line was severed long ago.
For men, the soul is your ‘anima’ and you will know her by the kind of woman you are attracted to. Is she a big teat ? A femme fatale ? A nurturer or a devourer ? Do you fear her or try to protect her ?
I sometimes think of the Cancer Sun and Moon as Samantha and Endora of the 1960s TV series, ‘Bewitched.’ Cancer Sun is witchy, but would rather ‘get to a man’s heart through his stomach’, be the domestic Goddess. Moon in Cancer is the opposite of rational and can be a nurturer or devourer of the soul (or both). And of course she’s the older Mother.
Pluto-Moon/Cancer or Lilith-Moon/Cancer aspects can be challenging in this respect and will reveal much about the Mother/child dynamic. The Pluto in Cancer generation (1913 – 1939), who were very affected by their mothers’ issues, are now preparing to return to the ‘Great Mother.’
Summary: This Moon, born in Cancer, is good for healing ancient or childhood memories (especially to do with Mother or Mother’s line), honouring the Soul and the feminine. And while we are at it – our relationship with Mother Ocean, source of all life, could really use some healing.
The following is adapted from ‘Dreamgates: Exploring the Worlds of the Soul, Imagination and Life Beyond Death’ by Robert Moss. Published by New World Library. (Thanks to Rob Brezsny for providing).
The basic insights of paleopsychology are as follows:
1. Spirits are real.
2. We are not alone: we live in a multidimensional universe peopled with beings — spirits of nature, gods and daimons, angels and ancestors — who take a close interest in our affairs and influence our lives for good or ill.
3. We are more than our bodies and brains, which are only vehicles for soul.
4. The soul survives the death of the body.
5. Soul journeying is the key to the spiritual worlds and the knowledge of ultimate reality. The soul makes excursions outside the body in dreams and visions. The heart of spiritual practice is to learn to shift consciousness at will and travel beyond time and space. Through soul-flight, we return to worlds beyond the physical plane in which our lives have their source and are able to explore many dimensions of the Otherworld.
6. Souls are corporeal, though composed of much finer substance than the physical body.
7. People have more than one soul. In addition to the vital soul that sustains physical life — closely associated with the breath — there is a “free soul,” associated with the dreambody, which can travel outside the body and separates from it at physical death, as well as an enduring spirit whose home is on the higher planes.
8. Souls — or pieces of soul — can be lost or stolen. This is the principal cause of disease and misfortune.
9. Some people have more souls than others and have the ability to make excursions to different places at the same time.
10. At death, different vehicles of soul go to different lots. Through conscious dreaming, it is possible to explore the conditions of the afterlife to prepare for one’s death and to assist souls of the dying and departed.
11. We are born with counterparts in nature. For example, we are born with a totem animal and a relationship with natural forces (wind or water or lightning) that are part of our basic identity and help to pattern the natural flow of our energy.
12. We are born with counterparts in other places and times, and in other dimensions of reality. When we encounter them through interdimensional travel, they become allies and sometimes teachers.
Images: Sara Goodridge, Egyptian winged Scarab, Dali Ace of Cups, Mahakali of Kolkata 1910 litho, Ronald Searle TV Guide illustration, fiddler crab, Dorothy Phillips.
