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Tuesday, May 8, 2018

Tarot: Water

There is a tradition that the water glimpsed on the other side of the veil in the High Priestess card is the same water we see on every other tarot card which shows water. In the Major Arcana it next appears as a waterfall in the next card after the High Priestess before disappearing for a good few cards (update 13.5.18 - ignore this, there's water on the Chariot)  and reappearing in Temperance.
What does this water signify? I think I have an answer from another member of the Golden Dawn, Dion Fortune. These two ladies *may* have belonged to different schisms of the order, I haven't checked, but the obvious source for understanding the world of this tarot deck is the Golden Dawn tradition.
I found this quote in Patricia Crowther:
'The sound of that running water [at her husband's funeral] remained a mystery for some time, until the day I obtained a copy of Through the Gates of Death by Dion Fortune (Aquarian Press, 1957). As I held this book, it fell open at a particular page, where I read the following passage:
"When spiritual love is coming to us from the Inner Planes we have only to still the outer senses for a moment to hear it purling like a brook, a steady flow, coming to us all the time from the eternal and steadfast soul that has gone ahead to the Next Country. "
'Fortune calls it the" Brook of Love", or the "Communion of Love", and tells us that no psychic powers are needed for it to reach the mundane consciousness. She advises us to send back our own personal flow of love to our loved ones on the Inner Planes.' (Patricia Crowther:High Priestess. Phoenix Publishing, Blaine, Washington, 1998, p. 110)
So the water comes from higher planes - in my naughty way I'm going to gloss this as not only referring to love but generally to things of the higher planes. The cards on which it appears reference higher things (among others) and the cards in which it does not appear indicate the more 'mundane' tasks of the Fool's journey.
I know I have argued repeatedly here against these kinds of divisions but the world view here is that of the Golden Dawn, not necessarily my own. Many tarotists criticise this deck precisely because of that world view. Meh.
Have a sound track also stolen from another worldview. Vidi aquam: I saw water flowing out of the Temple, from its right side, AlleluiaAnd all who came to this water were saved, And they shall say: Alleluia, Alleluia.  To quote Wikipedia: 'The text refers to the words of the prophet Ezekiel (Ezekiel 47:1)[2], who saw the waters gushing forth from the Temple as a sanctifying flood that flows through the earth.' 

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