08/17/2024
The Alchemical "Vision: Of The Day"
Card for Today:
Queen of Wands
The Queen of Wands, in Egyptian headdress and skirt, is self assured and calm, holding a leafy Wand. The wands/staves throughout this suit are always in leaf or blossom, as it is a suit of life and animation. Before the Queen are two lions and a black cat. Behind her is a gigantic sunflower with an enormous eye. And further behind her the forest bursts into fruition. "Here is the essence of the Heavenly Sol descends into the flower- Earth's answer to the Suns countenance......"
The giant flower behind the Queen reinforces her power of feminine creation , the power of reproduction, the ability to nurture a seed into the beauty of a full bloom. In this case, the bloom is a sunflower- that is, the Queen has created the sun itself, she has caused the sun to flower.
Since she is responsible for the giant flower behind her, the great eye within the flower is not watching her, but is looking out into the world, extending the Queen's vision over her domain.
The two lions recall the Tarot card Strength in which the feminine has calmed the wild animal Instinct. In Alchemy, the lion corresponds to Gold or the "subterranean sun." In the Queen of Wands, the subterranean suns have given birth to the greatest that has risen from the unconscious to be visible in the mundane world, the great sunflower. In Ancient Egypt, corresponding to the Egyptian dress of the Queen, the annual nurturing and nourishing Nile floods were presided over by the lion in the form of the constellation of Leo, after the sun has reached its highest point.
At another level, the lion represents strength and the Masculine Principle. With a simple, demure downward look, the Queen has tamed these Masculine Symbols- she has integrated the internal Masculine, the Animus. Another aspect of the lion appears in Lambsprinck's "De Lapide philosophico" (Frankfurt 1625) in which he equates two lions with the body and the spirit/soul. At the end of the Alchemical Work, "It may be a great wonder that two lions turn into one."
Between two lions is their domesticated miniature, the cat. The Ancient Egyptians associated the cat with the moon, sacred to Isis and Bast. The Queen has before her a balance of the Masculine Solar in the form of the lions and the Feminine lunar in the form of a cat. Because of their color, the black cats are associated with the darkness and death. And here is the second balance: the life-giving aspects of the lions (the subterranean suns) and the death aspects of the cat. Death must be present where life exists. In Alchemy, death is the beginning of a New Life.
The flower is on of those powerful, antithetical symbols. With it's hermaphroditic pistils and stamens, it represents the ultimate in fecundity and continuity of the species into the never-ending future. On the other hand, flowers are transitory objects, they bloom and just quickly, the wilt. Greeks and Romanswould strew flowers over graves, not so much as an offering, but as an analogy.
While the sunflower behind the Queen at first seems to be a positive symbol, bursting with golden energy, it's actually a warning to the Queen that she must always keep in mind the allegorical meaning of the origins for the sunflower. Clytie, scorned by her lover Helios, sat naked on a rock, staring at Helios as he crossed the sky, mourning his departure at sunset. After nine days, she was turned into a sunflower, one that follows the sun across the sky. In addition to the warning about the general villainy of men, it also alerts the female traveler to the dangers of the Animus. A failure to properly encounter and integrate it can lead to an unhealthy fixation on masculinity in both the internal, psychic and the mundane world.
Plotinus said that the eye could not see the sun if the eye were not itself related to the sun. The great eye in the sunflower is part of the sunflower itself. This sunflower, with its single eye, is a cyclops, who are strong. Stubborn, and explosively emotional. The cyclopedic eye of the Queen of Swords is saying to be ever watchful for the dangers represented by the sunflower.
The Queen of Swords has earned her powers. She has brought the power of the masculine sun from underground in the unconscious to the surface where it can be used for growth, both physical and psychic. However, the card warns the traveler, over-fascination with the contra-gender function- the Animus in women and the Anima in men- can lead to a distorted gender relationship in both the internal and external worlds.
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Over All Card:
Three of Cups
There are Several "three's"in the three of cups. In addition to the expected cups, there are three women, two dressed, and one n**e, who seem to be dancing and celebrating.
Three is a very important number in Alchemy: there are three steps- negredo, albedo, rubedo- in the process of gaining the Lapis or the Philosophers Stone, the metaphor of psychic wholeness. Thus, the number three symbolizes spiritual synthesis.
Almost any group of three women is significant in the annals of mythology. One such combination is Artemis, the Goddess of the Hunt; Selene, the moon goddess representing motherhood; and Hecate, ruling the underworld. The fates, the threefold form of the great mother. The fates, the Norns of Norse Mythology. The three weird sisters of destiny in Shakespeare's Macbeth are probably Scottish equivalents of the Norns.
At the surface level, it seems that the three women int the Three of cups feel free to celebrate as they wish in the absence, perhaps because of the absence, of men. The men present in the card are relegated to the bottom corners as tiny figures.
The three Chalice are as active as the women. They too, seem to be dancing, the outer two in such agitation that they are about to spill their contents on those below. There is a clear correspondence between the three women and the Chalice over their heads. The Chalice, or in it's gargantuan form, the cauldron, is a symbol of the Goddess, the Womb, and the female reproductive organs. It also represents water, which is a female element and the Feminine qualities of Intuition, subconscious, psychic ability and gestation.
The three of cups emphasizes the most feminine aspect of the four Alchemical elements of water. This also accounts for the triangle, the Alchemical symbol for water, inscribed In each of the cups.
The golden symbol of the planet Venus emphasizes further the feminine nature of the three of coins. Venus/Aphrodite is the Goddess of Love, s*x, beauty, and fertility. In Alchemy, however she plays a different role. One of the important steps in the Alchemical process is removing moisture and thus purifying the material undergoing transformation. The ninth key of the great work is brightly colored as a peacock tail that occurs under the rule of Venus in the sign of Libra, and shows that the matter is gradually drying. For the traveler, this represents purification of the soul.
The blue curtains draw back as of to reveal a scene that is for our private viewing or perhaps a stage play. Or perhaps because the curtains are sky-colored, this is the skybeing drawn back to reveal the activities taking place in the Divine Realm. In Alchemy, blue is the color between black and white, between darkness and illumination. To the traveler who began in the darkness, these halfway curtains draw back to reveal the realm of light: the three Chalice and the three dancing women.
The flowers, plants and fruits on the ground symbolize abundance and beauty of life.
For the Male Travelers, the three of cups demonstrates the power of the Anima, the internal feminine aspect of the male psyche. At a deeper level, it is the Power of the Anima multiplied by three, the magic number (according to Jung and the Alchemists) of process. Allowing the Anima to dance, that is, energize the psychic transformations of the Great Work, will bring one closer to the goal. The three of cups gives a Glance at what is on the other side of the blue curtain. For the Female traveler, the card encourages a celebration of the feminine principle throughout the female psyche, in the unconscious, in the Shadow, in the ego, and in the self. All are great sources of Power.
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Mojo aka Brandi Dye
