II High Priestess

II High Priestess - Mysteries of Mary Tarot deck

She who Priestesses the Holy in the Ordinary

'To seek God without already having Him, is of all things the most impossible'

The Mysteries of Mary and the Christian mystery of the incarnation

of the Divine into earthly matter, is the ultimate sacred marriage,

the hieros gamos, the marriage of the greatest opposites,

that of heaven and earth.

We cannot fathom how does heaven and earth unite as one

and we cannot fathom that all of earthly matter is sanctified

by the divine essence that lives in all.

We cannot accept the open invitation that the Soul

does exist in this body and we cannot accept that all is

blessed by the Presence of God.

We continue to look for signs and manifestations and

confirmation that the God does exist and the God may

be present here and now.  But instead of looking within

and trusting the inner voice and the inner Self,

we look without.

We turn to others for their wisdom.

We look at the stars in the sky;  we turn to books,

to those in authority, we look at the tribe.

Sometimes we see what we think of as God

in the world outside of us, but mostly the God that

we seek we never find.  It does not look like God.

It does not act like God.

In the Mystery of the incarnation, no earthly matter

or place is too humble or too low or too ordinary

for divine presence.  Mary, an ordinary woman,

bears the Son, straw, stable and animals, the worthy

audience and guardians of this self-disclosure

of God among us.

Awake to the Inner Presence and you will

experience matter as matter and God as the

Mystery and the reality that these two both

co-exist here and now.

There is no separation between holy and ordinary.

The Mystery of the Incarnation of the divine into the ordinary

has been told through many aeons of time and through

many cultures and traditions.  It is not only now

in the new unfolding age that we are being reminded

that woman metaphorically and in human

consciousness, represent matter (mater) and that

woman (matter) mothers the Divine.  Isis held the suckling

Osiris to her breast as did Inanna and other ancient goddesses.

Awake to the Inner Presence by discovering your story that

lives within you.  In the High Priestess card in the Mysteries of Mary Tarot,

she has stepped off the wheel of fate (usually symbolised by your

astrology chart which has fixed your destiny in time and space) and

she has stepped off the half-moon.  Often the High Priestess,

the Virgin Goddess, the Queen of Heaven, stands on the half-moon,

symbolising amongst other things, the influence of the hidden

world of emotions.

The Soul within you is priestessing the healing balm for your own

personal story, but first you have to learn to let go of the ideas

of who you think you are and what life should be like, and

start to pay attention to the unlived story within.

'From his innermost being will flow rivers of living water'

What is the myth that you are living?

Myths are alive in our consciousness and they reflect our cultural

understanding of the personal and transpersonal stories that 

are playing out in our time and in our personal lives.

There is an unconscious and preconscious myth 

which is forming you and unfolding through you as your life.

It dictates your reactions, your responses, your defenses

as it is rooted in an archetypal mythical story and 

until you uncover the story and find its healing balm,

you will not be able to truly become an autonomous being.

Mostly we believe that when we are acting in the opposite

way of our upbringing, or our wounding, or our parents, or our

tribe, that we are autonomous, but this is not true.  We are then

still being run by this script as we are not free to act

autonomously and holy (healed).

Each one of us is born into a personal myth.  We did not

choose the race, culture, place and time into which we were

born.  These factors make up the personal and historical myth

which will unfold in our life.  We have a choice what we will

do with this myth.  Through our growing up process we will

have many experience and we will have many learning

opportunities and these will all add to us - through the losses

that we had to endure and the victories that we may have claimed,

we will grow into adolescence and then we  no longer need

those experiences.

Sometimes we inherited a deep psychological and spiritual

wound.  We need to know what we were born into so that

we can wake up and realise that our perspective of the

world is not true, that it is skewed through our inheritance

or our upbringing or our experiences.

In order to cope with your early life experiences, you may

have created an anti-myth for yourself in which you became

someone other than yourself.  It is also important to uncover

this anti-myth because this is also not your true story that

wants to be lived.  This is a fantastical story that also

shapes the way that you see the world and which will

not serve you any longer after childhood.

These two aspects of your personal myth will overlap and

both have contributed to whom who you have become.

In order for the spell to be broken, you need to become

disenchanted.  Unless and even if, you do your inner work

and face the myths that you created about yourself, life

may still confront you with shattering life experiences in order

to shatter the mirror of illusions that you continue to stare into.

Once the disenchantment is allowed to take place and you step

off the wheel of fate, the High Priestess within will start to

pour the living waters from which you can continuously

drink.  She is in complete balance, the waters contained in two

sacred vessels, the hieros gamos of heaven and earth, 

alive within you.

'To seek God without already having Him, is of all things the most impossible'