Morgan's Tarot Monday

DOWN HOME FUNK

"The palace in the center of Shambhala, or any other paradise, might seem to be far away because we are looking from the wrong dimension. Paradise could lie where the forces of the universe are balanced in contentment and harmony."

Where are you at...? Are you in a place that you find contentment wherever you happen to be or are you looking to external means for your balance and contentment? Often,

Tarot Tuesday

"I would like a story," says the salamander to the Hierophant.


"And what would you like to hear, little one?" The words come slowly. Each syllable seems to be drawn from deep within, pulled up from an individual rootlet. The salamander is used to it, and patient.


Stephanie Pui-Mun Law 
from Shadowscapes companion book

The Hierophant card can be seen as a positive card in a tarot spread... It represents someone in search of higher truths and who is spiritual in nature. Customs and traditions are highlighted and it suggests that we can all find comfort in our culture, especially during hard and difficult times. It is time to get back to basics, like the ancients from our past did.

The Hierophant is someone who is able to see through the superficial and get straight to the heart of the matter. He has a healthy connection with life and living, someone who has experienced life in full and now has the experience and wisdom needed in order to teach others, like that of the wise old tree we see in this card.


He is a spiritual teacher and represents gateways to a higher consciousness reached in a ritualized way.The Hierophant can be considered to the link between the higher plane... he teaches  by word and example as the wise old tree to the salamander.

The Hierophant encourages us to find freedom through knowledge and exploration. He may indicate that it is a good time for you to seek counsel from someone that is more experienced. You may be longing for structured spirituality, perhaps in the form of religious services. 


This might be a time where you are in the process of finding meaning for your life and you may be questioning you own behavior. In a tarot reading, the Hierophant encourages you to look within and explore your truths and it may be telling you to adopt a more conventional way of thinking.

Of Pentagrams And Apples

I came upon an interesting tidbit about pentagrams and their association with apples ( a pentacle is the five pointed star and a pentagram is the same five pointed star enclosed in a circle) and believe it or not had never heard of the pagan lore attached to it. As follows is a (not so )brief summary of it's origins in pagan history

Think of an apple... juicy and red and ripe for the picking. When it is sliced in half, it magically shows us a five pointed star formed by the seeds inside. Each of these five seeds contain a symbolism reflecting the spiritual aspects of this universal symbol: idea; sustenance; life, secret knowledge and the hidden mysteries within the earth.

Remember the story of Adam and Eve...? In Christian lore, the apple represented hidden knowledge which was forbidden to human kind and the apple signified that which we should not attempt to know ... and attempts over the centuries to obtain knowledge of the Universe ...and therefore, ourselves... were suppressed. The pentagram in its modern guise as the pentacle was also a target of this subjugation.

The pentagram was originally a symbol of the goddess, Kore, who was worshipped in many countries as widespread as England and Egypt thousands of years ago, but under many different names (i.e. Cara, Ceres, Carnak, Core, Car, Karnak, etc). Kore's sacred fruit was the apple. When cut through its equator, the apple has a near perfect pentagram shape inside, with each point containing a seed. Many Wiccans, Pagans and Roma (Gypsies) still cut apples in this way and the Roma refer to apple cores as Stars of Knowledge

Think of this next time you eat an apple. -spirituality-goddess-symbols