The things I missed in this deck - after 28 years of looking!!

firemaiden

Rosanne said:
I cannot believe I have never seen this before! I even have a framed HP on Art paper (without the Letters on the pillars, curtesy of Fulgour) and have never taken this in. So HP is facing the door into the temple in this card- her back to the sea! I too, have been using this deck for years and years- funny I can find no mention of it in the many books about RWS. Thank you levannah.
~Rosanne


Ah yes! Thank you for pointing this out. I think Umbrae and I should have made more of this on our thread about the HP....

The sea is behind her, because she is guarding the exit from King Solomon's Temple, not the entrance - - once you pass her and leave the temple, you are at the "sea" - ...
Then he made the molten sea: it was round, ten cubits from brim to brim and five cubits high. A line of thirty cubits would encircle it completley. Under its brim were panels all around it [...]Its brim was made like the brim of a cup, like the flower of a lily; it held two thousand baths" [Kings 7:23-26]​
 

Alta

You sure about that firemaiden? I thought the 'sea' was inside the temple and a part of the sacred ritual. The sea behind the HP looks like a real one to me, not a 'bath' supported by bronze cherbim etc.
 

Umbrae

Kings 7: 23 He made the Sea of cast metal, circular in shape, measuring ten cubits from rim to rim and five cubits high. It took a line of thirty cubits to measure around it. 24 Below the rim, gourds encircled it—ten to a cubit. The gourds were cast in two rows in one piece with the Sea.
25 The Sea stood on twelve bulls, three facing north, three facing west, three facing south and three facing east. The Sea rested on top of them, and their hindquarters were toward the center. 26 It was a handbreadth in thickness, and its rim was like the rim of a cup, like a lily blossom. It held two thousand baths. (11,500+ Gallons)
In 7:39 we learn: “He placed five of the stands on the south side of the temple and five on the north. He placed the Sea on the south side, at the southeast corner of the temple”
It is common to depict the ‘sea’ at the corner but overlapping the entrance (since it was large enough to do so).
 

firemaiden

It is supposed to be in the courtyard.

The bible passage difficult to deciper, and everything in the passage has the been interpreted several ways (especially the units of measure, "cubit" and "bath") but in my travels through the internet, the images I saw put the huge brass basin of water called the "molten sea" or "brass sea" or "brazen sea" outside the entrance, or slightly to the left.

ON the wikipedia entry there is a sketch Solomon's Temple showing it that way; and on this page Solomon's Temple Copy of Phoenician Temple of Melqart in Tyre it is depicted to the left of the entrance.
 

Alta

Oh, okay. I actually like that part of the Bible, but for some reason always pictured the baths or seas inside.
 

levannah60

Your welcome!
 

levannah60

HP and flowers

The sea of the HP in the Bible? There's a new one as well. WIll have to look into the flowers thing too, most of the time, I just think 'flowers' and that's it. THe closest I've come to identification is the roses and lililes (Passion and inocence?) in the Magician card.
 

Rosanne

It seems to me that the only Temples who had seas and lakes were the Egyptians. These were Deity Temples, and the water was for libations and purification rituals. In the rest of the middle East they had Oblong/t shaped or circular troughs for purification as water was liquid gold. They were outside the temple. Why would Solomans Temple have a sea inside? Would not the bath have been for a form of ritual Baptism- not puirification? You had to be clean before you went in ( and your nails clipped etc ) Maybe on the High ZPriestess it is the Sea on the Moon? ~Rosanne
 

firecatpickles

You raise a good question. In Judaic tradition, the purifying bath is called the mikvah; and orthodox, conservative and ultra-orthodox Jewish women must take one before entering schule (and presumable the Temple in ancient times). There must be a connection; however I am not a Hebrew or Kabbalah scholar, alas...
 

Sedi

Is it just me or is The Tower one of the towers in The Moon or Death (perhaps seen from the back as it has three windows rather than just one)?


Les.