Bat Chicken
http://www.mary-el.com/17.html
I have always struggled with this card. This one sheds a little more light on it for me. The nearly monochrome orange colour makes me think again of the sacral chakra. The only other colour is indigo and it is the only indication of water.
The woman (angel?) whose pose is similar to Christ on the Cross bears the circles of stigmata. She seems to float above in infinite crowd of people who seem to fade into the landscape.
Her image reminds me of a peaceful Hierophant, the ideal that does not exist and is as distorted in that card as it is calm in this one.
Then there is the 6 pointed star on her dress. I have come across this before and thought I’d repeat part of the quote here from J.E. Cirlot's Dictionary of Symbols:
In most depictions of the symbol, the center of the symbol is implied. In this one (also seen on the hand of the Emperor) the center is marked by lines and is actually there. The word that comes up under similar symbols in the alchemical term ‘coniunctio’
These are all images that appear in the Mary El Tarot and the last one seems to predict the two following cards.
Thoughts?
I have always struggled with this card. This one sheds a little more light on it for me. The nearly monochrome orange colour makes me think again of the sacral chakra. The only other colour is indigo and it is the only indication of water.
The woman (angel?) whose pose is similar to Christ on the Cross bears the circles of stigmata. She seems to float above in infinite crowd of people who seem to fade into the landscape.
Her image reminds me of a peaceful Hierophant, the ideal that does not exist and is as distorted in that card as it is calm in this one.
Then there is the 6 pointed star on her dress. I have come across this before and thought I’d repeat part of the quote here from J.E. Cirlot's Dictionary of Symbols:
… it is a symbol of the human soul as a 'conjunction' of consciousness and the unconscious…
In most depictions of the symbol, the center of the symbol is implied. In this one (also seen on the hand of the Emperor) the center is marked by lines and is actually there. The word that comes up under similar symbols in the alchemical term ‘coniunctio’
Coniunctio is synonymous with the red and white rose, the snake or dragon that bites its own tail and the sun and the moon that are united.
These are all images that appear in the Mary El Tarot and the last one seems to predict the two following cards.
Thoughts?