Bat Chicken
Buryn's keywords: intuitive knowledge, archetypal sexuality, proud independence, lunar inspiration, spatial issues, compassion, assertive imagination
I think I have been avoiding the feminine cards in this deck. With the profusion of feminine cards in other decks I have studied it has been trip to ride through the structured power of an "Emperor's" deck. My soul card is the Emperor and he has been enjoying Blake. The feminine cards just seem to leave me flat and in learning about Blake's, although enlightened, but not always positive view of feminine power influenced by his times, his ideology and his acquaintance with Mary Wollstonecraft, I am left wanting to believe a less likely but more positive view of Blake's women.
Blake's women are 'emanations' of their male counterparts, their 'anima'. They seem to misunderstand their power and therefore not use it wisely. If we look at the holistic view, Blake is perhaps commenting on two things here - first that to be whole, we must embrace or reunite our masculine and feminine by experiencing both. He could also be commenting on women in his society and their powerlessness that was expressed through manipulation. Mary Wollstonecraft (mother of Mary Shelley author of Frankenstein) wrote commentary on the state of women in society. She was one of the early feminists and was contemporary with Blake, running in his circles. Blake illustrated her "Original Stories from Real Life". They shared ideas on traditional marriage and saw it as a kind of female slavery.
The painting in this card is actually cropped from the original called both "Hecate" and "The Night of Enitharmon's Joy". (see second attachment) Enitharmon is the consort of Los and the only 'emanation' to be mortal. She is material and she is "Eve', "…she is the Moon of love to Los' Sun"(Damon). Where Los is Time (Magic), Enitharmon is Space - the Body (Mystery).
Enitharmon is called both the Queen of Heaven and Earth Goddess. Her relationship to the Greek Goddess Hecate, the original name of the image is in her triple aspect, the 'triple female Taberancle' (genetalia) - perhaps an expression of Tharmas' gate in "Innocence". The connection to that card goes further with Hecate's association with the dog and her status as a 'liminal' Goddess at the limit between the earth and the Underworld.
From this link
In Hecate/Enitharmon, I see the shadow, the dark feminine, the Mystery. She looks toward the crocodile, the cat/bat is above her - more allusions to Egyptian symbolism - "…The Egyptian word for cat is mau, meaning to see, and both the moon and the cat were seers by night. As the moon reflects the light of the sun, so the cat was supposed to reflect the moon on account of its phosphorescent eyes. In the form of the goddess Bast the cat keeps watch for the sun, with her paw holding down and bruising the head of the serpent of darkness, the sun's eternal enemy." (http://www.wisdomworld.org/additional/ancientlandmarks/EgyptianSymbolsWorship.html)
More tomorrow... It's too late!
I think I have been avoiding the feminine cards in this deck. With the profusion of feminine cards in other decks I have studied it has been trip to ride through the structured power of an "Emperor's" deck. My soul card is the Emperor and he has been enjoying Blake. The feminine cards just seem to leave me flat and in learning about Blake's, although enlightened, but not always positive view of feminine power influenced by his times, his ideology and his acquaintance with Mary Wollstonecraft, I am left wanting to believe a less likely but more positive view of Blake's women.
Blake's women are 'emanations' of their male counterparts, their 'anima'. They seem to misunderstand their power and therefore not use it wisely. If we look at the holistic view, Blake is perhaps commenting on two things here - first that to be whole, we must embrace or reunite our masculine and feminine by experiencing both. He could also be commenting on women in his society and their powerlessness that was expressed through manipulation. Mary Wollstonecraft (mother of Mary Shelley author of Frankenstein) wrote commentary on the state of women in society. She was one of the early feminists and was contemporary with Blake, running in his circles. Blake illustrated her "Original Stories from Real Life". They shared ideas on traditional marriage and saw it as a kind of female slavery.
The painting in this card is actually cropped from the original called both "Hecate" and "The Night of Enitharmon's Joy". (see second attachment) Enitharmon is the consort of Los and the only 'emanation' to be mortal. She is material and she is "Eve', "…she is the Moon of love to Los' Sun"(Damon). Where Los is Time (Magic), Enitharmon is Space - the Body (Mystery).
Enitharmon is called both the Queen of Heaven and Earth Goddess. Her relationship to the Greek Goddess Hecate, the original name of the image is in her triple aspect, the 'triple female Taberancle' (genetalia) - perhaps an expression of Tharmas' gate in "Innocence". The connection to that card goes further with Hecate's association with the dog and her status as a 'liminal' Goddess at the limit between the earth and the Underworld.
From this link
In Hecate/Enitharmon, I see the shadow, the dark feminine, the Mystery. She looks toward the crocodile, the cat/bat is above her - more allusions to Egyptian symbolism - "…The Egyptian word for cat is mau, meaning to see, and both the moon and the cat were seers by night. As the moon reflects the light of the sun, so the cat was supposed to reflect the moon on account of its phosphorescent eyes. In the form of the goddess Bast the cat keeps watch for the sun, with her paw holding down and bruising the head of the serpent of darkness, the sun's eternal enemy." (http://www.wisdomworld.org/additional/ancientlandmarks/EgyptianSymbolsWorship.html)
More tomorrow... It's too late!
