Tarot from Conscience (or the Traveling Moth)
A space for tarot reflection for the day, week, or moment it comes across your screen. Each of these is reworked intentionally for The Edge, from the egregore of GroupTarot’s Card of the Week, to center education, diversity, and intuition.
Partial content copyright 2021 GroupTarot, week of Oct. 18, 2020. Used with permission.
While I don’t always intentionally align numerology – I know enough about this system to notice it and share in personal ways – the fifth card in the Major Arcana does want to be focused on for my fifth offering here.
The Heirophant.
In some ways this card has a lot of baggage with its ties to the Pope and Holy Roman Empire.
It also reminds us to live and beam out our beliefs and values, to allow them to radiate from us. To be spiritual leaders.
Creator of the Sacred Rose Tarot, Johanna Gargiulo-Sherman, shifts this illustration from the very Roman Catholic iconography in the RWS (Rider Waite Smith) and Marseilles traditions. This Hierophant is seated or squatting in a grove of trees, in front of a body of water reflecting the starry sky. Or maybe is in a different world entirely where the Heavens are below our feet.
There are no people this leader is preaching for, to, or at. Except maybe the ferns in the foreground.
There is a cross at their center, but there is an even bigger star at their back, and a tower of golden crown light inspiration, along with the traditional blind eyes of Oracles.
I can’t remember what the rod in their left hand is supposed to be and I don’t want to break the flow of writing to look it up. What I am struck by is how it looks like the structures holding up modern day power lines. And there is a kinship between electricity and Divine inspiration (regardless of our personal definitions of the Divine). It’s talked about as tingles, sparks, electric… We talk of ourselves being open conduits sharing messages and information…
One of my dear friends Phoenix signs all of her social media messages with “shine on.”
That is the invitation of today’s card.
“Shine on.”
Radiate from the intersections of your truths and experiences.
Stay grounded in the physical and metaphysical worlds.
Reflect other’s brilliance respectfully.
Receive and share information with a full 360 degree awareness, which includes all the deep, dark, gooey parts of our core, as well as the spaces we inhabit.
Remember our bright star is one of many in the night sky.
Together we make ***Constellations***
Our cycles are seated in and rooted with, the cycles of the Earth and the cycles of the land we reside on. We each effect the other. We are information conduits for each other.
Sometimes, the Heavens and Great Mysteries are below us.
“Shine on.”
And share information with those who want to receive it.
No one likes robocalls or spam. 😉
“Shine on.”
Whether your light is seen and received instantly, or whether your light and contributions are understood thousands of years later – like us looking down at those constellations and not knowing whether or not the star that emitted the light we’re looking at died thousands of years ago and we’re just now in the perfect celestial alignment to receive it, or like Pamela Coleman Smith illustrating a tarot deck that changed the entire course of our art and tarot over the last hundred years,
“Shine on.”
More about the deck’s creator – Johanna Gargiulo Sherman https://www.coneyislandhistory.org/oral-history-archive/johanna-gargiulo-sherman
To purchase this deck: I don’t have a favorite store or publisher link for this one. I always recommend calling your local brick & mortar first before heading online.
Further recommended reading – or listening! Podcast http://www.tarotpodcast.com/ttgpodcast/tarot-to-go-radio-019.mp3
By Kate Mura, Owner of Group Tarot and Creator of Conscience (or the Traveling Moth)
Find out more about Kate in her YouTube interview Welcome to Group Tarot with Kate Mura
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