February 1, 2011 - The High Priestess

Just back from the Santa Barbara Film Festival, this was the card I drew.  It was an interesting weekend, to say the least.  I spent a day with my past, and there weren't tears, and there wasn't passion, at least not the young passion there had been years ago.  I was present but detached, there and yet observing.  I guess you could say I was the High Priestess, not making things happen but glorying in each unfolding moment.  


When the High Priestess arrives in a reading she heralds a time of inaction.  We live in a culture which values action, doing, expression.  The cycle of movement is contraction and extension; the cycle of respiration is inspiration and expiration, but in each of these active cycles, comes moments of pause, of rest.  She counsels patience, the High Priestess.  She tells you good things come to those who wait and that sometimes "desires can be realized through the stillness that gives desire a chance to flower within the fullness of time" (Joan Bunning, learntarot.com).  Waiting and patience are not my strong suit.  Life, though, has shown me 'grandmotherly kindness' these past few years, rapping me often with a hard stick the way Zen masters do to make a point, to move us out of complacency.  I'm learning a glorious patience and a a marvelous stillness.


The High Priestess suggests it is time to use our intuition, to trust your inner voice, to open to dreams and the imagination.  I've been quieting these past couple of years, trying to hear the small, still voice inside.  It struck me this last weekend that I hear that still voice loud and clear these days.  I have come to the High Priestess place, backed into it you could say.  So now what?


I'm thinking she's here to tell me to open to what could be, to wait, to watch, to look deeper, to settle into the unknown and to let it unfold.  No pushing.  No making something happen, or trying to.  That's all illusion anyway.  As I wrote to a friend recently, he in the thick of his 'interesting times,' at best we collaborate with life or it with us, at worst we are swept away like Odysseus with only our faith and Ina's scarf between us and the sea.  


So I will be the High Priestess and whatever other card comes as I take this journey.  I'll sit, steeped in mystery, and let whatever is there flower.