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The High Priestess's The Magician The Fool

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Eventually, the High Priestess leaves her temple and goes out into nature. It is in nature that she takes her inner knowledge and uses it to create an outward reality, thereby becoming the Empress (III). Unlike her virgin predecessor, the Empress is married. Her husband the Emperor (IV) is her masculine counterpart. Whereas the Empress is surrounded by untamed nature, the Emperor sits in his throne room (Nichols, 1980). He is the Father archetype that provides order to the archetypal chaos of the Mother Empress. The marriage of the Emperor and the Empress represents the union of thinking and feeling. It is through the Emperor that the magical creativity of the Magician meets logic and reason. Just as the High Priestess teaches the Magician …show more content…

Even the forest shows restraint in growing, as trees shed their leaves in the Fall. The message of Temperance is that everything has a time and a place. Without Temperance, one risks an encounter with the Devil (XV). The Devil appears when Temperance falls to the wayside. He represents unrestrained lust, greed and materialism. Spending too much time with the Devil will cause the Fool’s downfall. Fear not, the destruction of the Fool’s Tower (XVI) only represents the destruction of an old paradigm. The tower, far from being a fortification, is in fact holding the Fool prisoner (Nichols, 1980). Given that lightning is associated with the Gods, this is a destruction ordained by the Divine. Unable to see the quagmire in which he is embroiled, it takes an act of God to wake up the Fool. Lightning forcibly ushers the Fool into …show more content…

The World card concludes the third row, completing the Fool’s assimilation into the Realm of Heavenly Illumination and Self-Realization (Nichols, 1980). In the World card, the Fool meets the Self archetype. The Fool has undergone so many transformations and integrated the many facets of himself into a cohesive whole. He is not confined to the expression of a single, hyperbolic archetype. The character on the World card is naked, because she represents the authentic Self. However, there is a small strip of fabric wrapped around her. This is to symbolize that there are always aspects of the Self to be discovered. This fact is also represented by the circular wreath surrounding her. This wreath symbolizes that the journey to individuation is never complete. The Fool is destined to repeat this cycle, each time with an added layer of

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