Tarot for Taurus Season: The Empress and the Hierophant
Cultivating a relationship of honor with Mother Earth
Today is Beltane, the May Day festival which marks the beginning of summer in the Celtic tradition. Much like Samhain, which lies on the opposite pole of the wheel of the year, Beltane is a time when the veil is thin and you may catch a glimpse of Faerie out of the corner of your eye when you least expect it. Beltane is also a celebration of “open pasturing”, when cattle were driven between two bonfires and out into summer pastures. In my Taurus Season piece earlier this month, I explored the white bulls of Greek mythology and their winding tales of lust and pride. If you identified any wild impulses of your own, now is a good time to let them wander, after a nice cleansing brush with the fires of your purest intention.
Beltane is also a fertility festival and a celebration of life’s pleasures, which is another instance of Taurus energy. It is a time too to honor the union of the divine masculine and feminine energies that bring forth all life. As Sophie Strand writes in her poem Beltaine:
They jumped through the fire, it is said.
Were wed. His arms, oak-twisted, fastened
to her fields. Her blue rose erupted in his glen.
Last month, for Aries season, I discussed the Emperor tarot card, which can represent the divine masculine. There are two tarot cards associated with Taurus. The most commonly cited is the priestly Hierophant. The second, The Empress, seems to me a better fit for this season of lush fertility. What better symbol of earthy, Venus-ruled Taurus than this representation of the divine feminine, Mother Earth. Like her counterpart the Emperor, the Empress holds the globe of the Earth in her hand. She is adorned with a crown of twelve stars, reminding us of the connection between Earth and the cosmos. There is also a glimmer here of Asterion, the “starry one”, who waited in the center of the labyrinth of Crete. Sophie Strand gives us yet another way to consider the Emperor and Empress: May King and May Queen, the horned Oak King and his bride.
As we explore the Empress archetype and Taurus energy, I want to share another legend featuring a white bovine which I recently encountered. According to legend, 2,000 years ago two Lakota warriors were out hunting when a white buffalo calf began walking towards them. As the calf approached, it transformed into a graceful young woman, cloaked in pure white. Upon seeing her beauty, one warrior was overtaken by lust. The woman welcomed him to her and the two were engulfed in a black cloud of swirling dust. When the dust cleared, the woman stepped away to reveal a pile of bones. The other warrior fell to his knees in prayer. She told him to return to his people and prepare for her arrival. When she reached the village, White Buffalo Calf Woman instructed the people to kindle a fire. As she walked in a circle around its blaze she imparted seven ceremonies to honor the land and the Great Spirit. White Buffalo Calf Woman left behind a sacred bundle containing a clay pipe, which is still held by the Lakota people.
Before she departed, White Buffalo Calf Woman promised that one day, when the world was seized by greed, war, and famine, she would return. The birth of a white buffalo calf would be the sign that it was time to restore harmony and balance once more. The white dove that rests across the Empress’s breastbone in the Gill Tarot card seems to me to whisper the same promise.
On April 25th of this year, a white buffalo calf was born on Wagon Springs Ranch in Burnet, Texas. While this is not the first time such a calf has been identified over the years, it is a timely symbol that I felt was too potent to ignore. White Buffalo Calf Woman is an Empress figure, instructing her people in the proper rites for honoring the Earth. In her story we again encounter the forces of lust, the shadow side of Taurus, this time contrasted with reverence and ceremony.
While lust for sexual pleasure is central to many legends and myths, it is not the only way we overstep the bounds of right relationship with other humans and the more than human world. In The Unlikely Peace at Cuchumaquic, an account of his experiences on a Pueblo Indian reservation and apprenticing to a Guatemalan shaman, Martín Prechtel writes:
All the natural things of the world also addressed the “debt” they too caused the natural world, because of course they too needed to eat, fly, swim, live, flower, and take cover. But because the natural things of the world were the diverse manifestations of Holy Time itself, they could feed the Holy “whole” of Nature by just being themselves…
The human capacity to damage and interrupt the proceedance of all natural life and matter with their clever ability to exploit nature to not only feed themselves, but “get” what they wanted, was tallied by the Holy in Nature as a debt of such immensity as to be unpayable to this Holy Diversity in a natural fashion.
Prechtel’s explanation of the debt all living things owe to the “Holy ‘whole’ of Nature”, is the most compelling interpretation I have seen of humanity’s inherent sin. Most living things take only what they need to fulfill their roles as “diverse manifestations of Holy Time itself”. Only humans have the uniquely “clever ability” to take more to get what we want. This is an uncomfortable fact to sit with. It means that even I, even you, even the most saintly figures we look to for guidance, are tainted by this ravenous nature- the flesh-eating minotaur that we can never completely vanquish.
However, our very sinfulness gives us the unique opportunity to address our debt in what Prechtel calls “the most beautiful, determined, and patient way… delicious creative language, rich generously long rituals, and cleverness of humans whose Earth-wrecking cleverness also did the wounding.” Ritual, then, is one way we can repair our relationship with Mother Earth. White Buffalo Calf Woman told the Lakota people as much when she instructed them in the ways of the pipe, the sweat lodge, and the sun dance.
With this in mind, perhaps the Hierophant of the Tarot has some wisdom to share this Taurus season after all. In Living Astrology, Britten Larue explains:
Hieros [is] a Greek word meaning “sacred.” Joined to a derivative of phainein, which means “to show,” the Hierophant shows and speaks what is sacred. The original hierophants were priests of the ancient Greek city of Eleusis who performed sacred rites. They oversaw the rituals for understanding the mysteries of life, death, and rebirth.
I feel there is a great need today for true Hierophants, those who can instruct others in the “beautiful, determined, and patient” ways of ritual that honor our debts to this Holy Earth. But it is also possible to build this practice ourselves, by revisiting ceremonies from our own cultural lineage, accepting invitations to participate in the traditions of others, and by inventing new rituals for a new age. I myself have found walking the labyrinth, performing the Passover Seder, and crafting medicine with local plants to be powerful acts that ground me in my responsibility to the Holy. I invite you to share your own ritual practices in the comments. Perhaps we can act as hierophants for one another, building together a path of harmony and respect.
Finally, I will share my rendition of the Empress tarot card. The female figure is Julia Moore, a science illustrator featured in Asheville Made magazine.
Further reading:
Story of the White Buffalo Calf Woman: http://www.thepeoplespaths.net/lit/bufwoman.htm