The Virgin Priestess
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The Marseilles card
The Waite-Smith card
The Penitent Magdalene
Stage IV - Conjunction
The key to this stage is that the Blasted Tower, discussed back in Chapter 11, is rebuilt here.
The four cards of this stage, The Virgin Priestess, The Chariot, Transference and The Hermit, are considered as a vertical series, starting at the bottom. The Virgin Priestess (called The High Priestess in most modern decks, a name not nearly so revealing of her function) represents the genesis of what the Fool must create from within himself or herself, so this card has the sense of conception from a virgin state, meaning a state that the Fool has created internally during the previous stages. It is from this clear state that the birthing or rebirthing process can begin.
And thus we come to the central mystery of the journey: What birthing process? This is an impossible subject to addressso briefly and leave a coherent meaning. However, the essential elements are as follows: The Fool, like us all, consists of two parts, which is what the Sun and Gemini were meant to depict in Stage I. These two parts are first the Ego or Personality which consists mostly of our conscious awareness, and second a higher, spiritual part that resides within, but is usually unknown for the reasons we discussed at length in Part 1. The task of the Fool is to separate these two parts, so that the one can be purified and the other strengthened. In esoteric terms, this means actually creating, or rather, crystallizing and strengthening, a second body, albeit a non-physical body, hence the mystery.
This second body is known by many names. In different traditions: pranic body, subtle body, spiritual body, Merkabah. Here, it is represented by The Chariot card. Since the higher realms the Fool is going to encounter on this journey have higher levels of energy than our physical body is used to, another body which is suitable for these levels is required. We all have one, of course, but it must be prepared and readied to carry our consciousness—another aspect of the mystery.
The next card is called Transference (elsewhere Temperance, a clear misdirection). The figure is shown transferring a substance from one goblet to another. The goblets represent the physical and subtle body; the “fluid” is consciousness.
The top card here is The Hermit. This newly constituted body is not yet an independent entity. It is a body of light, however, and is shown as the Hermit’s lantern, which must be “held” by the physical mind/body at this stage.
This entire process is mediated by the figure of the Virgin Priestess, and hence her new name, for this stage depicts the conception of a new body inside the matrix of this Priestess. The actual birth occurs in Stage VI.
The Virgin Priestess
A break now occurs in the journey, a gap or jump. The inner temple or home base created at the Emperor stage, and stabilized by Strength, now comes alive in a mystical process that begins with a wedding, a betrothal, between the Fool and the energetic power of the universe, which is called Shakti in Tantrism. The Virgin Priestess represents power and the essential force that underlies all life. The conscious awareness, which up to now resided in (or at least seemed to reside in) the Fool’s body, now begins to transfer into a new vessel—the Emperor’s inner fortress—that has been prepared for it. This vessel is represented by The Chariot.
The mystical wedding is not physical, therefore the act is not physical either. The wedding is between the Warrior-Fool and the creative power of the cosmos. The Virgin Priestess card represents an archetype, a real, living power. It is contacted by an inner process the Warrior-Fool undertakes.
No human gender is implied by the figure on this card. A symbolic wedding occurs at this stage—called hieros gamos or mystical wedding in many traditions—but it is not a physical wedding involving physical bodies. Since this is a difficult concept for us to grasp, several analogous concepts are presented to make the idea clear. One is the idea of Shiva as consciousness and Shakti as energy and form from the Hindu and Tantric traditions. Another is the thirteenth century poem Thomas the Rhymer. There is also an image from Notre Dame cathedral that is very helpful in understanding this mystery, which has been described as “the Woman drags the Soul completely out of the Body and makes it cross a sea of fiery water,” and “She must stay by your side and sustain your being within the shamanic dream that needs to be awakened…”
