High Priestess as Hathor - Long
msesheta
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The Tarot High Priestess as Hathor
Kerry A. Shirts
When we look at the High Priestess in the Tarot deck, what and who do we see? This card is such a remarkable card symbolically, that it is near impossible to exhaust its symbolism. Nor will I try in this paper. However, the crown she wears is worth looking at as it suggests the Egyptian Goddess Hathor, a most significant personage. True Isis also wears this crown so sometimes this lady is called the Isis of the Tarot, which is not incorrect, but I believe the crown is Hathor’s and thereon lies a tale to tell.
Here is the High Priestess of the Waite/Rider Tarot. Note the two horned crown with the moon in between. When our eyes gaze upon this beautiful card, we notice several striking things The two pillars flanking her the B and J pillars, obviously the biblical Jachin and Boaz of Solomon’s Temple, are black and white. A duality is at play here, black and white, left and right, male and female, day and night, etc. This is the "Tora", the law of nature from our lives here on earth. In ancient Egyptian thought, as Sigried Morentz has shown, the left was the place for putting evil, the right for good. (er schicke den Bsen zur Linken und den Guten zur Rechten). The expression h'w apparently meant a real place for the ascent of the sun, the place where the sun burns evils (wo sie die Bsen verbrennt). It is a mythic poetic expression for the East in Egyptian thought (mythisch-poetischen Ausdruck fr den Osten, see Sigfried Morentz, "Rechts und links im Totengericht", in ZAS, 1957: 63, 64).
Now lets unveil this card a bit. The symbolism is poignant, so lets give birth to our deeper understanding. Notice the veil of pomegranates behind her. What is it? Joe Steve Swick III has demonstrated something remarkable to me concerning this card. Pomegranates are symbols of fertility, which aptly fits the Goddess as a Fertility Goddess of Life. But there is something hidden here. Hathor, the Egyptian Goddess gave birth to the Egyptian Sun God Ra as we shall see here shortly in our translation and analysis of the Egyptian Book of the Dead Chapter 17. But look again at the veil and see what it is. This is the Tree of Life of the Qabalah!
Now the High Priestess takes on a hidden significance of cosmological proportions. She herself is the Tree of Life, the giver of life. Through her even the Gods are born! She is the principle of life, as Sophia, the "Wisdom" and wife of God. She is the central pillar of the 3 pillars in the Cabalah Tree of Life. Her fecundity is assured as she is tree, woman, giver and securer of the "Law" (Tora – the scroll in her hand and partly hidden under her veil) as well as the guardian of the portal, the entrance between the pillars. Life gets by no one except through her. She is the gate, she is the portal, she is the vehicle of life. The Hathor crown affirms this understanding. Chapter 17 of the Egyptian Book of the Dead sheds some light on this. What I wish to do is share some of my notes, my scribblings, transcriptions, translations, and analysis of the Egyptian Hieroglyphs in Chapter 17, and correlate what it says there with what we see in this Tarot Card.
Here is the Hieratic, with hieroglyphic on the outside edge of Chapter 17, columns 29, 30. Faulkner’s translation says that eternity and everlasting are two different concepts. The example as translated here is instructive. "As for eternity, it means daytime." Notice this is the translation of the right handed column here, ir neheh pu hrw Notice the determinative of the sun, the circle with the dot in it in the word hrw = day. Then Faulkner translates "as for everlasting, it means night." The Egyptian words ir dt pu grh. When we relook at the High Priestess, we note that there are two pillars flanking her, one dark (night), the other light (day). Even in the eternities, in the field of time, there are opposites as the Egyptians and the Tarot indicates.
Now here are columns 72, 73 of Chapter 17 in the Book of the Dead. Here we have a description of Thoth raising the hair of the God and fetching the eye when it was sick, and then spitting on it to heal it in the next column, which I will show you in the next picture. But what does the Eye of the God have to do with our High Priestess of the Tarot? Everything once you realize the symbolism in the card. The Hathor crown is the whole key to it. The full moon in that crown is the Eye of the God. In Egyptian Mythology, the sun and moon were the right and left eyes of God. The maid (our High Priestess) as the mother is the wife of the Great Father who is the fighting bull (Wildstier) and the female compliment of the Creator God in ancient Egypt. Kees says she is the rational part of the male/female relationship, and appears as Hathor at Heliopolis. (Hermann Kees, "Zu den �gyptischen Mondsagen," in ZAS, 1925: 5). Later in Chapter 17 we find another interesting context for our Tarot Card. Again, this might appear small on the screen, but printing it out will help you see it easier on paper. It shows up rather well that way. In the mean time I can explain it for you here. What I have done is expanded out each column that is relevant to the discussion, and transcribed and translated it, with Faulkner’s help in his various books and articles.
Column 74 is where it says Thoth spit on the eye to heal it. This forcefully reminds us of Jesus doing the same thing on one occasion with a blind man. Column 75-76 is the important columns establishing that Ra was born from the Cow. Nes iw maa na Ra Mes em sef er, "I have seen the Sun-God born (mes) from the buttocks of the Celestial Cow (Hathor). And the hieroglyph for Hathor, with her crown, is in column 76, the 10th hieroglyph down from the top.
Column 77 is quite important as it demonstrates that the heavens in Egyptian thought, are water. Eref su ennu ennui en pet "it means these waters of the sky." Why is that important? Look back at the Tarot High Priestess at the bottom of her gown and what do you see? The Crescent moon. Notice how her gown or robe looks like flowing water. It symbolizes the cosmological watery heavens.
Now column 78 is also important as it establishes the premise of column 79 which brings us full circle back to our theme. 78 says the waters of heaven are nothing else than the image of the Eye of Ra on the morning of its birth from the Hathor cow! Column 79 says as for the Hathor cow, She is the Eye of Ra. In other words, as we have seen in the Tarot symbolism, she is the Tree of Life. She has the role of Hathor, as Mother of the Gods.
Here she is in the vignette of Chapter 17 in the Book of the Dead. Notice the huge Wedjat Eye directly in front of her. The hieroglyphic inscription in front of her nose says directly she IS the Eye of Ra. Note in Naville’s edition of the Book of the Dead that Thoth is actually giving her the Wedjat Eye.
This is very reminiscent of the Facsimile 2 in the Book of Abraham where a creature is giving the Wedjat Eye to the ithyphallic deity of Min in Figure 7.
Note Isis behind the throne wearing the Hathor crown in Facsimile 3 in the Book of Abraham. It’s the same crown the Tarot High Priestess is wearing. More significant symbolism comes through alchemical and mysticism symbolism as we see below.
Notice the fascinating correlations here. On the left is the world of darkness, as on the left is the dark pillar B in the Tarot. This is when the eye of wonder enters nature. Now on the right is the world of light when the Divine Mystery has passed through the fire and dwells in majestic light. Notice the heart at the center of the cross directly in the middle of the spheres. The heart is at the same place the heart of the High priestess is in the Tarot Card, which, indeed, has the cross! This illustration from J. Bohme’s Wunderauge der Ewigkeit.
The symbolism here is the same as our Tarot High Priestess also. This is Wisdom as the female emanation of God. The spiritual seed of God is realized first through the uttered word of the Divine Female, Sophia. The seed is then manifested in matter through the womb of nature. Thus the title of this illustration is appropriately
"The Heavenly and Earthly Eve, Mother of All Creatures in Heaven and on Earth"
This is what the Tarot High Priestess is symbolizing. Woman is the tree of life, from which eternal Divine seeds are birthed and live. The pomegranates on the veil behind the High Priestess on the Tarot Card are the eternal and unending seeds of the Divine awaiting birth through the Heavenly Mother, the High Priestess. This is the Geheime Figuren der Rosenkreuzer altona 1785. As Walter Scott in his commentaries and notes on the Greek and Latin "Hermetica" notes, the Mother principle, identified symbolically as Isis (our High Priestess card) is the striving toward the good in nature. It is the "productive power in nature." It is Isis, the "living force in matter which strives towards the good." (Walter Scott, "Hermetica," Vol. 3, 1926: 71-72). It is also most interesting that Isis (or Sophia) grants immortality to the King. In the Ptolemaic temple at Esna, Isis says to the King: "To you (I give) the four corners of the land on your support, a long kingship for many years in peace, for the duration of eternity and perpetuity." (John S. Kloppenborg, "Isis and Sophia in the Book of Wisdom," in "Harvard Theological Review," 75:1 (1982): 75). In the Bremer Rhind Papyrus, Isis is identified as the wife and sister of Osiris, who will protect him, guard him, call him forth and is called "Mistress of the Universe, who came forth from the Eye of Horus, Noble Serpent which issued from Re', and which came forth from the pupil in the eye of Atum." (Raymond Faulkner, "The Bremer Rhind Papyrus," in "Journal of Egyptian Archaeology," 21 (1935): 132).
This woodcut from Albrecht Durer, Nuremberg 1502 shows exquisitely the symbolism of the Female as on the Tarot Card High Priestess. The top inscription reads "The Greeks call me Sophia, the Romans Sapientia. The Egyptians and Chaldaeans invented me, the Greeks wrote me down, the Romans handed me down, the Germans expanded me."
The lower inscription is powerful:
"That which constitutes the essence of heaven, earth, air and water [note 4 elements], and that which embraces the life of man, as well as that which the fiery God creates in the whole world: I, Philosophia, bear all in my breast."
Again the imagery of the "World" Tarot Card is significant.
Notice both these figures have the female in the circle of the living green oval of eternity. Truth is female. Notice the four elements [the four corners of the world, the four evangelists, the four rivers of Eden, the four alchemical ingredients; salt, sulphur, mercury, azoth, the four letters of the Tetragrammaton, YHWH, the four cardinal virtues, justice, prudence, temperance, fortitude, etc.] idea as well as the lemniscates involved. Again, the woman is the center, the reason, the force, the life and heart of everything. This is the meaning and significance of the High Priestess of the Tarot as Hathor, the Mother of the Gods.
Finally, it is worth observing that each Tarot Major Arcana card corresponds to one of the paths on the Cabalah Tree of Life diagram. Many patterns are manifest this way since each of the 22 Arcana correspond with a Hebrew letter of the Alphabet as well. Notice that there are three vertical pillars on the Tree of Life diagram, and the High Priestess corresponds to the middle pillar on her Tarot Card, being between the B and J pillars. On the Tree of Life diagram of the Cabalah, we also find the female Tarot Cards aligned onto the Middle Pillar! A most interesting situation.
Also note how the High Priestess is right at the cross (where her own cross on her chest is on her garment!) of the Tree of Life! Notice also the first heavenly trinity triangle is Father, Mother, Son! The three Tarot Cards being Magus, Fool, Empress.
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