Balance and eggs 🥚 The High Priestess

Tarot for the week of 20/03/23 💐 Ostara and overlaying traditions.

Mar 20, 2023

Happy Ostara y’all!

This newsletter is coming to you on the day of the equinox. That pivotal moment where the night and day are equal. After today the light will outnumber the night. But for now, there is a beautiful balance—the crowing of a spring.

In my journey to reconnect with my pagan roots, both Slavic and Celtic, I have been researching this day a bit. What we think of today as easter customs are actually poached and plundered from non-Christian celebrations. Painting eggs, eating rabbits and the bright yellows of daffodils are all traditions that have survived. So to bring these into my celebration of the day I have (not very successfully) hollowed out some beautiful farm fresh eggs to decorate, along with the buds of pussy willows.

What’s really interesting is the interaction of cultures I have been trying to realign with. Topienie Marzanny, being the drowning of a straw effigy of the goddess Marzanna, is an old polish custom. This aligns with the creation of a doll or poppet of grain that is made around harvest time, a tradition mother can remember from her school days. Here the farmers would keep the final stalks of the harvest and create beautifully intricate designs from them, meant to keep the spirit of the grain alive over the winter months. I actually made one of these dolls (not with grain but with lemongrass) from my final harvest last year, she travelled with my beloved and me across North America and today I will bury her as I plant for the coming season. I love the interwoven nature of these traditions, and the chance to reconnect with them.

In other news, a piece I wrote for Heroica about how tarot helped me navigate my early twenties is now up. For those of you who know me, that time was a bit all over the place. Figuring out what I wanted to do, to be, to create. I’m sure most people can relate to that. The feedback I’ve received on this article has been so lovely and I really appreciate people getting in touch.

Read "Tarot and my early 20s" here

The tarot card for this week is a beautiful one for this time of year. In fact a perfect one for this day in particular. I have a lovely bag which my boyfriend diligently painted with this card, so it’s one I hold very dear.

Tarot for the week of 20/03/23: The High Priestess

Though I have talked about this card a lot, or so it seems, it has yet to come up in a weekly reading. Within this card is all the symbolism of the Twos in Tarot, which I covered a few weeks back. Along with the added weight of being part of the major arcana.

The High Priestess is all about balance. On either side of the central figure are two freestanding columns, one back and one white with the letters B and J on them, these are symbolic of the pillars in Solomon’s temple in the bible and also of freemasons. But the crown of the High Priestess is what stands out, similar to that of the goddess Hathor, who proceeds Christianity. So here we see what I was talking about with Ostara/ Easter, the older religions and traditions subsumed into the newer ones. The age-old practices surface even after all this time. Behind the Priestess is an embroidery of an overflowing garden of what look like dates and pomegranates, but something about this motif, this garden, seems forbidden. As if eating the fruit, like in the myth of Persephone, will trap us on the other side. The Priestess’s robe, similar to that of the queen of cups, flows into water at their feet, in which a crescent moon rests (echoing the one on their crown). On the chest of the priestess is a cross which could be either symbolic of Christianity or the balancing of the four elements, in their hands is a scroll labelled TORA (meaning "divine law").

There is so much to go on in this card. So many conflicts, which is where the balance comes in. The balance of old and new, day and night, internal and external. The High Priestess is associated with intuition, with innate knowing. When it comes up in a reading it means that there should be a moment of stillness, like that of the Two of Swords, where one goes inward to seek out the truth.

This card asks us to balance both our conscious mind and our subconscious. There is no way to do that without getting very still. By sitting with our contradictions. This card, with its layers of symbolism, of religion, can exist. And in your complexity so can you.

So take time this week to sit with yourself. Find time to settle the waters of your every day and peer clearly to the bottom of your inner well. What parts of yourself feel like they are conflicting at the moment? Is there a way you can exist with both of them?

Journaling prompts for the Equinox

This week ask yourself: What is something old I carry with me? What is something new I wish to pick up? Where am I feeling friction? What conflicts do I hold in myself? Where do they sit in my body? How can I get them out to look at them? How can I feel them both, tend them both?
What balance do I seek in the outside world? Where do I feel chafing, or friction? How can I hold space for difference while maintaining protection for those who need it? What traditions do I wish to cast off? What traditions do I want to delve into? Where can I try to bring more balance?

As always I would love to hear what this brings up for you. How have you been feeling? What do you do to celebrate the equinox?

Xandua Tarot

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