August 16, 2016: Separation

August 16, 2016:

My Wild Unknown Tarot card for today is The High Priestess.  The image on this card is a white tiger, sitting serenely with that inscrutable look cats can get, a rainbow hewed crystal ball between her paws and a waning crescent moon in the sky.  Cats are mysterious creatures; anyone who has ever lived with one knows this.  They are predators, and yet they are devoted parents and loving companions.  But they seem to see things or hear things that aren’t there; they seem to know things that we can’t even imagine, never mind sense or perceive the presence of.  Even in repose, eyes half closed, gazing gently off into the distance, we can tell that she knows . . . she just knows.

I don’t throw this card very often, so there is some important message here.  The HP is the number 2 card of the Tarot Majors, the number of balance, polarity, tension, cooperation, and keeping secrets.  This number offers the concept of comparison, and comparison just might be important today.  Part of the process of comparing two items is understanding their differences.  This leads me right into the next stage of the Great Work, Separation. 

Yes, I am glad to move away from the first two stages of the Great Work, but I can’t allow myself to think this stage is a break from the discomforts and difficulties of Calcination and Dissolution.   Some assume the stage of Separation as merely an intellectual exercise. Yes, my job during the Separation process is to explore and fact-check my beliefs and to learn to understand my emotions, but this is by no means just an intellectual or analytical exercise.  The hard part is doing this kind of exploration in an unconditional, non-judgmental way.  Rejecting certain legitimate feelings as bad or wrong, or rationalizing the beliefs that are uncomfortable to explore objectively, will very likely send me right back to Calcination.

Separation offers me the chance to view my experiences with an open mind and without the need to judge them as good or bad.  Intuition rather than fear or ego can guide me if I allow it to, and when there are no judgments to be made, fear cannot take hold.  In the end, I just might learn that I have more of an ability to change myself that I thought I had.  Is this the hidden information guarded by The High Priestess?

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