August 24, 2016: Notus

Ooooh, today I threw The Hierophant from my Wild Unknown Tarot deck.  What a cool and powerful card!  This Hierophant is a raven, sitting on a black key, with a bolt of lightning coming down from the upper right corner of the card and striking that key.  Ravens are large, omnivorous, clever, and probably intelligent creatures.  Ravens are devoted to their families, and are pretty much monogamous (yet they sometimes cheat on their spouses!); they can mimic other sounds, and can even manipulate other animals to act in a way that serves their own purpose.  Talk about working within the system!  They play, and will even cross the species line.  In myth, the Raven is clever and tricky, true to his own needs and purposes but willing to talk others into working with him.  Ravens are known to take and hide items that they are attracted to, and this Raven is holding onto and protecting a key, a potent symbol of access to knowledge or wisdom.  The Hierophant is the guardian of knowledge and wisdom; he shares what he knows with others and learns from them at the same time.

Time to visit with my Elemental Guide of Fire, Notus.  Within myth, the south wind Notus was known as a very dynamic, stormy and dangerous wind, especially to those who sailed the seas.  Notus, who was said to dwell in the south, was a storm-bringer, the wind that brought the storms of late summer and early autumn.  To Notus belongs the hot winds of late summer, and the hazy/hot/humid dog days of August, as well as the boiling thunderstorm cells and the tropical storms and hurricanes.  He was feared as a destroyer of crops, both through the hot desiccating winds and the torrential downpours of his season. 

Notus appears to me as a curvaceous woman with fiery red hair and beautiful porcelain skin, dressed in reds and oranges and holding in her upturned palms a flat disk containing an eternal flame.  She has a playful spark in her eyes, and sometimes I fear her cleverness creates a joke on me, but thankfully she has yet to place me in harm’s way (although I have metaphorically singed a few eyebrows working with her in the past).  She is good at egging me on, mostly when I need courage but occasionally when I should not respond to a nudge.  Yep, cunning and clever, and sometimes a bit of a troublemaker.  I like her.

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