Scrying the Thoth Tarot: The Princess of Disks

The Vision

The dark charioteer from the last vision disappeared from view, leaving me in a sunlit wood. In the forest was a tree shaped like a woman which, despite appearing inert and motionless, was full of life. I moved closer to it and could detect the scent of morning mist on her breath as the breeze parted her stiff lips. I fell to the floor and touched the leaves at her feet where I sensed her sadness at being imprisoned in this way, for she was a divine force in a fixed state rather than the volatile state of the serpent and waters. I sensed the teeming life in the soil and the fauna of the forest floor and knew that life pervades everything, and that the tree is a totem for that life. The woman in the tree was the fallen daughter, and all that lives on the earth is of the same substance as her body. All physical life is one under the guise of flesh and earth. Then, just as the vision appeared to be ending, I found myself being brought back to make an offering of life to her. I was instructed to bury a sacramental seed in the soil around her feet and plant it with the knowledge that it is a gift that will enrich her, for her yields are greater to those who make such offerings.

Notes

From the Tree of Life to Yggdrasil, trees are a symbol of the entire web of spiritual and physical existence, and here it represents the Divine force bound by matter. The sadness sensed in the goddess trapped in this form reflects the metamorphoses of several nymphs into trees in the Greek myths. A common theme for this kind of transformation is violent male energies leading to a state of female retreat into a desexualised state, often with the assistance of the gods. Examples include Daphne’s transformation into a Laurel to avoid rape by Apollo, Lotis becoming a Lotus to avoid being raped by Priapus, Myrrha transforming into a Myrrh tree to escape her father after she tricks him into sleeping with her, and Pitys being turned into a pine to help her escape the pursuit of Pan. These ‘regressions’ of spiritual forces into matter are akin to the containment of those forces in the physical substance of Malkuth. Locked safely away in Malkuth, the energies are no longer wild and unrestricted, as they are beyond it, but are stowed into a material form that prevents calamity. The spiritual forces themselves survive, but do so in the restricted manner of the Fallen Daughter, who has descended from a state of grace into one bound by the density of matter. Its survival is detected in animistic principles, in which all life, be it that of inert plants or active animals, is an expression of the divine force.