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Double loop in the Zodiac


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II

ג The Female Pope
Pure, exalted and gracious influence enters the matter. Hence, change, alternation, increase and decrease, fluctuation. There is, however, a liability to be led away by enthusiasm; one may become "moon-struck" unless careful balance is maintained.
ג

ATU II

The Female Pope

The Priestess of the Silver Star

The House of God and man, the Sanctuary, the law, Gnosis, Kabalah, the Occult Church, the duad, wife, mother.

Hieroglyph of the Tarot: THE FEMALE POPE, a woman crowned with a tiara, wearing the horns of the Moon and Isis, her head enveloped in g mantle, the solar cross on her breast, and holding a book on her knees, which she conceals with her mantle. The protestant author of a pretended history of Pope Joan has met with, and used, for good or bad, in the interests of his thesis, two curious and ancient figures of the Female Pope or Sovereign Priestess of the Tarot. These figures ascribe to her all the attributes of Isis; in one she is carrying and caressing her son Horus; in the other she has long and unbound hair. She is seated between the two Pillars of the duad, has a sun with four rays on her breast, places one hand upon a book and makes the sign of sacerdotal esotericism with the other -- that is to say, she uplifts three fingers only, the two others being folded, to signify mystery. A veil is thrown behind her head, and on each side of her chair the flowers of the lotus bloom upon the sea. I commiserate sincerely the ill-starred scholar who has seen in this antique symbol nothing but a monumental portrait of his pretended Pope Joan.

In the hieroglyphic work of Hermes, being the Tarot or Book of Thoth, the duad is represented either by the horns of Isis, who has her head veiled and an open book concealed partially under her mantle, or otherwise by a sovereign lady, Juno, the Greek goddess, with one hand uplifted towards heaven and the other pointed to earth, as if formulating by this gesture the one and twofold dogma which is the foundation of Magic and begins the marvellous symbols of the "Emerald Table" of Hermes.