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3. Iris |
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3. Iris. This is an incredible picture. The apostle
John writes of it in the 12th chapter of the book of Revelation:
"And then a great wonder appeared in heaven: A woman was clothed with the sun, and the moon was under her feet, and a crown of twelve stars was on her head. She was pregnant and cried out with pain, because she was about to give birth." While students of the Bible will assume that when John described this picture at the end of the First Century A.D. it was being described for the first time. But the picture goes back thousands of years before John’s time to ancient Egypt. This woman, unlike the one standing guard over the temple with the shadowy moon on her head, is clothed with the sun. She lives in the light of the resurrected Christ. Her feet rest atop the moon, like a victorious general with his feet at the neck of his conquered enemy. She is not a prisoner of a shadowy system, she has understood the symbols, so the are only symbols. She knows the reality, of which symbols are but pointers. Just as the Magus is free and enlightened, this card is a picture of the whole body of individuals--one could say, collectively, the "true church"-- who share in this freedom, not bound by religious pressure and dogma.
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To the next card...4. The Stone
