La papesse

 

Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.

La Papesse is a quietly subversive figure in the tarot de Marseille. In some of the Besançon decks she is one of those censored and replaced with the Roman Goddess Juno, (along with Jupiter as a replacement for La Pape), due to the sensitivity of such figures in the 17^th and 18^th centuries. It is uncertain whether this was to avoid offending the Catholics, because the protestants didn’t want reminders of papal authority, or perhaps a combination of the two. But in any case, I find it best to stick with the original designations and tend to regard Juno and Jupiter as placeholders, so will stick the La Papesse.

But who is she? She is sometimes called Pope Joan, referring to a woman who, disguised as a man, rose through the church hierarchy to be elected pope. Whether she really existed or not is unknown, and it seems likely that if such a person did exist then the catholic church would be keen to suppress such heretical information. As for Joan herself, the story goes that her secret was safe until she got pregnant by a lover, which obviously rather blew her cover!

In any case, La Papesse is an authority figure, but from the renaissance and late medieval perspective a paradoxical figure, and a rather countercultural one. In an age where the church was (as it still is) dominated by men, the fact that a woman could rise to such heights is unthinkable. Yet she did so, by intellect, by secrecy and immense strategy and wisdom, though she seems a passive figure, she’s clearly nobody’s fool.

In the card itself she is seen as a woman clad in papal vestment, holding a book of (presumably) scripture, perhaps her Breviary or Book of Hours. She thus teaches theological or spiritual truths from a position of authority, yet a veiled one where her true nature is not known. A Jungian might call her the Anima, and later traditions call her the High Priestess, but coming from a Christian society I feel that her designation La Papesse, should be honoured as her existence itself is a challenge to the monolithic authority and dogmatic rigidity of that system, one which we in the west imbibe, whether we know it or not, from the moment we are born.

La Papesse shows that even within a rigid hierarchical and dogmatic system there is room for quiet spirituality, intuition, receptivity and sensitivity to the higher. She is a gateway figure, but not a dogmatic one, rather she beckons from behind the veil for those who would seek real wisdom. She is transgressive in that she does not insist on norms and rules, all the while existing within those rules as a quiet current of spirituality.

All in all she is one of my favourite cards in the tarot for her simplicity conjoined with intelligence and not a little bit of guile. She fools by being unrecognised, unseen for what she really is to those bound and blinded by rules and structure, and thus is able to operate and teach in a gentle and intuitive way. She is the gentle home room teacher in an otherwise strict school, the kindly aunt, the older lady, not necessarily family, who has something to teach based on a life lived among adversity, experience turned to wisdom, and her lesson is the second to come in the series of trump cards, where the seeker is still young and clear eyed enough to receive her gifts.

Love is the law, love under will.

Le Bateleur

 

Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.

After putting it off for a bit, I wanted to make a start on my exploration of the Tarot de Marseille. This is not such a simple task as it seems, and as a seasoned occultist one thing I have to deal with is decades of Golden Dawn type interpretations based on book T, Crowley’s Book of Thoth, and popular interpretations largely developed from the Rider-Waite tarot. However, the Marseille is older, has a messier and more organic background, being essentially the first mass-market version of the tarot available, created shortly after the invention of the printing press, and drawing not on the occult writings of 19^th and 20^th century occultists, but on centuries of culture, philosophy, and the popular tropes and imagery developed especially in the period from the late Middle Ages to the renaissance.

Not being an expert on these things either, I don’t feel I can interpret accurately from that position either, and would be more likely to confuse than elucidate. So instead, I’m going to take a completely naïve approach, and while I cannot avoid drawing on my own experience and background to some extent, I want to avoid drawing up correspondences or anything so mechanical, and instead just say what I see. I would ask you therefore to take these observations in the spirit of playful exploration, rather than anything definitive.

On to the first card: Le Bateleur: who is this guy? He stands, brightly dressed, a big flamboyant hat, a short want held lightly in his left hand, the other holding some small object. In the Ben-Dov it could be a dice or a token. In the Jean-Pierre Payan it looks like a red ball. Perhaps he’s going to do the ball and cup trick? In any case he looks like the sort of street magician you might meet at the fair, willing to entertain you with the illusion that you might actually win something. There is something of the trickster, deft, poised to take you money and put it into the purse he has ready on his table. This is not somebody I would trust but the kind of person who with a twinkle in his eye and a friendly smile, would take the shirt of your back and encourage you to keep playing. After all, one more game, you might win it all back…

He also seems to exude intelligence, a sort of craftiness and worldliness. There is a creativity here, but it’s the creativity of manipulating objects and situations, even people. He could be a politician, spinning a fantastic vision of ‘sunlit uplands’ to lure the masses, appealing to their prejudice for his own gain. But he could equally be a sort of artist, a musician or other dextrous creative, perhaps an actor.

What would he mean in a spread? I guess it depends. If describing the questioner, he may speak of developing certain skills, he’s a tradesman after all, in his way. Nonetheless he’s not a high level creative but more at the level of the street hawker or the journeyman, he askes to develop your craft and rely on your wits. He may also represent someone out to deceive, a false choice, someone stringing you along with promises that never come to anything.

So far, I think my impressions have been largely negative, but I feel I would not be doing Le Bateleur justice if I left it at that. He’s undauntedly also clever, resourceful, and may represent the development of important social and life skills. How to get on in the world which, after all, if taken too much at face value, can be ruinous. So, he may also council to be aware, cautious, ‘as wise as a serpent’, navigating the world with a certain adroitness.

So overall he’s an interesting character, one of the first people we meet in our life journey, and whether he teaches us something useful, tries to fleece us, or anything else, we can still learn a lot from the interaction.

Love is the law, love under will.