Full Moons give us the opportunity to ponder the reconciliation of opposites, which is a concept important in the Jungian world.
The opposites of Death and the High Priest are in the air right now, thanks to the Full Moon in Scorpio.
The Death card in tarot is associated with Scorpio. Per Jungian analyst Ken James, who is also a tarot teacher:
We struggle with the idea that we are contingent life forms undergoing constant transformation. And the most important lesson that we can learn here on the Earth plane is to release things that no longer serve us with the confidence that there will always be something more, something new, something that will emerge that we may not understand, but that is promised to us by virtue of our day-to-day experience.
The Hierophant (often returned to as High Priest or Pope) card in tarot is associated with Taurus.
This card, like Taurus, is grounded and indicates a preference for stability and external structures.
Per Rachel Pollack, “The name ‘Hierophant’ belonged to the high priest of the Greek Elusinian mysteries.”
It “indicates the intellectual tradition of the person’s particular society, and his or her education in that tradition.”
“In its best aspect the Hierophant (as outer doctrine) can give us a place to start in creating a personal awareness of God.” And “indicates our own inner sense of obedience.”
The penetrating intensity of Scorpio, like Death, challenges established structures and would prefer to encourage necessary dismantling rather than stability.
In the Death card, look at how there is a High Priest figure about to be taken out by Death.
How will these two ever reconcile?
I posed that question to the I Ching and received Hexagram 13: Fellowship.
It is fellowship and community that will bring about the reconciliation of these two opposites.
The additional figures on the Death and Hierophant cards aren’t exactly fellowship together. They are in submission to either Death or the High Priest/Hierophant.
James Hillman describes community as “not individuals coming together and connecting, and it’s not a crowd. ” So what is it?
Community to me means simply the actual little system in which you are situated, sometimes in your office, sometimes at home with your furniture and your food and your cat, sometimes talking in the hall with the people in 14-B. In each case your self is a little different, and your true self is your actual self, just as it is in each situation, a self among, not a self apart (Hillman, We’ve Had A Hundred Years of Psychotherapy-And the World’s Getting Worse, p. 43).
In the Death card there is a sun in the background, above the High Priest’s head and in between the two towers.
As selves among, maybe we can make that sun a little brighter.
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