Atalanta Rising By Keith Stillwagon
Queue John Lennons Verse on A Day in the Life:
Woke up, got out of bed
Dragged a comb across my head
Found my way downstairs and drank a cup
And looking up…..
I promptly flipped the fuck out! Now, it was my choice to lose my cool. I didn’t have to, but I did. Maybe it was the fact that I really didn’t want to get up out of bed, and I definitely didn’t want to go to work this morning. I’m drinking my morning cup of water, and my mother is listening to her usual Christian fundamentalist programming. What made this morning different from any other morning was the message permeating the consciousness of thousands of sheeple across the country.
Today, the message was for women. The preacher fervently exclaimed the women’s place in the Christian household. They must submit to the will of their husbands, live to serve and protect, and be humble in their role in the marriage. He then went on to condemn ‘self-opinionated women’, and at this point the rage began to overtake my early morning haze. What do you mean ‘self-opinionated’? A woman who has an independent approach to thinking? A woman who is her own person, separate from the construct of marriage?
I did calm down a bit as the preacher taught the men that they could learn a thing or two from the compassion of women…just breath, it’s going to be ok. But by this time, my mother and I were getting into a first-thing-in-the-morning-philosophical-argument-on-the-dogma-of-Christianity, which is not good for anybody. She told me that the Bible says that the man is the leader of the house, and that since I had not accepted the teachings of the Word of God in my heart, I could not understand. Gee, I guess getting the ‘Word of God’ hammered into my head since I could breath doesn’t classify as accepting the Word in my heart. The fact of the matter is I had accepted everything that my parents taught me in my heart as a child. Who, as a child, could conceive of the possibility that their parents could possibly not have a clue of what they were talking about?! Nobody! I accepted everything that they taught me whole heartedly. Yes, there is an invisible man in the sky that I must obey and love with all my heart, or I will be cast down into the abyss of hell to be burned alive for the rest of eternity…but….HE LOVES ME! (R.I.P. George Carlin).
I’m not going to get into what this did to me as I entered the society of lunatics known as elementary school, or when this world view lost any relevance in middle school, or when I embraced the antithesis in high school. Needless to say, that I eventually lost my mind with no compass to guide my soul on the journey of life. My twisted rationality ruled the way that I experienced my reality. And since I did not address my inner situation of turmoil and distress, it appeared outside of me as fate.
Through certain traumatic experiences that lead me in the direction that was my ultimate purpose, I began to understand that rational, linear thinking was the bane of society. Our masculine paradigm is a corruption of the inner self. We are taught from birth that our environment is there for our benefit, to manipulate and destroy in the name of technological advancement; we know nothing of our symbiotic relationship to our surroundings. It is an eternal dance of give and take, a forever evolving experience of creation.
At this point, I began to understand that the way to personal balance and ascension was through a completely different modality of expression: the divine feminine.
The High Priestess Tarot card illustrates everything I could say in one picture. She, alone, guards the entrance to the Temple of Solomon in between the two pillars Joaquin and Boaz. We are each a living, breathing temple of the divine spirit. At her feet is the moon, the symbol of the unconscious which makes up the greater part of our minds. The cross on her chest does not endorse the message of Christianity, but the mastery of the four fold nature of being as understood by the matriarchy of the past. Inside the temple, we see a ‘garden of pomegranates’. For those of you familiar with Israel Regardie’s work and the Order of Golden Dawn might recognize this as a symbol for the kabalistic Tree of Life and indeed the shape is also suggestive.
The crown of the High Priestess is an ancient symbol for the female goddess consisting by a waxing and a waning moon flanking a full moon:
The full moon highlights the ‘third eye’ on the High Priestess which is directly aligned with the sphere of Daath on the Tree of Life. Daath is a very interesting study all on its own. Being the 11th sphere of the tree, it represents knowledge that comes about as the fruit of the feminine path. Coincidently, I was about to write something about 11:11 and it is now 11:11 on my computer screen and a message popped up from an application called ‘Magic’ telling me that the time is now 11:11 am and asking if I would like to continue my session. YES!
I digress. 11 is also know as the number of magick according to Aliester Crowley. Other researchers have connected the number 11 with the collapse of the twin towers, awakening divinity, and knowledge of the holy spirit.
Maynard James Keenan expresses his sentiments of the number 11 in the song Jimmy by Tool off the album Aenema:
Hold,
Your light,
Eleven lead me through each gentle step,
By step,
By inch by loaded memory 'till,
One,And one are one, Eleven.
So glow, Child, Glow.
I'm heading back home...
He is saying that until the ONE and ONE ( or the 11, or the two pillars Joaquin and Boaz, or the two pillars of the Tree of Life, ) become one (the middle pillar) represented by the High Priestess herself, only then will he be able to reunite with the missing aspects of his consciousness.
The last symbol of this card is held in the hands of the High Priestess as she guards the gate to the unconscious. If you can read the letters on the scroll, you see T O R A. From this we can assume that she is holding the Torah. Michael Tsarion has pointed out that in older times consonants remained the same but the vowels were often switched around so that Torah gives us Tarot. If we can define the Tarot as a set of symbolic archetypes in which we can use to interface with our own consciousness, then we may be able to apply the same definition to the Torah. The Torah is packed full of archetypes: Moses, Joshua, Enoch, Adam & Eve, etc. Each character represents an aspect of our own consciousness. We might be able to awaken these archetypes in our own life when we need to draw on their energy. The same goes for the archetypes of the Major Arcana: the Magician, the Emperor, the Universe. How often do we interact with the mental constructs under the guise of the unconscious? Constantly!
There are many prophecies of our times that speak of worldwide calamity and hostility. These are just symptoms or birth pangs of a dying age. As we leave behind the dogma of the Piscean age and slide into the Aquarian age, we will be experiencing the a renewal of the mind. It is very traumatic to leave behind everything you have ever known and could ever comprehend, but the fruit of this venture will be the evolution of the entire planet. The greatest prophecy of the new age is the “Return of the Divine Femine”. This simply means that we will cease to view the world from the left, masculine, logical side of the brain and come into balance with the right, feminine, intuitive side of the brain.
Here we will experience a rebirth. We will realize our connection to our brothers and sisters, and the great mother goddess, Gaia. One will not be able to harm another without being aware of harming themselves. We enter this world through the sacred portal of experience, to evolve the density of the 4th dimension Earth. Only from a woman can life come foward. The great mother goddess is the foundation of all experience and the path to enlightenment.
There are those that wish to capture complete control of the human race before we slip into enlightenment. They would like to lock us into this paradigm through the use of technology and hypnosis. Many have already fallen into their hands to live as robots, scrambling for material possessions; they are comforted by the security of financial slavery. There will be a ‘New World Order’, the question is: will we take control or will play into the hands of the overseers.
ALL HAIL THE GODDESS!
