Saturday, October 24, 2020

Make Art Not War Tarot Draw: The High Priestess

I’m very blessed to be a part of the small Make Art Not War collective of diverse creative women. Check out our #MakeArtNotWar hashtag on Twitter to follow what our group is up to.

Our most recent prompt in our group creativity initiative is for one of us to pull at Tarot card and for us each to write our thoughts about the card, discuss the card as found in our own decks (we fascinatingly have so many different decks between us) and any related ideas that the card brings to mind.

Stina Leicht drew the High Priestess for all of us and this thrilled me. It’s my favorite card.

The High Priestess represents wisdom, feminine intuition and power. For me, the card represents a certain amount of “life goals” – exploring ever further and ever deeper into the realms of spirituality and divine insight. I think of the High Priestess as my guiding light; my North star.

When I first began giving over to more mysticism in my life, a process and journey that has been nothing short of life-saving and wondrous, the Mythic Tarot deck came into my life, chosen because my debut novel series, the Strangely Beautiful saga, deals with Greek Mythology and that’s how the Mythic Tarot breaks down its journey through the entire deck; through Greek Gods and Classical figures.

The High Priestess in the Mythic Tarot deck is Persephone.

While Persephone has always been one of my favorite figures in Greek Mythology, I also reinvented her in my Strangely Beautiful saga and the Goddess I created remains one of my favorite and most mysterious of characters; frustrating, maddening, breaking apart, inspiring, luminous and ultimately selfless; giving herself over into the mortal form of a strange young woman who is so full of love that by the sheer power of her heart she ultimately saves everyone around her. 

For me, tapping into the wisdom that the High Priestess bids us consider means, like it did for my heroine, opening the heart, sometimes wider than we even think is possible. If we can strain at the seams sometimes, as long as we monitor our boundaries, we can find out what's truly possible emotionally, spiritually, physically. 

It’s a particularly resonant and fitting draw for me and for Stina as well, seeing that “Persephone” is critical for us both. I boldly adopted that classic name and bestowed it upon the heroine of my Strangely Beautiful saga; Persephone “Percy” Parker. The title of Stina’s exciting upcoming novel is Persephone Station, and I can’t wait to read it!

If you don’t know my Strangely Beautiful novels, for those interested in how I’ve adapted Greek Mythology to suit my own needs and blended Mythic ideas with extremely Gothic atmosphere and High Fantasy elements, the Strangely Beautiful saga has been compiled by Tor/Macmillan and remains on sale(for a limited time) and the entire 4-book series, over 1k of fiction, is only$2.99!

May the High Priestess shine and bring wisdom into your life as she has done in mine. I hope you’ll take a moment and meditate on the power of introspection and intuition that she bids of those who draw her.

Follow #MakeArtNotWar on Twitter! Subscribe to my blog here, check out my website at LeannaReneeHieber.com and my Torch and Arrow Etsy shop of Gothic, Neo-Victorian, Steampunk accessories, art, signed books and other reimagined curios! 

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