Sunday, September 12, 2010

Cybele and the Queen of Wands


So recently I had to read about the cult of Cybele for one of my religion classes, and I was so intrigued by the description of her in our text book. In her book Religions of the Hellenistic Roman Age, Antonia Tripolitis writes that "In the earliest extant representations dating from ca. 6000 B.C.E., she is seated on a rocky throne, a woman of immense proportions. On either side of her throne stands a leopard, and on each leopard's head she rests a heavy hand protectively and triumphantly." This is quite clearly the same description of the Queen of Wands from Crowley's Thoth Tarot.
The connection is intriguing, as Cybele is a goddess associated with domination and ecstasy, and is revered with wild dancing and loud music. She is also incredibly magnetic and jealous, as her beauty alone caused her consort Attis to castrate himself out of awe. This would explain the Queen of Wands' swooning facial expression, as well as her Bacchic staff symbolizing the mysteries of bliss attributed to that god, and her hand placed on top of the leopard. Furthermore, Cybele was known as "the mother of the gods," and was associated with Chronos's wife Rhea. This matches perfectly with Crowley's Liber 777, in which he too equates Cybele to Rhea and places them in the sephira of Binah, as Binah is also the Great Mother.

This begs the question then: what are the attributions of the other queens in the Thoth deck? I have a guess that the Queen of Disks is a form of Juno, and that the Queen of Swords is Kali (which would explain the random sarong she's wearing), but I can't seem to nab the Queen of Cups. Could she be another iteration of Isis? Her lotus resting upon the ibis crane because she was the mother of all invention in the Hellenistic period? Perhaps.

If anyone knows of a source that explains this, either in Crowley or in Israel Regardie (these would be the first authors I would check), please let me know! I'd love to know if anyone has noticed this before, and if this kind of logic is useable for the entire court. Some of the Princesses are relatively easy to decipher, but the Princes are pretty difficult to pin down, perhaps for a reason.

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