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Heavy Metal Astrology: The High Priestess | Tarot

CARD SYMBOLOGY AND DESCRIPTION

Type Of Card: Major Arcana, Card II (Rider-Waite Tarot Deck) Planetary Symbolism: Moon Zodiac Sign Represented: Cancer Element Represented: Water Upright Position: Higher powers, mystery, subconscious mind Reversed Position: Hidden agendas, need to listen to inner voice Opposing Cards: The Magician, Two of Wands, Seven Of Wands and Eight Of Wands Reinforcing Cards: The Hermit, The Hanged Man and Four Of Swords The B symbol stands for Boaz, signifying negation, the J symbol stands for Jachin, meaning “beginning”, and the twin pillars represent the positive and negative poles of existence. The High Priestess is also known as Persephone, Isis, the Corn Maiden and Artemis. She sits at the gate before the great Mystery, as indicated by the Tree of Life in the background. She sits between the darkness and the light, represented by the pillars of Solomon’s temple, which suggests it is she who is the mediator of the passage into the depth of reality. The tapestry hung between the pillars keeps the casual onlookers out and allows only those initiated to enter. The pomegranates on the tapestry are sacred to Persephone. They are a symbol of duty (because Persephone ate a pomegranate seed in the underworld which forced her to return every year). The blue robe the Priestess is wearing is a symbol of knowledge. She is wearing the crown of Isis symbolising the Triple Goddess. The solar cross on her breast is a symbol of balance between male and female. In her lap, she holds the half-revealed and half-concealed Torah, representative of the exoteric and the esoteric teachings and higher knowledge. The moon under her left foot shows her dominion over pure intuition. The palm indicates fertility of the mind and the cube on which she sits is the earth. The planet associated with the High Priestess is the Moon. (High Priestess Tarot Card Meanings: Biddy Tarot) The High Priestess is the guardian of the unconscious. She sits in front of the thin veil of unawareness which is all that separates us from our inner landscape. She contains within herself the secrets of these realms and offers us the silent invitation, “Be still and know that I am God.” The High Priestess is the feminine principle that balances the masculine force of the Magician. The feminine archetype in the tarot is split between the High Priestess and the Empress. The High Priestess is the mysterious unknown that women often represent, especially in cultures that focus on the tangible and known. The Empress represents woman’s role as the crucible of life. In readings, the High Priestess poses a challenge to you to go deeper - to look beyond the obvious, surface situation to what is hidden and obscure. She also asks you to recall the vastness of your potential and to remember the unlimited possibilities you hold within yourself. The High Priestess can represent a time of waiting and allowing. It is not always necessary to act to achieve your goals. Sometimes they can be realized through a stillness that gives desire a chance to flower within the fullness of time. (The High Priestess: Learn Tarot)

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In This Moment: Ritual Track-By-Track Album Review [With Pictures]

“Shame says that because I am flawed, I am unacceptable. Grace says that though I am flawed, I am cherished.” - Abigail Williams: The Crucible, Arthur Miller

SALVATION

All begin to gather around a huge bonfire in the dead of night, decked out to the nines in appropriate attire for the onset of a demonic religious ceremony. Witch drums build to an overpowering bone-chilling crescendo as chants bellow in the background, and you know what is about to take place. Here we have an introductory track which is very stereotypically In This Moment. They firmly believe in taking people on a journey, and it is why they always go to great pains to create a story within the music with each album. This album is no exception as they once again begin the album with a track that crescendos and builds tension and generates excitement for what is to come. The ritual begins here.

OH LORD

The concept of good and evil is explored heavily on this album, and here is where that story begins. The crux of this song is someone exploring the depths of their own psyche, fighting an internal battle with their dark and light sides. And, in a way, this person feels ashamed of being flawed, feeling as if they must be purified in some way to rid themselves of this shame. It asks the all-brooding question, “Am I Lilith or am I Eve?” which, in my opinion, is the heart of the song and is the question that is explored throughout the entire track. Who am I really? Am I the good person that I know myself to be, or am I really as evil as others think I am?

BLACK WEDDING

It’s a nice night for a black wedding. A priest and a nun come together in the wee hours of the night to confess their sins to one another. There is indiscretion afoot on both sides of the booth. This song mirrors that of a Catholic confessional, given its back and forth style of vocalizing with the one and only Rob Halford of Judas Priest. This is one of my favorite tracks on the album, simply because of the imagery attached to it. From my perspective, it’s about the whole concept of star-crossed lovers; people who initially could have been good for each other, but ultimately were destined to be ripped apart. With its whimsical piano introduction and poppy chorus, it is destined to be single material at some point. The vocal interstitial at the end of the song of the recited bible verse really fits in well with the theme of the album and helps stitch together the theme with ease.

IN THE AIR TONIGHT

I can feel it coming in the air tonight. The light voices on the wind signal what is about to happen. Here we have a very haunting and melancholic rendition of Phil Collin’s classic song, “In The Air Tonight”, which was inspired by his own wife’s infidelity and discussed events which ultimately lead to their divorce. Their rendition gives it a much more witchy vibe, foreshadowing things which have yet to take place. It injects you with this uneasy feeling that something could happen at any moment, but at the same time knowing that it was meant to happen all along. How do you take a song that’s already perfect and make it even more so? You can’t. You just have to use it to tell your own story, and I truly believe that is what they’ve done with their version.

JOAN OF ARC

The exploration of good vs evil is put center stage in this track from the get-go, with the first line being a line sampled from the 1999 film, The Messenger: The Story Of Joan of Arc. It asks the question, “Who are you to even think you can know the difference between good and evil?” Maria set out to use Joan of Arc as a metaphor for her own crucible, in which she suffers at the hands of the masses for not living up to their expectations. But she has come to terms with who she is and does not find fault in others, instead allowing them to burn her at the stake for their crimes, thus making herself a martyr for her own cause. She’s saying, go ahead and set me on fire if it makes you feel better, but it changes nothing. This one is another one of my favorites.

RIVER OF FIRE

I wanna feel you strike me down with lightning. Here we continue on with the theme explored in Joan of Arc of allowing yourself to be crucified, only here it is done in a way which is much more direct. There is a ritualistic back beat that pounds throughout the entire track, giving you the feeling that you are now in the midst of the ritual you came to experience. This song says, I want you to give me everything you got, all of your hate; pour it down on me like rain from the sky because I want to feel all of it. Let it rain, bring on a hurricane and baptize me in a river of fire because I want to drown in your wrath and fury.

WITCHING HOUR

This is the witching hour. Three witches gather around a bubbling cauldron in the middle of a dark wood. This song’s origin no doubt resides in Maria’s trip to Salem, the site of the Salem Witch Trials. It puts this story on display right from the beginning, sampling a sound byte which speaks on that very thing: “Superstition and fear drove them all to accuse their friends and family of consorting with the devil.” This song also explores her own real-life crucible of persecution even further, with her no doubt feeling vilified by those around her for the things she thinks and believes and the way she expresses herself. Even given its dark nature, this is easily one of the poppiest songs on the album in regards to production value. It utilizes a mesmerizing trap beat that casts its own spell on you throughout the entire track. This song is voodoo in the purest sense of the word and is my favorite song on the album.

TWIN FLAMES

Crawl into these flames with me. This is one of the most insanely beautiful songs on the entire album and it is one of my top favorites. This song steps away from the good and evil exploration for a quiet moment with your soulmate within the flames of the bonfire. The idea of twin flames is a very esoteric concept. The idea is that people share one-half of each other’s souls. They are pieces of one soul split into two, thus the appropriate lyric, “One flame bursting into two”, which more or less signifies the separation of these two soul halves and these people going their separate ways. The idea is explored in much of the star-crossed fashion of Black Wedding. It has this harpsichord chord progression that pulls you inside the fire’s incandescent glow.

HALF GOD HALF DEVIL

Without the darkness, there’d be no light in me. This song represents the full integration of dark and light. Maria has come to terms with everything that has happened to her, both the good and the bad and embracing all of it. It’s this knowledge of self and experience that frees her from the negative perceptions of those outside her. It also answers the question posed in Oh Lord. Am I good or am I bad? It’s both. And you cannot hope to achieve full enlightenment until you learn to bring both sides together. This is another one of my favorites because this is the moment where I can feel that she is finally comfortable in her own skin and is letting the world know that you cannot have the good without the bad.

NO ME IMPORTA

The simple truth is that I just don’t give a fuck; I don’t care. This is the continuation of that strong self-knowledge. In a way, it feels as though it’s about people who criticize her from the comfort of their keyboards, analyzing her every thought, word and move in an effort to try to “fix” her. It’s about knowing that you’re messed up, about knowing that these flaws are simply just part of who you are and there is no problem at all. There’s an undeniably catchy chord progression in this song that will leave you hooked. There are lots of starts and stops and words that just kind of run into one another. I have to admit I didn’t know what to think of this song at first because I didn’t really understand what was going on lyrically, but now that I know and get what it’s about, I’m happy to say it’s another one of my favorites.

ROOTS

There’s this sick part of me thankful for the hate. This song is the apex of the album’s theme. Part of it is learning how to transmute hatred. When you know who you are and you are grounded in your own self-belief, the words of others begin to lose effect. Where do your roots start and where do your roots end? How well do you know yourself? Do you let the perceptions of others get to you or do you use them to your own benefit? In a way, it represents our connection to ourselves and to source. It says thank you for all of the hate because it has only made me stronger. It shows that without the bad, I would not be who I am today. Because she really does need it to help strengthen her own personal resolve and evolve as a human being. LAY YOUR GUN DOWN

Won’t you lay your gun down? This song explores the album’s underlying theme one final time, in an attempt to lay her own gun down. In an intimately flawed final moment, Maria acknowledges her own flaws and lays them bare for the world to see. All these twisted little parts of her are what make her who she is. And in coming to terms with this, she reaches her own level of self-actualization. Pull the trigger and fire away because she’s made of scar tissue. Everything that has happened to her has made her indestructible. In This Moment are known for their low-key endings, and this song mirrors that of songs like Out Of Hell from Black Widow and 11:11 from Blood. You can really feel the emotion in the last few seconds of the album and feeling a sense of gratitude for what you have just experienced. The ritual has now come to an end.

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✝  In This Moment - Ritual Aesthetic  ✝

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Addicted to my fate. Watch as I devour. Convicted for my faith. This is the Witching Hour.

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"Am I Lilith or am I Eve?" | An Astrological Analysis Of In This Moment's New Single

Maria has always been highly vocal of her love of astrology, and I am so happy that she has finally put that love into song, ie, the new In This Moment single, Oh Lord, in which she pleads with God asking, “Am I Lilith or am I Eve?”. For students of astrology, you know that this statement has intense astrological connotations. In this post, I am going to go into detail behind this loaded astrological lyric, explaining the mythology of Lilith and Eve and how it relates back to her own Lilith placement.

BIBLICAL SYMBOLISM

The mythology behind Lilith is both biblical as well as astrological. According to these stories, Lilith was Adam’s first wife, but she was ultimately banished from the Garden of Eden for refusing to be subservient towards him. In that respect, Lilith and Eve represent two different aspects of female sexual expression. Lilith wants to go off, do her own thing, be free with her own sexuality and not let any man tell her what to do. Eve, on the other hand, lives to play the role of the submissive, with obedience to her husband and/or significant other being her primary goal in life. Basically, you have the free, strong-willed and sexual woman versus the meek, weak-willed and chaste woman.

ASTROLOGICAL SYMBOLISM

In astrology, Lilith is a point of the moon called the “black moon”. In a woman’s chart, it showcases the darker side of her sexual expression, how she might go about getting what she wants and is often considered a quite empowering placement for women. The sign that it’s in will showcase the manner in which they achieve this. Lilith represents the antithesis of the stereotypical female. She will do whatever she wants, whenever she wants, with whomever she wants, and she will stop at nothing to make sure no one gets in her way. Lilith is fed by her own personal desires.

LILITH IN GEMINI

Maria has Lilith in Gemini at 9 degrees. The nature of this placement represents the symbolism of the conflict she experiences in the song. It all comes back down to duplicity and the struggle with these two parts of herself. I have this placement myself, so I can speak about it from personal experience. Lilith in Gemini people are known for being sexually promiscuous. They might resort to lying or being cunning to get what they want, as they know how to prey upon people with ideas and words. They are masters and mistresses of exploitation of the mind.

CONCLUSION

The question she is ultimately asking herself is, “Am I dominant or am I submissive?” It’s the struggle between wanting to assert herself and be this strong, aggressive woman and wanting to remain this meek woman and maintain a sense of stereotypical femininity; to simply just be a female without worrying about having to put up a tough facade for the outside world. Looking at it from a different perspective, she could be asking herself, “Am I evil or am I pure?”, which, more or less, hearkens back to a particular lyric from Into The Darkness in which she proclaims her own purity defiantly. It really brings to light the struggle between the dark and light in all of us, and the self-doubt that often takes place when we start thinking about the kind of person we are. Who are you? Are you evil Lilith or are you pure Eve? I think we all at some point come to realize that it’s both. And that we must learn to reconcile both sides of ourselves in order to accept that both darkness and purity dwell within us.

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“oh god, have mercy on me“

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In This Moment - “Oh Lord” [Official Video]

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