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XX Judgment
The Phoenix is a
mythological creature that symbolizes rebirth, resurrection,
redemption and immortality.
The story goes
that when the One living phoenix felt death was near he would
build himself a funeral pyre of sweet smelling spices. After
singing the only song of his life, one so beautiful that all the
men and gods would stop and listen, he would burst into flame
and be reduced into ashes. Then, from the ashes, a new Phoenix
would rise renewed. His first duty was to gather up the bones
and ashes of the old dead phoenix, gather them in an egg and
place them on an alter in the city of the Sun.
I found this
image to be a smooth progression from the previous two cards,
the Sun and the Moon, whose alignment create a spectacular drama
of the dying of the sun/son. Here, though, there is no vulture
or falcon coming from the mouth, instead there is a spiral
tongue. It’s the tongue that sings the beautiful song of
rebirth which wakes the dead from their sleep and shows them the
spiral cycle of death and rebirth. The spiral is not the same
thing over and over, it is the same pattern progressing ever
higher, lower, inward, or outward. Just as the Sun and Moon
describes time as cycles within cycles, Judgment describes time
as a giant spiral, an evolution.
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