The Shadow Tarot 

© Linda Falorio, 1995

The Dark Goddess, Maut, the ravenous Vulture, toys with a pet spider feeding it ribbons of flesh torn from the souls of the living. That She has been doing this from ages past is attested to by the skull. It is that of Australopithecus africanus, having a geological age of three million years. Sparks of human lives are the fuel of Her existence, whose origins are lost in dim mists of time when Nephilim walked the Earth, when Star People came from Nibiru, planet of Balance and Unbalance.

When Nibiru, ruler of Libra, bears down upon our world in its 36000-year orbit of the Sun, Earth is bombarded with destabilizing electromagnetic radiations, causing great upheavals, earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions, as in Decaulion's Great Flood. Nibiru's return stirs the archetypal excitement of a Second Coming, the excitement of the possibility of transcosmic forces taking a deliberate role in human consciousness evolution (e.g., AThe Harmonic Convergence" of 1989).

Return is marked by re-emergence of the Feminine, redressing the male-female balance-imbalance, when women actively seek to "Take back the night.@ It is the Goddess associated with Lafcursiax, who ever is returning from our archaic past, her visage an adumbration of our far future selves time-warped into a chaotic present. It is She, Inanna-Ishtar, Goddess of Love, Warrior Goddess who redresses all imbalance with her merciless swift sword.

The spider is that dark emblem of Typhonian mysteries, of the ancient serpent cult of Obeah, the Ophidian current, symbol of the goddess Maat in her cycle of returning. The crazy symmetry of the spider's web spans the abyss of in-betweenness into which we might otherwise backwards fall, crossing from being to non-being, crossing from the known universe into the Aeon of Maat which is ever spiraling toward us from an unknown future. Hanging upside down, the Spider Queen of Space spins Her web, creating 256 windows into other dimensions, transmission towers in the void pulsing extraterrestrial energies that serve to erode, then mutate human consciousness. It is the dread voice of Hastur, swirling darkly through the vastness of the universe.

The African Egungun—"bones of the dead"—the embodiment of law and order is evoked by the pigment used, "ivory black," made from blackened bones.

MEDITATION:

The need for work with the energies of Lafcursiax is suggested when we find we have been too rigidly adhering to abstracted notions of linear, patriarchal law, when we encounter belief in peace without justice, or belief in Divine Right, in hierarchies, and in the "rightful place" of Woman, in the "virtue" of the status quo. Here may be found belief in a merciful god, yet fear of knowledge, freedom, joy, and life, and especially fear of having "too much fun." Any blocking of these manifestations of risen kundalini may result in literal vertigo.

The formula of dealing with this vast influx of electromagnetic and bionic energies is that of "no-balance," of loosening, of letting go of dayside needs for linear balance and conscious control that are at the root of nausea and vertigo; by relaxing we allow a natural upward spiraling of our energies.

The powers of this tunnel are operating on the razor's edge of non-control, fearing not to redress imbalances, fearing not the power of righteous fury. Here is joy of life, and passionate love, reeling on danger's edge of un-balance between oblivion and bliss; here is ecstasy, and creative chaos, as glyphed by the eight-armed symbol of the planet Nibiru.