The Mossy Voice of Judgment

This article is based on this Dutch article of Martijn Benders

The Mossy Voice of Judgment

‘Judgment’ – the resurrection plant, of which the most famous is the Rose of Jericho, named after the city with collapsing walls when it was circled seven times by Moses and his army.

The story goes that the Jewish people worked as slaves for the pharaoh, miraculously managed to escape as an army, wandered through the desert for forty years, and suddenly emerged with an army and an ark of the covenant to claim the holy land, where God leveled the city walls. The sense of being chosen was enormous even back then.

English moss doesn’t grow in England but in various tropical regions.

Last week, I met Kees van der Pijl. Few people in the Netherlands have so much meaningful to say:

The man in the middle is very religious and also a ‘financial expert,’ which I read, is somewhat the religion of our time, that you could specialize in it. Deeply convinced that we are in the end times. Yes, one might quickly fire their nuclear arsenal then.

The Last Judgment, thus, with the voiceover by Attenborough. Die Ewige Wiederkehr des Gleichens as a kind of perverse symmetry law.

Judgment naturally comes with the idea of symmetry. Our judicial system is based on this: like monks, like cowls.

In the Rider-Waite deck, you see in The Last Judgment six naked people rising from the grave after an angel blows the trumpet:

The whole family is allowed to rise again, so to speak. That doesn’t quite give the idea that you should be among the chosen ones, because then you’d be the only one rising from the grave.

With Veronique, it’s less of a family affair, and you get more the idea of an Adam and Eve who eternally have the ground pulled out from under their feet, only to fall and rise again, as befits resurrection plants.

The flag of St. George is a red cross on a white background. It is historically linked to St. George, recognized as a Christian martyr and the patron saint of England, among other places. Today, the flag is primarily known as the national flag of England.

English moss is probably the host plant of Euptychia attenboroughi, the black-eyed satyr moth. All this should be read with a mossy voice that has outlived itself.

But St. George, wasn’t he also the man who slew the dragon? In Christianity, are the dead essentially dragons to be fought? In the Rider-Waite, it at least became a bit cozier, with the familial resurrection. In Veronique Hogervorst’s Butterfly Tarot, the dragon is more likely God himself.

And the grave has been replaced, how could it be otherwise in a butterfly tarot, with a cocoon. The fear of death encapsulated in the Cartesian dualism of the Rider-Waite card: St. George fighting the death dragon – here, it is replaced by cocooning life, catching manna from heaven, waiting to burst. That is much more akin to a resurrection you can simply observe in nature.

What is also an interesting association (as a poet, you’re expected to be an association specialist) – the famous Kop van Jut as a literal basis for the word ‘Judgment’

The Kop van Jut

The “Kop van Jut” refers to an attraction at fairs where people hit a platform with a hammer to ring a bell, often represented by a figure symbolizing punishment or revenge. The image of the “head” acting as a scapegoat strongly associates with judgment and condemnation. Someone who is the “Kop van Jut” gets the blows, just like someone who falls under judgment.

Interestingly, in Old Dutch, words like “jutten” (to incite) might be related to this figure, suggesting that the Kop van Jut is someone who is incited or forced to be a scapegoat. In terms of justice, this emphasizes how people are sometimes forced by society to bear the burden of judgment.

Harris-Crowley Deck

In the Harris-Crowley deck, the card is called The Aeon, and you also see cocooning strongly reflected in the symbolism:

Unlike the Rider-Waite tarot, this card centers on fire, and the Hebrew letter Shin, which means both fire and tooth, the tooth of time. In the drop of the letter, we see three worshipping figures cocooning.

By making the card elementarily diametrically opposed to the Rider-Waite deck, Crowley attempted to underscore his belief that his revelations ‘had destroyed the world with fire.’ With his Thelema, he symbolically tried to return entirely to the Egyptian pantheon, which fit well with the time he lived in, when there was indeed a sort of Egypt revival happening.

I find the balance in Veronique’s Butterfly Tarot more pleasant: when you think of rebirth, you think more of water (Nun, Death), but the fire is also present in her card in yellow form, with satyr flutes instead of trumpets.

Martijn Benders, 04-10-2024

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