Major Arcana 2

Today we come to the third card in the Major Arcana of the Tarot, and she is the female analogue to the Magician, the High Priestess.

2 High Priestess: Modjadji – the Rain Queen

Archetype and divinatory meaning: The high priestess is one who guards sacred knowledge, revealing it and teaching it to the searcher, using it in harmony with the needs of the earth and its people. The divinationary focus is on waiting, waiting for the right time, for energies to be gathered before being released.

Image: Modjadji, her face serene and welcoming, is seated on a stone throne with a fall of water and abundant flowering aloes on either side of her, symbolising the healing power she holds. She is wrapped in blue robes, the color of water, and her power hidden until it needs to be used.

Origin: The tribes that lived in and around the valleys and hills where Modjadji, the rain queen lived, knew that she and her tribe were sacrosanct. She controlled the clouds, the life giving rain for crops and cattle, and she and her tribe were thus not part of the wars and squabbles of those around.

Visiting the rain queen to implore her intercession was only done after the efforts of your own sangomas and indunas had failed, when no other recourse was open and the land needed rain desperately.  Then the journey to Modjadji was undertaken, and her help sought.

Her face was seldom seen as she was considered to be divine, and only her inner court was permitted to approach her. Her tribe, the Lobedu, is thought to have been started by a rain-making princess from the Karanga tribe in Zimbabwe. She is considered immortal, although it is more that she lives on in successive bodies in much the same way the Dalai Llama is believed to be reincarnated.