A few days into the new year, everything is pretty much back to normal... whatever that might be. I thought, its time to go for another visit to the Temple of the Secrets and start with the second half of my interpretation of the 22 major arcana of the Tarot.

If you are interested in the other Cards, there are links to the related posts at the end.

Today's theme is "XI - Force"

There are different schools of thought and in some tarot decks VIII and XI are the other way round. To me this arrangement made more sense in the end.

As in previous posts about my tarot, I look at this row of the 22 major arcana, the trump cards of the tarot, as the description of a human life, commonly known as the journey of the fool. In the cards we have seen so far, our soul was born into this world, guided by divine parents and a child was raised by earthly mother and father. We were given education and divine blessings. We fell in love, left the parents house to venture out into the big wide world and also learned responsibility. We saw the light of wisdom and learned to accept the ups and downs of life...

At this point, it is now time to take a look at ourselves. The card "XI - Force" is also called "The Affectionate Taming" and refers to our "inner beast". According to C.J. Jung, every person has a so called "shadow", a part of our personality, we are not particularly fond of, in extreme cases even completely reject. I can easily get scared looking down into the abyss of the dark parts of my soul.

But this isn't, what the card is all about. What we really should learn here, is to make peace with ourselves. Trying to lock up and denying the monster will only increase its anger, potentially causing some major problems. Instead, it is important to aknowledge this part of the self and learn to accept it.

In my painting, by embracing the monster, the personality becomes complete, destructive forces are turned to passion and the inner beast no longer poses a threat.

I'm sure @erh.germany and @abigail-dantes would be able to give much more in depth information on the psychological aspects of this card. They both wrote some really fascinating posts about psychology and if you find the subject interesting, you should definitely take a look at their blogs!

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The Temple of the Secrets was part of the museum I ran for twenty years. I also lived in that same building. It is the oldest in my hometown, built in 1432! To get to my flat, one had to go through the museum and it was pretty cool, to have that as the "entrance hall"

We had some 400 museums quality replicas of ancient Egyptian artifacts, like parts of King Tut's treasure.

I always liked the display with the scribes and papyrus. There were also statues of the ancient Egyptian god Thoth, who was depicted in the shape of an ibis or baboon.

Of course, we also had a Nefertiti. Back then the original was on display in the Egyptian Museum in Berlin. But there was a rumor, that they also only showed a replica...

If you like ancient Egypt, make sure you follow @laylahsophia's blog!

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We also had a section about ancient Greece,
with one of my favorites being the "Head of Medusa"

Quite the opposite of this gruesome mythical creature is my favorite greek steemian @ruth-girl! She writes interesting educational/science posts and beautiful stories.

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To find out your Personal TAROT Card, just add day, month and year of your date of Birth:

dd + mm + jjjj = xxxx.

Now add the four digits of the resulting number:

x + x + x + x = nn

If the resulting number is greater than 22 please add n + n again.
Any result equal to or smaller than 22 is your personal number with 22 representing 0

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If you are interested in the aspects of divination, please make sure to
visit @tarotbyfergus

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Temple of the secrets, total size of artwork is 15ft by 45ft, unfinished

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If you'd like to take a look at previous cards, you can use the following links:

"0- The Fool"

"I - The Magician"

"II - The High Priestess"

"III - The Empress"

"IV - The Emperor"

"V - The High Priest"

"VI - The Lovers"

"VII - The Chariot"

"VIII - Justice"

"IX - The Hermit"

"X - The Wheel of Fortune"

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If you like my work, of course I appreciate your upvotes and resteems

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View all my pictures I posted here on steemit!
Viewer discretion advised, nsfw pictures visible without warning!

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My tarot cards were done in my special technique as introduced in What is Hinterglas?