Tarot's High Priestess: Venus enters Pisces

With planet Venus entering the mystical sign of Pisces tonight at 9:33 pm est, I'm celebrating by posting a version of the Tarot's High Priestess card 2, as depicted many moons ago by yours truly via colored pencils!

Now as many Tarot readers and fans know, the High Priestess symbolizes higher, deeper knowledge, intuition, mystical insight, and may represent a feminine form of 'The Pope'. So that for some folks, this Major Arcana card number 2 connects to the controversial legend of Pope Joan, a lady dressed in men's clothing who some believe rose to lead the Vatican for two years in the mid-850s.

Understandably, the paternalistic Catholic hierarchy has denied the existence and career path of Pope Joan through the years, and one assumes the church's course of denial has not changed. For if her story is real, Pope Joan's ascendancy to leadership is what some might call an inconvenient truth, and quite the embarrassment for men who labor under and promote the myth of infallibility.

In closing, I'll simply say that personally, as a Protestant, but with ancient ancestors of the Catholic persuasion, I have no opinion whatsoever concerning the Pope Joan topic, but the possibility of a feminine pope back in Medieval times does make for an intriguing legend or myth that Venus in priestly, mysterious Pisces can readily appreciate!

Portrait of an 'Incomplete Gal' - now Vivian Astoria!

*February 22, 2018: A few days ago I posted here a partially drawn image titled, 'Incomplete Gal' (name this drawing)'. Today I shall post the completed (fini!) pencil portrait of....

Vivian Astoria McClellan and here she is now...

Sending Thanks to All my Facebook Friends (you know who ya are) who suggested possible names for this visage, this character study in pencil!

But why 'McClellan'? For fun. And because for me it represents a 'mysterious' or hidden ancestral line due to 17th century morals (or their lack!) when titled gentlemen kept mistresses as if they were kings (the gentlemen, not the mistresses). And so it seems that if one of my Webb ancestors, John D. Webb, is in the line of a certain immigrant-to-America Thomas Terrance Webb as he apparently is, Thomas took 'Webb' from his mother's family (she, Ann Webb of Colerain, Ireland) and his papa was her main squeeze, Thomas McClellan so long hidden (as things now appear hundreds of years on). If you're wondering, the answer is No, Ann was not his only mistress. (Follow the Thomas McClellan link and scroll almost all the way down to the DF41 Webb Cluster paragraph.)

Which only shows that you never know which sort of nougat you'll bite into when shaking your family tree!

Now as you know, the McClellan surname through the centuries has picked up multiple spellings as so many surnames do and you'll find them and other historic details about the family if you check out the MacLellan Clan pages!

To close, here again is Version One of Vivian Astoria McClellan just to keep both images on the same page (although they are the same drawing!):