Even though I painted this card a long time ago it still surprises me with many new elements and revelations. These things make me think that my original intention in this painting, which was to portray inner, feminine strength is merely the tip of the iceberg.

I look at it now and see the sphinx of Greek mythology. The sphinx was a creature made up of the body of a lion, the breast and head of a woman, and the talons of an eagle, with some variation depending on the source.

The myth goes that the sphinx perched herself atop a rock on a road near Thebes and posed a riddle, given to her by the muses, to anyone who passed. "What is that which has one voice and yet becomes four-footed and two-footed and three-footed?" She asked. The sphinx then destroyed anyone who answered incorrectly. Oedipus found out about this after many people had already perished and went to meet the sphinx. “Man, who crawls on all fours as a baby, walks on 2 legs as a man, and 3 legs with the addition of a cane in old age.” He answered correctly. Mortified that he knew the answer, the sphinx threw herself off a cliff to her death. As a prize Oedipus was made King and unknowingly married his own mother who was widowed when he unknowingly killed his father.

Some say Oedipus knew the answer because the muses had given it to him in a dream, others that an oracle gave him the answer and even others say it was his bloodline to the throne which made him capable of answering.

Oedipus, it should be noted, means ‘swollen foot’ because his adoptive parents found him hung by the feet or foot from a tree. He was hung there by a herdsman who had taken pity on the child after he was ordered to kill him by the King. The King had been told by an oracle that Oedipus was destined to kill him, which he eventually did, irregardless of the Kings attempt at thwarting it. Is there relation here to XII The Hanged Man, the next card in the order of Major Arcana?

The sphinx, including Egyptian and Greek, modern and otherwise, has come to represent a great mystery. They guard doorways to mysterious places outside and inside our own selves. In attempting to answer their riddles we risk death. The questions force our minds and hearts to fragment and look at words and images in new ways to find a simple, truthful, and sometimes obvious answer.

It seems to me that answering correctly risks death as well, as the answer is transforming and grants you passage to a new place, a birth, while the lion devours the old. I believe there is nothing truly hidden from our souls and the muses inspire us through major passages with questions that force us to know ourselves. Don’t know yourself or be deceitful and fail to progress, the death of stagnation. The lion’s head, while not usually part of a Sphinx, is here and is positioned between the woman’s legs. This is something I didn’t even realize until recently someone asked me mischievously, “Is that her kitty” (replace the word kitty with a more colorful word starting with ‘p’). All I could say is, “why yes, it is!” And it is. It is the strength and wisdom lying at the doorway to a woman’s womb and all the symbolic meaning that goes with it.