The Knower

Keywords: Knowledge at the centre of awareness; the Watcher at the Crossroads

The Knower is a a tall thin man or woman (deliberately ambiguous) in a ragged black robe whipped about by the wind. His/her arms are outstretched in the cross position, straight out from the shoulders. There are four heads, one aged, one male, one female, one child; The Knower stands at a crossroads and one head faces each direction. We may only see three of the faces of these heads, but we have an indication of the fourth. The aged face may be the one least visible, but this will vary during our own life phases. The least visible face of The Knower is not always the one that seems distant from us in a life phase, but there is a convention that the aged face is turned from us, as this is the last phase that we will experience in each life. The four phases are Childhood, Adulthood, Maturity and Age, corresponding to the Four Elements and Four Cardinal Directions.

The arms point up two of the reads, while the outstretched legs straddle the other two, thus the body turns at the waist. There are storm clouds and a turbulent sky with high random winds. To the north, facing away from us in the direction of age and death, there is a gleam of light through the darkest clouds.

The Knower knows all worlds, all being, all directions. In mythic terms this Trump reveals Janus, the divinity of turning points, and Hecate, the goddess of crossroads in the Underworld. The image of the four-headed being at the crossroads also resonates with sacrificial gods, redeemers and all spiritual powers at the centre of universal motion, where all polarities are interchanged. Sacrifice is an exchange, made from a viewpoint that is often unknown to us in our surface lives.

In a personal reading or vision this Trump may represent self-sacrifice for a deeper cause or for the benefit of others, or reveal a spiritual path of service or transformation. It may also indicate the way of dangerous or self-destructive knowledge, though this may indeed be the way to deep transformation. Self-annihilation may be profoundly valuable, losing the old limited self to find a central knowledge rather than a relative or peripheral self-image (one of the four faces).

There may also be a sense of revelation and prophecy with The Knower, for he/she receives and sees all from the centre of the crossroads.

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