pyraxis | Tarot: The Empress

A smiling woman standing on a sunny plain with her two young children clinging to her skirt. She is carrying a baby in a sling of fine striped cloth and cradling his head as she nurses him. In the clear sky above are flying two birdlike creatures. A tree in the background has monkeylike creatures hanging from the branches, and a large lizard and a herd are also in the background.

This was a hard one.

I had to bring it together so it somehow represented both the essence of the Karnese Mother goddess, and the more ordinary scene of a nethik mother, whose people are the most pastoral of the four recognized shapes.

That's why you can see each of the four shapes in the background, even if there isn't space for much detail. The Mother protects and nurtures all shapes, and though the Grehti priests in their cosmology divide them into a hierarchy of greater and lesser shapes, those which take human form and those which don't, all of them live together in the Mother's cradle. She is the land and the magic and life force it contains.

The little I know of nethik secrets, the ones they've held onto despite so many of them being mistreated and enslaved by the rsakk, is that the Mother was worshipped long before there were Grehti. The Grehti would have you believe they are her chosen consorts and without them the connection would be broken and there would be nothing but chaos. But there are rituals and knowledge that tell a different story. I can only say this because there are no Grehti here, but part of the knowledge is about the essence of duality.

Anyway, some of the nethik are nomadic and others are farmers, and they've developed the most advanced farming techniques known on Karn. (Advanced being a relative term since the culture itself is neolithic.) They have a lot of skill with herbs both for medicine and for cloth dyes.