This past weekend was my very last vending event of the year, which means I’m free to get back to studio work! I finished up the High Priestess assemblage, which I started a couple of weeks ago. A gray wolf skull rests between a pair of trees while the crescent moon just begins to rise over the horizon.

To me, the High Priestess represents a return to our wild selves. We are mammals, apes, animals–we are Homo sapiens sapiens. We’ve forgotten that, though, convinced we are above the rest of nature. Unfortunately, this attitude has been detrimental to everyone, ourselves included. We have romanticized the gray wolf as the greatest symbol of wilderness we have in our culture, and we should use that power–not to further destroy, but to reconnect.

And that is why the wolf skull holds the High Priestess’ energy–she is beckoning us back to the wilderness and to our deeper selves as animals. We see only the human-specific parts; we ignore the complexity of who we are as whole beings born from billions of years of evolution and experience. If only we reconnected with that ancient heritage, we could change the world for the better–and the High Priestess, in her lupine form, is ready to guide us back to that.