Barbara Walker Tarot - Queen of Cups: Virginal

The Ice Queen stands in the Cave of the Heart. Her crystalline cup rests on an inaccessible mountaintop. In Virginal’s glacial realm the water element is frozen. Like her eastern counterpart, Durga the Inaccessible, she once represented the Mountain Mother nourishing her world-suckling and remaining entirely indifferent to the adult male. Beautiful but nonsexual, she contributed some of her character to the medieval Holy Virgin. She stands for cold purity, dedication to high ideals, and apparent heartlessness, but may bring great spiritual nourishment.