May
12
2010

New Hierophants for New Times?

4 comments

Tarot

I lead monthly Tarot meditation sessions where we journey into the cards to meet the wisdom figures there.  This month we focused on the Hierophant and this figure was offering surprises.

 As the card in the Tarot most connected with rules, assigned roles, and established teaching or principles, the Hierophant is not the usual suspect for surprises, but such are the times that we live in that this figure, too, might be breaking out of its box.   As you can see from the Rider-Waite-Smith version of the card, the Hierophant is a figure of authority who works within institutions to pass on established knowledge.  His students listen and receive the information as it is passed to them.  The Hierophant has brought us the gifts of the wisdom of our ancestors, but also has a shadow side of control and domination that limits personal development and insight.

But in recent meditation experiences, the Hierophant seems to be coming in different forms.  In my own meditation, this wisdom figure came to me as a little girl.  (For more on children as wise ones, see my post on Children in the Tarot.)  She laughing led me to a temple hidden in a hillside, really a cave with a light source at its peak.  Another meditation participant had a most unusual figure appear.  The outstanding features were wings and it was hard to discern any kind of body.   In fact, it was impossible to tell if this figure was animal, human, or something else.  But it floated and led her to a temple to complete the work of the meditation.

After the mediation, I began to think about how nearly all of our society institutions are in crisis and flux:  the economy, religion, and the media may be the most obvious examples.  I work with people who do communications for grassroots justice organizations so I hear from them about how the “old” ways (from 10 years ago!) of getting out their messages and reaching the media have absolutely changed.  Newspapers are reduced in size and impact while social / new media has emerged a vital way to reach people. 

We live in Tower times!  And when the old structure is no longer providing societal support, the traditional Hierophant is limited.  He is not a figure to help us to make the leap to the new.

But we can re-envision the Hierophant and there are Tarot creators are already at work on this.  In the Shining Tribe, for example, Rachel Pollack re-named the Hierophant to Tradition and created an image of five standing stones.  The Tradition here comes from nature and the spirits of place rather than just human institutions.

Joanna Powell Colbert’s new Gaian Tarot shifts the meaning of this card in lovely ways by naming it Teacher and offering an image of an elder sitting surrounded by plants and animals.  It is hard to say if this figure is a man or a woman; perhaps this person’s wisdom derives from integrating the masculine and the feminine.  This Teacher takes her/his lessons from the non-human, including the plants of yarrow, comfrey, nettles, garlic, and dandelion. Although we humans think of ourselves as the purveyors of progress, in this time of Towers collapsing we would do well to take our wisdom for those who stay low to the ground and have survived on this planet for millennia,  making their appearance long before humans.  Both the Teacher and plants are Hierophants for these times of change and dissolution.

In my next post, I ponder just want we could learn from the Gaian Teacher’s plant Allies.

Leave a Comment

May 13, 2010, 3:44 am David Thornton

Nice article. I attribute the Hierophant to Sagittarius or more specifically the 9th House – which has connections with Sagittarius and Jupiter. This house rules philosophy, psychology and spirituality. It also rules foreign influences and long journeys.

May 13, 2010, 2:05 pm Carolyn

Glad you liked the article, David. Rider-Waite Smith and, thus Golden Dawn, are my “base code” for Tarot (upon which I add many layers!) so I use GD attributes, which connects Sagitarius to Temperance. Their Hierophant correspondence is to Taurus. How did you develop your attributions?

June 17, 2010, 5:02 pm David thornton

I have my own system which has developed over many years of reading and working with the cards.
There is a nativity by Schon 1515 which was one starting point.
You can also find details on my website tarotreadingincheshire.co.uk

May 18, 2010, 5:00 pm tobeimean peter

This is a good article and quite timely for me as I keep seeing The Hierophant coming up in key positions in readings for the past three weeks or so. I’ve long thought of the Hierophant as a portal of tradition and teaching, but it’s good to see these aspects underlined by the decks you’ve cited. I think in every case (including it’s Papal representations) the card represents some transmission of human culture down through generations. Lately, I’ve been seeing it connected in readings with the accumulation of material wealth — although I am not of yet quite certain how that manifests in terms of a change in icon/image.

Thanks for the representation of the card as a kinder, gentler Institution. I prefer to think of him/her as closer to The High Priestess than The Devil, although most traditional decks seem to imply the opposite is so.

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