Reading Tarot Like The Hierophant
For many years, I hated the Hierophant.
Whenever it came up in a reading, I sighed, dutifully tried to understand why it was bothering me, and shoved it back in the box as soon as possible. Most of the time I gained nothing from these interactions, even though I knew the Hierophant wasn’t silent. I just didn’t believe the Hierophant could possibly have anything useful to say to me.
The Hierophant is the archetype of traditional, usually religious, authorities. Nuns and priests and popes, temples and tabernacles, synods, dojos, and twelve steps groups . The original name of this card was The Pope, appropriate for a deck designed in Christian Europe,
I am not a person who works easily with the Hierophant. The anti-authoritarian stereotypes of Aquarius moons resonate strongly for me. I don’t do anything unless I know why I’m doing it and agree with the premise behind the action. Settings under the influence of the Hierophant are ritualistic. Their ability to function relies on everyone moving in lock-step. If you have questions, you follow the ritual and ask questions later. If you disagree with the answers to your questions, you leave.
Michelle Tea says in Modern Tarot:
“Conforming rightly has a bad reputation in contemporary culture; it’s used to keep bright spirits down, we think, and to preserve a dying status quo. Likewise, the concept of ‘tradition’ has been hijacked by people seeking to codify their dangerous opposition to a changing world.”
Conformity isn’t my happy place. I was convinced that for the happiness of everyone concerned, it would be best if I remained an outsider in the sphere of the Hierophant, but I was not a happy outsider. Not all of my experiences of the Hierophant were bitter. Without the Hierophant, something was missing in my life.
Beauty and Power of Ritual
There were a few years during college and just after when I had a wonderful relationship with the Hierophant. For most of that time, I belonged to a Christian church that was deeply ritualistic. When you walked into the sanctuary, you had to bow to the altar before taking your seat. You had to bow whenever someone said “Jesus,” and you had to make occult gestures with your hands during the reading of the Gospel.
I grew up in a church that was much less formal, and this new way of doing worship was strange to me, like walking into a dance I didn’t know the steps to. I stumbled through the ritual like a newborn calf, but despite my clumsy gestures, I felt transported. It wasn’t just influence of the thick cloud of frankincense. (Though, frankincense is a mind-altering substance.) I wasn’t any kind of magician then, but I could feel that what they were doing had magical power, power I now recognize as the power of the Hierophant.
The Hierophant’s power comes from tradition, the way that the repetition of meaningful words and gestures builds meaning over time. On the first day I walked into that church, they had been doing the same rituals in that space in the same way for hundred and fifty years. It felt like the rituals and incense had infused the walls. The rituals themselves had been altered little in fifteen hundred years. When the priest said the magic words of the Eucharist, I felt a sense of belonging, as if all of the congregations over time and space that had heard those words together were there with us, lending their power to the working. All of that accumulated power was palpable. I left the service each Sunday feeling like my batteries had been recharged.
Unfortunately, it didn’t take me long to see through the glamor and start asking questions, and when the answers I got to my questions didn’t satisfy me, I discovered that the Hierophant’s hold on that place was too rigid to hold me, and I left.
A few years after I left Christianity, I started studying the Tarot. The Hierophant felt like a tease, a reminder of something beautiful that I was incapable of participating in. It was easier to focus on the Hierophant’s bad side.
Leader of the Mindless Herd
Like all archetypes, the Hierophant has a shadow: Mobs of people coming together to chant slogans of hate, authoritarian leaders whipping people into a frenzy to support a controlling agenda, suicide cults filled with mindless automatons.
The same coordinated practice that builds power over time and that left me feeling empowered can be used just as easily to create power for evil.
Neuroscientists are just beginning to uncover the overwhelming power of habit. The human brain has to do an extraordinary amount of work in order to carry out simple functions. It is constantly trying to offload work as much as possible. It does this by using rituals, habits, and assumptions like a computer that relies on automated processes to do its job.
Group rituals, the natural habitat of the Hierophant, are simply habits that have been adopted by a people who have been trained to act as one. A person who has attended a liturgical Christian church for decades can perform the gestures of the Mass without thinking.
Once habits are set, they are extremely difficult to break. I built the habit of crossing myself every time I heard a siren, and it took me years of constant reminder not to do it to break myself of the habit after I left Christianity.
It is annoying to have to break a habit that no longer suits you, but habit itself isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Using hateful words can be a habit, but so is brushing your teeth. Habit becomes a problem when it helps you hurt yourself or others without thinking.
Hitler famously used the power of ritual in his rallies and parades to call the power of a nation to the service of hate. He created systems, habits, and gestures that made killing so easy for the bureaucrats in his service, the trials of his henchmen raised the question of whether they could have been accused of thinking about what they were doing at all.
The Hierophant, like habit, doesn’t take a side. Its power is present whenever groups of people use the magic of ritual to raise power. The Hierophant is there when people march for justice and when they rally for hate. The Hierophant is there when a community dances for joy and when they mourn at a funeral. The Hierophant uses the power of habit and group pressure to create addictions and break them.
Guardian of Initiation
The Tarot Pope became the Hierophant under the influence of Waite and Crowley who revised the Tarot in the 20th century. Historically, the Hierophant was the high priest of the Eleusinian Mysteries, a highly secretive cult in ancient Greece that celebrated the mystery of death and rebirth. In order to get in on the secrets of the Eleusinian mysteries, you needed to be initiated, and initiates were so good at keeping the secrets of the order very little is known about it today.
The Hierophant’s new emphasis on initiation was well in line with the archetype’s natural love of structure and conformity. Rachel Pollack says in 78 Degrees of Wisdom that when you work in an initiatory tradition, you are “entering a doctrine, with a set of beliefs which [you] must learn and accept before [you] can gain entrance.”
Initiatory traditions get a bad rap for their secretiveness. They must have something to hide, critics say, if they can’t share everything. But initiatory traditions at their best do not require initiates to assent to the doctrines of the order without knowing them. Instead, initiates are required to go through a discernment period where they think about the principles of the order and whether or not they can conform to them. Once they accept the doctrines of the order, then they are allowed access to the secret rituals and powers that would allow the initiate to use this knowledge.
This process of learning, processing, acceptance, and initiation helps to ensure that initiates do not adopt powerful new habits blindly. The Hierophant is at its most dangerous when masses of people assent to principles without thinking. The draw of belonging is powerful, and the need to require thoughtfulness and consent is one of the reasons for levels of initiation in traditions such as Wicca, the Masons, and Druid orders. At each stage, the initiate learns a little more, and the order and the initiate need to both give their consent before the initiate is allowed to go to the next level.
It was the initiatory side of the Hierophant that finally lead me to make peace with the archetype. I realized that you don’t need to be a mindless automaton to work with the archetype. I had been born into Christianity. I was initiated into the religion under the threat of hellfire before I was old enough to understand its beliefs and doctrines. But I am an adult now with strong beliefs and principles. When I meet the Hierophant in the robes of the initiator, I do it with love and trust and my eyes wide open.
Reading Tarot Like The Hierophant
In the context of a Tarot reading, the Hierophant is present in the rituals you build into your practice. If you always shuffle your cards and lay them out a certain way, you are participating in the Hierophant. The Hierophant helps you to discover the habits and gestures and techniques that make your readings better, and the Hierophant uses the power of habit to help you do those things consistently.
The Hierophant also influences your Tarot practice when you study within the context of magical orders or sit at the feet of mentors who work within a tradition, even if it is a tradition they’ve created themselves.
Because traditions gain power from unconscious habits of thought, it is important to become conscious of the beliefs and traditions that influence your readings.
It is healthy, too, to periodically set aside some time to consider your lineage. Where did your ideas about the meanings of the cards come from? Who are your Tarot teachers? Who were their teachers? How much do you know about the traditions they belong to? How much do you know about your own traditions? What assumptions about how the world works inform your practice? What do you believe about fate and free-will? The afterlife and past lives? Good, evil, and the nature of suffering?
Lastly, if you read for others, it is important to be open with your clients about your traditions and beliefs, as well. Whenever we read for others, we may be acting as initiators, even if we don’t realize it. Your clients have the right to consent before being initiated into your mysteries, just as you have that right when you present yourself to the Hierophant.
