Hello you,
I’m slipping in a little later than expected with this month’s Embodying the Tarot. I had full intention to follow my usual Thursday-before-the-new-moon schedule but last week kicked my butt with a whirlwind of premenstrual exhaustion, self-doubt, and existential grief so a couple of days hibernating took priority.
Which is to say, hi! Let’s talk about The Hierophant! Curious esoteric name, curious esoteric dude (with dude being used in the entirely gender ambivalent manner of course, because these tarot archetypes have no gender).
If this card feels like it harkens to medieval monks and thick tomes painstakingly illuminated by guttering candlelight, you’re not wrong. This is an archetype of sacred wisdom. Not that that necessarily means we need to run off to join a monastery and renounce all worldly concerns.
Before we dive in to how to work with that devoted energy in our own life, I wanted to let you know that my books are now open for One-to-One Breathwork sessions.
It’s immensely powerful to have space held for us. Yes, we can do all sorts of healing, growth, and magic on our own, but the fact of the matter is that working with another person just hits different. Having someone holding a container as you to come back to yourself enables you to put your guard (and mental chatter) down and drop in deeper to what’s really true.
If that space is something you’re direly needing right now, I would love to see you. Pricing is sliding scale, sessions are all held on Zoom, and you’re more than welcome to get in touch with any questions about breathwork and if it’s a good fit for you.
Okay! Let’s get into sacred knowledge sharing with The Hierophant…
5.
The Hierophant
You slip the robe on, just as you’ve done a hundred times before. Just as your mother did, and her mother before her. The fabric drapes weighty over your shoulders, skimming the floor with a comforting shush. You begin to move through the ritual, so familiar to you that it’s almost second nature. Candles lit, talismen laid out, voices raised together singing the same words that have been sung for centuries.
Incense hazes your senses and it’s almost like you can feel them there with you. All the people who stand at your back. The witches, the wise ones, the elders, the ancestors. All the people who came before and carried the torch. A lineage of wisdom and meaning passed down, from one to another. You can feel them holding you as you carry it forward in turn.
Who is The Hierophant?
This is the card of wisdom. The Hierophant seeks knowledge, particularly spiritual knowledge, and dances back and forth across the line of teacher and student.
The traditional Rider Waite Smith depiction of The Hierophant rolls with some pretty heavy handed Christian symbolism. All orthodox crosses and worshipers sat devotedly at the master’s feet. Tradition for tradition’s sake. Doing things because that’s how we’ve always done them.
It can make it a tricky card to relate to on first encounter. Especially as so many of us don’t necessarily want to be upholding the unyielding traditions and power abuses so prevalent in organised religion. I’m no different. I was raised pretty much agnostic, barring a fortnightly chapel visit in my Methodist high school, and the classic berobed Hierophant always rankled in my system. What did this priestly energy have to do with my unholy queer life?
There’s another way to see this archetype though. Turning the focus from the human-centric strictures of religion and into a more spacious kind of wisdom.
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