The Hierophant as a Sacred Revealer
The Hierophant points the way to truth, even when he represents a perversion of truth.
Read MoreTarot Grandmaster
3559 Southwest Corporate Parkway Palm City, FL, 34990 United States
866-99TAROT 866-998-2768 (Toll Free) 561-655-1160 (Text or Call) 772-207-1852 (Palm City)
Tarot is a book of spiritual wisdom in picture form that tells the story of all human experience.
With tarot, we connect with Spirit to discern wise guidance for the present, develop understanding of the past, and learn ways to work to manifest our goals and possibilities for the future.
If you are interested in the tarot and other tools of divination please begin with my tarot news page!
Please leave this site if the practice of traditional methods of divination are not of interest to you.
The Hierophant points the way to truth, even when he represents a perversion of truth.
Read MoreThe archetypes of tarot are timeless.
Read MoreThere is so much controversy and misunderstanding around reversed cards in tarot. The quandary is this. Since it is the reader’s choice whether to honor reversals, we must acknowledge that one can conduct a perfectly good reading without them. That being the case, then, why do some tarotists find reversals so integral to their reading process? One answer might be this.
Read MoreRecently I wrote a blog post about the archetype of the Hierophant, and the ways in which three modern tarot artists had reinterpreted that archetype. After reading that post, a number of people requested that I make a comparison between the Emperor and the Hierophant.
When we discuss tarot cards from an archetypal perspective, we need to understand that archetypes are different from interpretations. Tarot interpretations can vary a great deal, based on the reader’s intuition, preferred tarot traditions, and the context of both the question and the surrounding cards.
Archetypes, on the other hand, are fixed. The only wiggle room with an archetype is in our relationship to it and our resonance with it. This is an especially important point to consider regarding the Emperor and the Hierophant, since these archetypes both include the very yang energy of masculine authority. How we react to these cards says a lot about how we feel about masculine authority!
I often call the Emperor the authority of the community, and the Hierophant the authority of the church. When I say this, I am thinking about the time and place that gave birth to tarot, where religious authority would have carried a bit more weight than mere political authority. The question is how these archetypes translate into our modern times, when neither politicians nor priests are automatically feared or respected. In fact, some of the funniest jokes I know are about politicians and priests!
Every personality, every character, and every archetype has a light side and a shadow side. I generally see the archetypes of both the Emperor and the Hierophant as positive and well-intentioned. However, both of these archetypal characters have the potential for corruption and abuse.
It is easy to see the ways in which the archetypes of the Emperor and the Hierophant are similar. In what ways are they different?
It might be helpful to look at some of the cards’ correspondences. The Emperor is card number four, the number of stability. The Hierophant is card number five, the number of expansion.
The Emperor is related to Aries, and the element of Fire. The Hierophant is related to Taurus, and the element of Earth.
To me, the numbers and the elements of these two cards seem to balance each other out. Four is stable, but Fire is expansive. Five is expansive, but Earth is stable.
What do I conclude from this? The Emperor needs routine, but may step outside of daily activity in extraordinary circumstances. As a politician, he can declare war. The Hierophant seeks spiritual enlightenment, but is limited by his own humanity. As a priest, he longs to be something more than his human self. In fact, some people may worship the Hierophant.
When I consider the archetype of the Emperor, I see a respected community and family leader, a father and a politician. When I consider the archetype of the Hierophant, I see a person who has mastered a particular doctrine, a person who has become an authority of some specific body of knowledge. By comparison, the Emperor has earned his position by being responsible, likeable and present, rather than by learning a body of knowledge.
In a reading, both the Emperor and the Hierophant could indicate people, generally men. Both of these people could be either domineering or helpful. Both of these people are leaders. The Emperor may be political in the way he operates. The Emperor will do what is necessary to keep his people happy, or to protect them. The Hierophant will operate based on the particular discipline of his body of knowledge or his belief set. He cares less about how others regard him– his concern is adherence to his discipline or dogma.
Both the Emperor and the Hierophant can also represent institutions such as banks, hospitals, governments or corporations.
In a reading, the Hierophant can indicate advanced education, business ownership or being the boss. The Hierophant can also predict a wedding.
In a reading, the Emperor can indicate a position of stability and responsibility, or suggest that a particular situation is stable and reliable.
Thanks to everyone who asked this question. I hope you enjoy the video!
If you have questions about tarot, please email me.
Video of Christiana Answers a Question about the Emperor and the Hierophant
Modern tarot creators enjoy stretching tarot to fit every possible theme and worldview. That’s a good thing. Tarot’s ability to speak universally, using the imagery of so many cultures, is part of its awesome power.
I believe it is the strength and power of the tarot archetypes that allow tarot this much flexibility. Unfortunately, it is possible to stretch a card so far beyond its archetype that you lose the archetype entirely.
We are all aware of the trend to rename some of the more difficult Major Arcana cards. Death becomes Transition; the Devil becomes Materialism, and so on. We often discuss this trend in terms of the dark cards, the Tower, the Devil and Death.
Another Major Arcana card that often receives this same treatment at the hands of deck creators is the Hierophant. Weirdly, there is generally very little protest when a well-intentioned modern deck mangles this particular archetype.
I think deck creators’ tendency to mangle the Hierophant, and our tendency to put up with it, comes from two factors. First is the way most tarotists seem to feel about Hierophant energy. We don’t like rules and structure. We fear the religious hierophants in our own community who discriminate against us and disrespect us. Of course, we don’t want any of them in our tarot decks!
The second factor is that we seem to lack a basic understanding of the Hierophant. Because we don’t understand him, we don’t see his value along the Fool’s Journey.
I can think of three well-loved tarot decks that, in my opinion, really get the Hierophant wrong.
The first and oldest is Motherpeace, my second-ever tarot deck. In Motherpeace, the Hierophant is a man wearing false breasts, pretending to be a woman. Clearly, sensitivity toward the transgender community was not on the minds of these deck designers when they were creating the then-definitive feminist tarot of the 1980s.
The idea behind this vision of the Hierophant is that the matriarchy is the keeper of true spiritual authority. By pretending to be a woman, the Hierophant is trying to claim an authority that is not his. Trust me, this played better in the 1980s than it does now.
Modern spiritual decks with Pagan and New Age themes often try to “fix” the Hierophant. Tarot of Transformation renamed him “Spiritual Leaders” and used the key phrase “Taking the Hierophant off the Pedestal.” Chrysalis Tarot calls the Hierophant the “Divine Child” and says this in its LBW (Little White Book) to justify the change.
“Most tarot decks title this card the Hierophant, a religious authority figure. In Chrysalis Tarot, the task of spiritual growth is an individual responsibility that requires an open mind and critical thinking.”
To me, this kind of thinking shows an incomplete understanding of the Hierophant and of tarot in general. When we fail to embrace the Hierophant, and all the archetypes of tarot, we become unable to gain the knowledge, wisdom, insight and divinatory intelligence that tarot can provide.
Five hundred years ago, the Hierophant was the Pope. That’s why we see him as a religious authority. When we consider the position held by the Roman Catholic Church in Italy at the time of tarot’s emergence, we understand that the Pope was not just a religious authority, he was the ultimate authority.
Today, the Hierophant speaks to authority in relevant and important ways. To remove the Hierophant’s authority, as the three decks I mentioned have done, removes an important piece of the tarot puzzle, and risks making tarot less effective.
In a reading, the Hierophant can represent the rules and the authority of any “church.” That can be the “church” of medicine, law, or governance, of corporate, educational or military structure or spiritual doctrine.
When we need to submit ourselves to the church of medicine for surgery, we need the Hierophant, a surgeon who knows every piece of the doctrine, rather than a Divine Child who wants us to figure it out ourselves.
When we earn an academic honor, we have become expert in the doctrine of the Hierophant, not the introspection of a Divine Child.
In a reading, the Hierophant can suggest consulting a doctor or an attorney. The Hierophant can encourage your professional authority as a manager or a business owner. When the Hierophant appears to suggest these things, he commands our respect for the due process we all must endure. A Divine Child has no need or respect for due process, achievement, or a learned body of knowledge.
When we understand and portray tarot in a limited way, we limit the power of tarot. Right now, we seem to be inclined to limit the powers of the Hierophant.
When we examine the way our culture processes a tarot card, we understand something about our culture. At a time of corrupt governments, disenfranchised citizenry and economic disparity, none of us like the Hierophant energy very much.
The answer, though, is not to engage in navel-gazing and withdrawn self-discovery. The answer is to earn your own authority, and wield it wisely. That’s the way to change the authoritarian structures of the hierophants that don’t serve us. At the same time, when you need an authority – a doctor, a lawyer, a priest, you really can’t accept any substitutes.
Sometime the Hierophant comes up in a reading to describe a stubborn and didactic personality. The Hierophant has told me of a client’s dogmatic Evangelical husband, whom she would later divorce. The Hierophant has told me of a client’s spiritual leader who was abusing her sexually. The Divine Child in the same place would not have been able to communicate these things to me.
Our discomfort with the Hierophant is understandable. However, when we remove the Hierophant from tarot we miss the opportunity to explore the dichotomy of this specific energy. When does honoring tradition build our community, and when does it oppress us? When do we need the authority of a body of knowledge, and when is it best to trust or inner guidance?
True enlightenment comes from both studied knowledge and intuitive wisdom. The Hierophant is an important part of that journey. Through studying difficult tarot images, and seeing the ways in which they speak in readings, we learn about ourselves, and our society. The tarot archetype of the Hierophant is complex, and irreplaceable.