Card 05 - The
Hierophant
© 2007 Honora Finkelstein
The Hierophant, or High Priest, is the fifth card
in the Tarot deck and bears the Roman numeral V. Like the High
Priestess, he is a bridge. As she is the bridge to the subconscious
mind, so he is the bridge to the divine.
As an authority figure, he represents
tradition—meaning traditional values, rules, laws, and belief
systems. He may be seen in all the white collar professionals upon
whom civilized people depend for knowledge and wisdom—lawyers,
doctors, teachers, preachers, rabbis, therapists, and so forth.
Among aboriginal or tribal nations, he is the shaman, the story
keeper, the medicine man, the wizard. He is one who interprets the
meaning of life, of symbols, of prophecies, of portents. And he does
so through listening, reflecting, meditating, and channeling back
the answers. But unlike the High Priestess, who goes to a higher
form of consciousness within the self, the Hierophant interprets the
truth through society’s traditions, social awarenesses, and the
learned and handed down dogmas, rules, and doctrines, whether they
are learned from the church or the state.
Numerically in the Arabic number system used by
Western culture, the Hierophant sits in the middle, as the number 5
is the middle number between 1 and 9, 2 and 8, 3 and 7, and 4 and 6.
So he intervenes and mediates, as a priest is supposed to intervene
between ordinary human beings and their gods. As such, he also
represents the True Self, the inner spiritual master, teacher,
advisor, guide, or conscience, the part of the Self that takes a
higher ground and assists in keeping the lower consciousness on its
true path in life.
The Hierophant wears the mitered headdress and
robes of a bishop or pope, and he likewise carries the staff with
three crossbars, suggesting his connection to a triune god. This
staff is not simply the triune Christian god of Father, Son, and
Holy Spirit, since many of the tribes of the ancient world, from
Egypt to Asia to the Celtic races to the native peoples of Hawaii,
had sets of triune gods as well. The very nature of a trinity
suggests the three planes of existence: the physical, the
mental/emotional, and the spiritual. Like the High Priestess, the
Hierophant also sits on a throne between two pillars in a temple of
worship. He is that part of Self that because of his higher knowing
recognizes justice on the one hand and mercy on the other.
The acolytes who are being taught by the
Hierophant are wearing robes bearing the flowers from the garden of
the Magician. One wears a garment decorated with roses, while the
other wears a robe decorated with lilies. As they did in the
Magician’s garden, the red roses represent desire, and the white
lilies represent purity. Hence, it is the voice of the True Self
that must mediate or intervene and help hold a balance between the
individual soul’s desire motives and pure intentions.
As the Emperor represents the physical sense of
vision because of his reasoning abilities, so the Hierophant
represents the physical sense of hearing. According to the Builders
of the Adytum, the function of hearing is the principle link between
one mind and another. It also represents the interior hearing of the
voice of the True Self. A priest is a hearer of confession, and once
a confession of the truth has been made, the speaker making the
confession is joined to the one to whom the truth has been told.
Between the acolytes are two keys, sometimes seen
as “the keys to the kingdom of heaven.” One key is gold and the
other is silver. In planetary astrology, gold represents the sun of
our solar system, while silver represents the Earth’s moon. The sun
is fiery, outward acting, and penetrating, while the moon is cool,
passive, and receptive. Hence, gold is traditionally a metal that
represents the masculine gender, and silver traditionally represents
the feminine—the two polar opposites of the Earth plane and of human
interaction. The Hierophant sits as a mediator between the two—the
voice of a higher consciousness as well as the ability to listen,
which both genders must develop if they are to work in harmony.
If you draw the Hierophant in a Tarot reading, it
is a time for playing by the rules and by the knowledge and wisdom
of your own internal authority figure. Stay open to the internal
voice that guides you to higher understanding. |
