The Hierophant: Returning to Normal
AUTHOR’S NOTE: Of all the tarot trumps, the Hierophant (originally the Pope) feels most like a “square peg in a round hole” when brought up against modern expectations. It was a product of a bygone era and a different mindset, often requiring a great deal of mental calisthenics to puzzle out in practical reading situations.
I’m by no means a religious person and I have little use for “Father knows best” authoritarianism; consequently, when it comes to addressing mundane scenarios I’ve always avoided emphasizing the patriarchal piety displayed in the Hierophant because it seems so foreign to 21st-Century secular culture where most questions put to the tarot originate. But I recently had an epiphany about a possible solution while performing 2025 annual readings for a couple of friends.
I was struck by the realization that, as a card ascribed to the “Fixed” Earth sign Taurus, rather than implying access to spiritual wisdom it can represent a “normalizing” trend that gravitates toward and could ultimately reinstate the previous status quo (whatever that was for the querent, even though it may not be exactly what the individual wants now). It suggests avoiding radical departures from routine and sitting tight until they blow over; I’ve sometimes equated it with a “don’t rock the boat” mentality. Other relevant platitudes are “pull in your horns, take two steps back and wait until the dust settles; discretion is the better part of valor.”
Previously, I had contented myself with the idea that this card refers mainly to established conventions of the type that are enshrined in dogmatic screeds, those stipulations that regiment the faithful or — in Pink Floyd’s memorable turn-of-phrase — “keep the loonies on the path.” I get less use out of the notion that it signifies constructive “teaching” since not every forecast involves a learning opportunity that is robust enough to warrant mention. So I’ve viewed the Hierophant as signifying rules-based behavior, a moral straitjacket that is often self-imposed due to the need to comply with external circumstances. When compliance spells survival, there may be no other way to deal with it.
In prosaic readings, the challenge is to keep the characteristics attributed to this card sufficiently restrained (or “small enough”) to fit into the context of an average “day-in-the-life” outlook for the typical querent (that is, one who isn’t facing a major ethical dilemma). Demystifying its outsized footprint is part of my heretical effort to scale back the common assumption that the Major Arcana are always a “big deal,” ever since I recognized that such overweening eminence has seldom made an appearance in my own readings over the last fifty years of tarot practice. They simply don’t portend consequential developments in a consistently reliable way.
I’ve perceived that most of the time they merely convey a broad background theme against which the other cards present the details of the story; their influence may seem potent and poised to intrude but it rarely penetrates deeply into our daily grind, usually providing stage-setting more than plot advancement. I prefer to believe that, while they may create the environment for something out-of-the-ordinary to occur, they don’t often deliver on that promise; therefore I don’t hold my breath in anticipation of fireworks, an overreaction the Tower has taught me to dismiss as unwarranted.
Another way to put it is that, as exalted abstractions (aka “archetypes”} they don’t stoop to engagement in unexceptional cause-and-effect episodes; they may incline and inspire but they hardly ever instigate on their own initiative, at least not as we’ve been led to believe they do. I was once told by a European acquaintance that most Tarot de Marseille readers use only the trump cards and grant them no more significance than the rest of the tarot world assigns to the pip cards. Any supposed higher meaning amounts to charming allegorical ornamentation that gains little traction in mundane terms; perhaps the august personalities have better things to do than to stick their noses in where there is very little that requires their intervention, apart from the occasional “squeaky wheel.”
Back to my recent readings. In both cases, the Hierophant appeared near the end of the narrative, creating a powerful impression that the individuals would be returning to normal in some way over the next year. No fanfare, just the gradual restoration of a belief that things would be coming back together in a mildly encouraging fashion after an unsettled period.
I decided to latch onto the calm complacency represented by its esoteric correspondence to Taurus, which is patient, stable and comfortable in its own skin. The Hierophant would thus be envisioned as similarly modest in his ways, perhaps more of an unpretentious shaman with “healing in his hands” than a pompous clergyman. That is the kind of normalcy I can get my head around, not that of Bob Dylan’s creepy “Phantom of the Opera in a perfect image of a priest.”
Originally published at http://parsifalswheeldivination.wordpress.com on January 16, 2025.
