The Hierophant, the Archetypal “Five” and the Maelstrom
AUTHOR’S NOTE: I credit Edgar Allan Poe with educating me about the maelstrom: it is the “Mother of All Whirlpools” that will relentlessly suck down any seafaring vessel careless enough to wander into its embrace, kind of like an oceanic “black hole.” Here I’m drawing unflattering parallels to religious fundamentalism and its purveyors, although that correlation is incidental to the main thrust of this essay.
I recently came across commentary in Sallie Nichols’ Tarot and the Archetypal Journey about the fifth trump of the tarot (the Hierophant, or Pope in older decks), the number Five and the metaphysical “quintessence” that is humanity’s unique purview among animals. This led me to compare those concepts to the “maelstrom” as an irresistible force for change that is the essence of Five, and to try squaring that notion with the Hierophant as conveying a dogmatic, conservative worldview marked by rigid ideology. I will quote Nichols at length before exploring my own thoughts; she had clearly read “Joseph Maxwell on isomorphs” before she wrote this passage.
“The Pope’s number is five. The symbolic meaning of this number fits beautifully with all that has been said about this character. It embodies the four elements common to all creation, synthesizing these through the One of the spirit, which is the special province of man. Five is also the number of humanity, because man has five senses and five fingers or five toes on each hand or foot. The number five makes a bridge between man’s physical being and the archetypal mystery of numbers, There are many primitive societies which can only count to five; and in many cultures, including our own, five is used as a convenient measure for counting. Five has a magic quality; when you square it, it always returns upon itself. For this reason, the ancients called it a spherical number and thought of it as connected with infinity.
Five is three plus two: it combines the Trinity of spirit with the opposites of human experience. As four plus one it also embodies the quintessence, that precious substance beyond the four elements, the four functions, the four directions, and all the other “fours” that define our earthly reality. It has been said that the first four numbers represent principles of reality, whereas the number five stands for Ultimate Reality. In this way it might also symbolize the psychoid level of man, the enduring sub-stratum of the psyche from which all else evolves.”
I must first mention that my thinking is informed by the esoteric view of spiritual awakening as a “Solar” revelation that occurs at the central sphere (or Sephira) on the Qabalistic Tree of Life. My opinions travel quite far afield from orthodox theories about the transcendence of the human spirit and the exaltation of the mystical consciousness as a cosmic epiphany and concomitant merger with the All. As I see it, Spirit in its perfection doesn’t so much outshine or eclipse the Solar vantage point as infuse it, creating an approachable gateway there; think of it as establishing a “field headquarters” or “forward command post” in its role as arbiter between “Heaven and Earth.” You might reasonably assume that I’ve “waxed ecstatic” — or even erratic — in my extemporizing here but, as I shall demonstrate, this meditation follows closely on the heels of my recent jottings on the subject of the Fifth Element as “quintessence.”
After spending the better part of four decades getting my head around Temperance to the point that I can work with it in practical rather than purely occult, alchemical terms, I set my sights on its numerological counterpart, the Hierophant (1+4=5). Nothing that I knew about the Qabalistic nature of both the number Five and the historical Pope led me to believe that it would be any easier. Esoterically, Five is a number of disruption and dynamic change, which would seem to be anathema to the staid, starchy character of the Christian pontiff shown in the tarot. The impression I get from Nichols is that the Pope is dedicated to surrounding and subduing such unrest rather than trying to wield it in the service of human advancement. Pacification of the sheep was unquestionably part of his uneasy alliance with the secular Emperor, at least when they were on good terms. As I’m sure you can tell, I’m not particularly fond of the guy and think that, in his modern, less-blatantly-Machiavellian guise, he’s not really worthy of the fierce mantle of “Fiveness” that was flaunted by the profanely manipulative, “king-making” Popes of yore.
When I was working on my essay about the four corners of the square and the “crucible” at the center of the figure, I was thinking of the internal “quintessence” as the Perfected Self, and the fact that this central hub exerts a centripetal force that draws mundane experience inward upon itself, one that is centered in the Sun and fed by the four elements arrayed around the perimeter. It does suggest a spherical capsule that is capable of containing the five-fold condensation of Aether, Fire, Water, Air and Earth in a kind of gravitational compression or torsion that is opposite to the tethered tension of outward-bound centrifugal force. In that sense, the spiritual urge doesn’t radiate upward like kundalini seeking sublimation, but rather is drawn into the vortex (or perhaps creates the vortex) of the solar plexus where it does much of its work in preparing the individual for self-mastery. This is the “heart of the furnace” that I was talking about in my earlier essay, and there is nothing ephemeral about it.
The subtle but potent essence of Spirit descends the Tree of Life through “emanation,” but it must be put to work in shaping our “body of light” if we are to symbolically rise above our corporeal limitations. It connects us with infinity by diving deeper into the maelstrom, not by coaxing us to divorce ourselves from the centripetal pull and follow it back into the ozone. (The aphorism is “We must go inward to evolve,” to put off the yoke of binding circumstances and liberate ourselves through immersion in the “inner way” of self-realization; no amount of ethereal yearning for apotheosis will do it for us.) If it escapes back into the Astral and once again becomes free-floating, Spirit is only of academic interest to theologians, whose goal is to codify its abstractions as a religious “straitjacket for the masses,” a different kind of draining (a cynic might even say “soul-sucking”) whirlpool.
In Hermetic tradition, the sphere of Sol is the abode of the Holy Guardian Angel whose conversation and guidance are avidly sought by the aspirant, and it represents the first point on the Way of Return where we can fully appreciate Spirit in all its radiant glory and also cooperate with it to our own ends; prior to that we are merely taking orders in the form of existential imperatives (that is, we do what we must to make our way in the material world). Although I have little interest in angelic supplication and may be one of the least religious people with a mystical outlook that you’re ever likely to meet, my studies and practice in the hidden realms have brought me to respect this personification of spiritual longing (even though it may only dip into Nichols’ “psychoid” wellspring of individual motivation with no Divine pedigree whatsoever).
Originally published at http://parsifalswheeldivination.wordpress.com on October 27, 2023.
