The Hierophant

The Hierophant - This is the card of the teacher. Everyone and everything in our lives is a reflection of who we are, and is thus a manifestation of the Hierophant. When a person or thing stops being a reflection of who we are it is finished and must leave the circle of our reality. For instance I used to always become involved with men who were needy and wound centered, like my father. These men were psychic vampires, and I kept drawing them until I did two things. First I stepped back and saw my own need, hidden because I was used to a caretaker role and thought I was too strong for neediness (which I secretly despised). And I did it without judgment, so I could later compassionately forgive these men, and my father, and myself. And I learned to say no. Now, there are no people like this in my life. Now I can see these men might not even really have been as they were to me. It could be that this was simply the role they agreed to play in my life and/or they were only a manifestation of Spirit. It is a truth that we do not even know for certain if anyone in our life is really real, or any situation... it could all be part of the matrix.

Anyway, I myself used to really dislike this card. It was all the negative side of it I saw and I couldn't see past that. The false teachings that enslave the soul in chains of shame and guilt. Organized religion, that whore, working with world government to control 'the rabble'. But in the greatest sense the Hierophant is our spirit, our greatest teacher, our greatest lover, and it is expressing through life.

One reason this shows up in a spread is to point out a lesson is to be learned, generally before anything else will change. The lack of learning the lesson has become a major obstacle and the person is stuck in spiritual evolution. Things will only become more painful until the lesson is learned. Another reason for this card to show (and at an unconscious level of mind just seeing this card communicates its truth) that they are their own greatest teacher, and to seek balance where gurus, ministers, preachers and other such external 'guides' are concerned.

Symbolically, one look at the face of this being and we see the entity portrayed is neither male nor female. Then we look at its feet, to see what it is above, or has already learned as far as life lessons go, and we see the checkerboard of polarity. So this being is above polarized reality, the first three, human, seals/lessons/heavens. Indeed it wears the crown of the four upper heavens. Also at its feet are four brown coins, marked in quarters, set in a square pattern, on a red carpet; meaning it has risen above the carnal and earthly. We see the shoes are white, unsoiled by earthiness. There are two keys each marked with male and female symbols, that are crossed; meaning the sexual urges are finished and the soulmates are reunited in this one entity (not that soulmates have to merge, but it is an option). The two friars are interesting. One wears the rose of carnal life, and the other wears the lily which is a funerary flower. One is marked with a Y or V and the other has a Y or V implied but all that shows of it seems to be the Hebrew version of Y or V, Yod or Vav. We also see two Ys or Vs or a W on the top of the crown. Two Yods in a row designate the name of God, Adonai. Vav/Waw is the letter of man, and is sometimes the Hebrew letter assigned to this card. It is the copulative element (the 'male' energy). All this seems to say that God is present even in the lowest nature of all, the sexual; God is certainly present in Mankind; and God perhaps lives at the apex of the 7 heavens. The friars indicate that the Hierophant has mastered death and the redundancy of reincarnation. The pillars and throne are gray because gray is the color of black and white combined, and also, as with the fourth horseman, because the fourth heaven (also designated by the color blue) is within the void so that it's color is spectral, ghostly
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Most people are aware of the three lower heavens. The lowest is the material realm, where we are now, and it is truly foreign to our true natures. The next is the earthbound realm, which can be hellish, and purgatorial. The next is quite wonderful and this we call heaven, and we stop there. But there are four more enfolded within for those who learn love, the expression of love, and the nature of God (not as it is taught in church).

The clothes worn represent bodies or minds. As we have one present on each of the heavens, and each of the heavens has a symbolic color - ruddy brown for the material plane, red for the earthbound realm(infrared), White or rainbow(visible light) for the third (these three are all polarized planes), then we have the blue realm(ultraviolet), Golden, Rose, and Beyond color(sometimes shown as white or light pink), so the Hierophant wears the colors Blue, closest to the skin, white next, and outermost is red, and reddish brown is the color of the coins at it's feet. The blue gown and the gray pillars and throne all locate this entity at the fourth level - love.

The staff is marked with the cross bars of the four upper planes, each of which has a faster time than the plane below.

On the capitols we have a stylized womb, fallopian tubes and ovaries, within which is a cute little stylized acorn/penis. Again saying that sexual polarity is ended.

The being has three fingers raised, pointing to the triple nature of God/dess; and two fingers pointing down, referring to the polarized nature of the lower realms. Thus saying divinity exists on all levels.