Society's rules and what to do with them...

If the Emperor is will and authority, then the Hierophant is rules and regulations. The Hierophant is the male version of the High Priestess. And what does ‘Hierophant’ mean in any case? In the dictionary, hierophant means an ancient Greek priest who interpreted sacred mysteries, which loosened to mean any interpreter of sacred mysteries or arcane knowledge and finally, it can mean anyone who explains or makes a commentary. So a kind of know all narrator, the man who writes the by-laws, the person who knows the intricate rules of the game.


Many Tarot decks depict the Hierophant as a priest - at his best, he is wise and soothing, at his worst, he is an unbending traditionalist. But one interpretation that I saw and really spoke to me was a quilt that a woman called Deb Richardson Ewing had made of the Hierophant as Librarian. She saw the Hierophant as a person with vast knowledge to share, but without a great deal of empathy or openness to new ideas, which rings true to me. It is not enough to have knowledge; one must be willing to share it. It is not enough to share knowledge; you must be able to engage new people in becoming interested in what you value, to pass that knowledge on.


The Inner Child cards translate the Hierophant into a Wizard. You study the magic runes, you get the power. And often we want a bit of wizardry to solve our life’s problems. But sometimes you need to find your own moral compass, and other people’s rules are not enough.

If this card appears in your reading, we talk about the teachers/priests/rabbis in your life and what influence they may have. And we look at you - are you just following the rules, without thought, are you being stubborn and wanting a simple, clear cut solution? There is a comfort in rules, but life is rarely black and white.

One of the things I really like about doing this blog is that it forces me to clarify a few of my own ideas. As I browse around, I get a clearer notion of what other people are thinking about certain cards or Tarot ideals. I found a site which was really helpful with the Hierophant which spoke a lot more about the educational aspects of the card, something I realized I tended to overlook. Below is their useful list of definitions:

ACTIONS

getting an education

pursuing knowledge
becoming informed
increasing understanding
studying and learning
seeking a deeper meaning
finding out more

having a belief system

sharing a cultural heritage
learning a religious tradition
honoring ritual and ceremony
identifying a world view
following a discipline
knowing where to put your faith

conforming

following the rules
taking an orthodox approach
staying within conventional bounds
adapting to the system
fitting in
going along with the program
doing what's expected
being part of the Establishment

identifying with a group

being committed to a cause
devoting energy to a group
joining an organization
working as part of a team
feeling loyal to others
being in an institutionalized setting

That helped me a great deal. I think when next I get the Hierophant in a reading I’ll have a much more nuanced approach for it.

Ruling all he surveys - the Emperor

If the Empress is the mother, the Emperor is the father. The Emporer is the great authority figure of the Tarot, representing fathers and father-figures (including bosses, judges and presidents.) In the best case scenario, The Emperor signifies the leader that we all want to follow - sitting steadily on a solid throne, benign ruler of all he surveys. He has age and wisdom and strength. But that immovable throne can also be a trap, a responsibility that has the Emperor feeling restless, bored and irritable.


I was looking through all the various versions of Emperor Cards and I realized I was looking for an image of an iron fist in a velvet glove. When I think of the Emperor, I think of will and power, and while on the outside he may have velvety softness,in the end, he is the iron fist.


Which is why I like the Inner Child image for him – as the Emperor with no Clothes – in the fairy tale, the tailors pretend to have this magical fabric and fool the king, who then fools the court, to ignore the evidence of their own eyes. But when a child points out the truth, he can hear the child, and change. (though I think in the story he also kills the con men tailors.)

In a reading, who or what the Emporer signifies really depends on context – the Emperor can be an overprotective but loving father, a strong lover or a tyrannical boss, and if the querent themselves is the emperor, we try to see what kind of ruler they are being in their own world.

What Tarot Card are you?

I found the Quiz - What tarot card are you? and how could I resist - I had to do it! This is just for fun, I'm not vouching for it's accuracy, but with no manipulation of the data, here are my results:

You are the World

Completion, Good Reward.

The World is the final card of the Major Arcana, and as such represents saturnian energies, time, and completion.

The World card pictures a dancer in a Yoni (sometimes made of laurel leaves). The Yoni symbolizes the great Mother, the cervix through which everything is born, and also the doorway to the next life after death. It is indicative of a complete circle. Everything is finally coming together, successfully and at last. You will get that Ph.D. you've been working for years to complete, graduate at long last, marry after a long engagement, or finish that huge project. This card is not for little ends, but for big ones, important ones, ones that come with well earned cheers and acknowledgements. Your hard work, knowledge, wisdom, patience, etc, will absolutely pay-off; you've done everything right.

What Tarot Card are You?
Take the Test to Find Out.

Enjoy!

The Empress rules

I’m far more drawn to the Empress than the High Priestess (which probably says far more about me than the cards!) I find her one of the easiest cards to interpret correctly, no matter where she falls.


The Empress is the earth mother – often in tarot cards she’s drawn as pregnant – and she is pregnant – with ideas, with creativity, with the very fundamentals of creation.


Of course, Mothers can smother as well as mother – so the Mother Goose aspect, too fretful, too concerned, not giving space, also works for her. Giving birth is also about letting go…

But like all women, when she’s good she’s very, very good. When people are worried about whether relationships or jobs will prosper, the Empress is a very good assurance. It tells you that you can have whatever you want from your new romance, new business, new creative venture, but that it’s still in utero, and needs time to gestate. Take baby steps and give it time to grow, and you’ll get what you want (and who doesn’t want to hear that in a reading!)

Following the High Priestess

If you do enough readings, it follows that after a while, every card should turn up equally. But as I mentioned in the previous blog, Tarot is not about the odds; and if you live in a place like New York, certain energies flow more freely. I don’t actually get the High Priestess in a lot of my readings - which kind of makes sense - she’s opaque feminine energy, the yin to the Magician’s yang. Where he’s all chatter and motion, she’s meditative and mysterious. I see Manhattan as a very Magician kind of place, so I'm not surprised that the High Priestess would appear less often here.

She’s all about things like the Tarot – arcane mysteries, psychic energies, secret knowledge and insights. She knows things about you and your life that are not always clear to you. And when she appears in a reading, some of that knowledge is about to be revealed. Once in a reading a girl got it and I talked about quiet introspection and new knowledge being revealed and she just frowned and said she was all excited about being reunited with her large family at a cousins wedding, and it was going to be all noisy and social. So the reading didn’t go all that well. But later she contacted me (thank you, thank you – I love it when people email me to clarify or tell me how readings are unfolding!) and told me all sorts of family secrets came out during that wedding, so while it wasn’t at all quiet or mysterious, it was certainly all about secrets that she, for one, had never suspected.


In the normal course of events, when I see the High Priestess I tell people to slow down, things are getting too hectic and they need more quiet time. Listen to your intuition, meditate.
But if I get it in a complicated relationship spread, I warn about using secrets for control, about emotional blackmail.


The High Priestess is that unique feminine wisdom, but it’s the wisdom of the moon, cool and detached (unlike the empress, the next card who is all warm and fertile) The inner child cards actually warm her up to make her the Fairy godmother, power but with limitations, knowledge, but not always given to you...

What are the odds?

For those more mathematically inclined than me (99.8% of the population) the fact that I use 2 packs when I give a reading raises the question - what are the odds of getting the same card again?

The first time you have a 1/78 chance of any single card appearing. But if you open a second pack, you have already used your 1/78 chance. To get that card again, it’s 1/78 x 1/78 or a 1 in 6,084 chance. So theoretically, your chances of getting a repeat card are quite low. I said this to a client recently, and then gave the caveat that I would say I would get a repeat card in a reading maybe one in every 10 readings, which is way higher than statistically likely. So we deal her cards, and after her second shuffle, not only one but two cards repeat. I told her that was a one in thirty six thousand chance, but having done it on the calculator twice now, I see it’s a one in 474,552 chance. (I told you I wasn’t mathematically inclined) Weird odds.

I can faithfully promise that I haven’t done 400,000 readings. In fact, I can swear that I haven’t done 200,000. But I have frequently (one in every 20? Now I’ll have to keep count!) had 2 cards repeat. This just goes to show, there’s more than face value math happening here. But I knew that anyway, this just impresses the math skeptics amongst us.

The same client asked if there were tarot books I recommend. I’ve read so many over the years, and the various books gave different support – sometimes you want to know more about one specific card, sometimes about how suites and numbers interact, but an excellent all round beginners (and experienced) practitioners book has to be Rachel Pollack’s Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom: A Book of Tarot which has beautifully detailed explanations for every card.

The Magician

After the Fool (numbered zero) comes the Magician (the card numbered 1, in the Major Arcana.) The Magician is the male power of creation - creation by willpower and knowledge. But is it genuine creation or sleight of hand? Sometimes it’s hard to tell, and sometimes it doesn’t matter…

(I love this clever card set which shows the traditional rider waite images, imagined from behind:- you can see the Magician at work, and the monkey behind the scenes)

If people are asking me about a new business and the magician appears, I advise to approach with caution (but not necessarily run away!) There is ambiguity - is this a genuine business opportunity or a scam? There is magic and there are tricks, and I would use the rest of the reading to try and sort out which this situation is, and why does the querent feel as they do. The Magician is an omen symbolizing the importance of new enterprise and that you, the Querent, have the willpower and initiative to succeed.

If the Magician stands for a person then that person is charismatic, clever, witty, inventive and persuasive. People listen and agree with the Magician. If you are the magician, you can make things happen in your life, and you don't always feel the need to color within the lines...


In the Inner Child pack the ambiguity of the Magician is beautifully summed up as the genie from Aladin, and the moral, be careful what you wish for...