Bohemian Gothic-The Hierophant

Thirteen

Surja76 said:
We must stick to our positions and our values in spite of the conflicting opinions of other people, do not we?
Well, you had me thinking on this all morning, thank you very much :D Here's what I came up with: There are a lot of cards in the Tarot deck that tell us to trust our instincts, be ourselves, stand our ground, find our own way, etc. But, personally, I don't think the Hierophant is one of those.

It might be why the Hierophant is so hard a card to identify with for a lot of us who were raised on books and movies where the hero is a rebel and an individualist. The Hierophant, I believe, represents the humble servant of a greater, institutionalized power, whether that's cultural tradition or spiritual tradition. His message is that we should bow our heads and surrender our will to that higher power--which he feels is giving us some wisdom that trumps personal positions or values (i.e. those positions or values that go against such traditions or spiritual laws).

Putting it another way, I do not think the Hierophant is Martin Luther who tells the Catholic Church: "I can't reconcile what you're doing with my beliefs and values. Change or I'm leaving." I do think that the Hierophant is St. Francis who did his own thing, but asked for the blessing of the church, and who likely would not have been able to continue doing what he wanted to do without that blessing.

Let me give you another example: In the Bible, god says "Don't eat pork." And there are those that follow this law. No pork. They don't follow it because there's any moral or ethical value to it; I don't think they see pigs as evil creatures, or creatures that shouldn't be slaughtered. They believe god told them to do this, and they don't question it. They obey the law.

Now imagine these people are put in a dire position: eat pork or starve. The person who sticks to their values will decide to eat or not eat it for themselves and not care what anyone else does. But the Hierophant is someone who can't do that because people look to him for guidance in these matters. They ask him "What should we do?" If he is a "negative" Hierophant, he will say, "god says no pork, so no pork. That's it. No argument. Starve." The "positive" Hierophant, by compare, won't consider his own position or values--what he will consider are other things that have been written in the holy book, things said by holy people, similar situations and what god's lessons were. So he might answer, "Not eating pork is important, especially if you have a choice. But god values your lives more. So let's eat it and stay alive. god does forgive."

This is getting long, so let me continue in another post.
 

Surja76

Thirteen said:
Well, you had me thinking on this all morning, thank you very much :D Here's what I came up with: There are a lot of cards in the Tarot deck that tell us to trust our instincts, be ourselves, stand our ground, find our own way, etc. But, personally, I don't think the Hierophant is one of those.

Let me give you another example: In the Bible, god says "Don't eat pork." And there are those that follow this law. No pork. They don't follow it because there's any moral or ethical value to it; I don't think they see pigs as evil creatures, or creatures that shouldn't be slaughtered. They believe god told them to do this, and they don't question it. They obey the law.


This is getting long, so let me continue in another post.

Oh thank you Thirteen!! Thanks to God! I really do not want to see him toooo gnostic.
I wish Hierophant to be a real man I know being always ready to marriage :D :D :D
 

Thirteen

The Hierophant is a card, in my experience, is about times when we're in a quandary or moral/ethical/spiritual dilemma. We ask the tarot "What should we do?" If the Hierophant comes up, the tarot is, I believe, telling us to look to the values, traditions, and spiritual teachings of some institution we belong to for our answer. The values, if you will, of something greater than ourselves. Older and wiser than ourselves. It's why we have things like constitutions and laws and even family traditions. So that when we get morally and ethically lost, we can use them for a compass.

What Cardinal Wolsey, as the Hierophant, should have done when the king argued for an annulment was said, "The Church values marriage, and as a Cardinal of the Church, I have to value it as well, no matter what my personal position is on your marriage. I won't help you divorce your wife." This answer might have lost him everything, but he would have avoided going deeper and deeper into the swamp as he did in trying to be both a Chancellor to the King and a Catholic Cardinal.

Now, of course, he could have also said, "I think the church should allow divorce, so let's break with Rome, and divorce you." And given up his Cardinal's robes and been only the King's Chancellor. That might have been a right/moral answer to the situation, but, personally, I wouldn't see it as the Hierophant's answer.
 

Surja76

Thirteen said:
The Hierophant is a card, in my experience, is about times when we're in a quandary or moral/ethical/spiritual dilemma. We ask the tarot "What should we do?" If the Hierophant comes up, the tarot is, I believe, telling us to look to the values, traditions, and spiritual teachings of some institution we belong to for our answer. The values, if you will, of something greater than ourselves. Older and wiser than ourselves. It's why we have things like constitutions and laws and even family traditions. So that when we get morally and ethically lost, we can use them for a compass.

Aha yes. If to consider Hierophant like intermidiate it is very important to him to keep his word, to keep silence and to be good diplomat in order to keep the law. It is close to Justice but I think it is more justice in order to agree with himself and his conscience.
 

Thirteen

Surja76 said:
Aha yes. If to consider Hierophant like intermidiate it is very important to him to keep his word, to keep silence and to be good diplomat in order to keep the law. It is close to Justice but I think it is more justice in order to agree with himself and his conscience.
Actually, I don't think he is that good a diplomat. It's like Cardinal Wolsey there. He was a Cardinal. A representative of the Catholic Church and its voice. This means that it was his job to tell others where the religion stood on matters, what it valued and what it believed. It was not his job to be silent or discreet. Nor was it up to him to change or work around church policy as it would be up to a diplomat to work around a country's policy, or a Justice to work around the law.

Diplomats will deal with evil dictators if there's an advantage to their country and never mind if our stated policy is "We don't deal with evil dictators." And a justice will say, "Well, according to the law you should go to jail for this, but you've suffered enough, so go free." That's not the Hierophant. If the valued tradition is "no dealing with evil dictators," then no dealing with evil dictators. And if it's "do this, go to jail," then it's go to jail.

...Unless the quandary is such that two traditional values are in conflict. Then the Hierophant has to decide which ones, if broken, won't break the "institution." Another example--true story. There were these nuns at a mission in an African country. Civil war broke out, and the nuns were at risk from marauding soldiers. Their superiors in the church sent them birth control pills. So they wouldn't get pregnant if they were raped. The nuns tossed them out.

THAT is a Hierophant quandary--and a Hierophant move. They decided that the values and traditions of their religion toward sex-creating-life (which they held as sacred) superseded both the tradition of obedience to superiors, and remaining childless as nuns should. It wasn't a matter of justice or diplomacy or even keeping to their vows. It was a matter of deciding which traditions were the more valuable and needed to be followed. Which ones if broken wouldn't undermine the faith, and which had to be kept, or else the faith lost all meaning.

The Hierophant believes that the rules (traditions, mores, cultural values, spiritual laws) are the most valuable thing we have and we have to rely on them and stick to them however and as much as we can. They can only be bent in extreme situations and for a greater traditional value. Otherwise you don't break them.

Which means he'd make both a rotten diplomat and a poor justice. That he'd rarely keep silent on any topic, and you can't count on him to make or keep promises. If he promises to eat dinner with you, and you serve him pork, and pork is a "no-no" then he's not eating it, even if that means breaking his promise to you. That promise has less value than that older, more traditional value of not eating pork. Yes?
 

Thirteen

Just to add: As I recall, the Hierophant sometimes stands for marriage (being the priest at a wedding, yes?). Which makes the connection to Cardinal Wolsey very ironic, him being the one who tried to annul King Henry VIII's first marriage.

I guess that's fitting for this particular deck.
 

Surja76

Thirteen said:
Just to add: As I recall, the Hierophant sometimes stands for marriage (being the priest at a wedding, yes?). Which makes the connection to Cardinal Wolsey very ironic, him being the one who tried to annul King Henry VIII's first marriage.

I guess that's fitting for this particular deck.

Yes terrible laws.
So if suppose there is indulgence in his hands it means it is not important what person will say at Confession Room it is important how much money he has being able to buy expiation of sins.
it is not only seal of confession, but that as servants of the church is silent by changing the divine laws.

So that to resume we can say this card is to make difficult decision and the main problem that we need to make right decision.
So is all the opposite. This cards indicate the only those values, in which we impose. That is not that what we believe, and that the law at this time, at this moment. Home of the law. And if the laws changed, we will abide by the law, notwithstanding the fact that law is under common sense, or not.
 

Thirteen

Surja76 said:
This cards indicate the only those values, in which we impose. That is not that what we believe, and that the law at this time, at this moment. Home of the law. And if the laws changed, we will abide by the law, notwithstanding the fact that law is under common sense, or not.
You've got it! That is the big problem with Hierophants. On the one hand, they can offer values and traditions that give people the moral compass they've been missing. Give them a boat in a stormy sea and save them from drowning. On the other hand, they often won't abandon that ship--or recommend that others abandon it--even if its got holes and it's sinking. If that is an Indulgence our Hierophant's hand, then he is on a ship that's full of holes and he probably knows it. But he's decided to stay on that ship because he is a Hierophant. And the one thing that I, personally, think is true of the Hierophant is they can't even imagine leaving that ship. No matter how bad it gets.

This is a very tragic Hierophant, who knows his ship has problems, but he is not one of the worst Hierophants. Those are the ones who are not only completely blind to any problems, facts or truths about their ship (institution), but feel that everyone should be forced to sail on that particular ship. Tradition, to them, is like medicine given to a child. However bad it tastes, the child must be forced to take it for their own good.

A "good" Hierophant, by compare, tries to show by his own example that people should follow his traditions and that these traditions have value. He doesn't try to force them on people. And he'll acknowledge the holes in the boat even as he urges people to trust that this grand old ship can still survive the storm.

But, in the end, what make a Hierophant, I think, good or bad, is his refusal to abandon ship. Cardinal Wolsey hoped to find some way to sail the Church of England's ship in the direction the king wanted it to go. When the King decided to abandon and sink that ship because it wouldn't go where he wanted it to go, Wolsey went down with it. He may have been a poor Hierophant because he tried to be political and diplomatic rather than following the values and traditions of his faith. But in the end, he was still a Hierophant. He did not change religions, even when it was clear that the ship was going down.
 

Surja76

Hi, Thirteen! I missed you today. I love to read your stories :)

Thank you, your thought are completely right, you help me to understand this card more deep!!! We got it!!!!

SOOOOO have you some more cards not been described in this deck? Interesting what will be the next?
 

swimming in tarot

What a great discussion! I've been learning so much about the Hierophant, any Hierophant, by reading this thread. Thank you so much! :D