Bohemian Gothic-The Hierophant

Surja76

GREAT! The Deck is almost full! :)
 

kisou

Zoning out? Hard to say. For a card as quiet as The Hierophant in this deck, it seems so busy- so many things not being said or being said in whispers. It's like a silent panic attack to me; so many things to take in and look at at once.

The statue in the back; the man looks like he's begging or in pain or in some sort of anguish. There's something unnatural about the way his neck is bent and the way he holds out his arm, like "listen! please!"

The nuns in the courtyard don't seem malicious or bad... but they do feel like they're whispering. Even though we only see one nun, there's no doubt in my mind that she's talking amongst her peers, about the things that are going on. It doesn't even seem to matter what they say. All I can really picture is the shape of their lips moving quickly, muttering amongst themselves and glancing quickly at one another.

The clergyman... he's so interesting to me. He's spacing out, hardly paying attention to the fact that he's crumbling the piece of paper he's just read or that he's slid down in his seat and is sitting improperly. Whatever he's thinking about is pretty deep or world shattering or shaking or whatever. Do I think it's something good or something bad? I don't know. Whatever it is, it stirs his soul and its really taken him out of his present situation. If I were to try and get this man's attention, he might not hear me at first and then "snap out of it" in a start.

The mood in his card- as I said- seems QUIET, but so darn anxious and tense. I can't really see a reason for it, either; it just IS. Trying to look at this from another perspective, wherever this monastery or church is, I think it'd be in the mountains somewhere where it snows. For some reason the card is just dark and somber and maybe a little bit chilly... all the time. There might be the sound of a nearby stream... I kind of think back on Hamlet and Ophelia drowning in the river.

Overall, I don't really know what more to say about this card; it really feels like it needs to be in context. Then again, I might feel a little stressed about this card right now because it was my daily draw card this morning :O
 

ncefafn

Before reading any of the descriptions in this thread or in the LWB, the first thing I noticed is that this Heirophant doesn't have any acolytes attending upon him, and he looks rather sulky about it. No one's there to hear his great pronouncements. What a bummer.
 

brother Joseph

The saint in the background?

I know this has been covered somewhere else but can someone please remind me.

Who is the saint in the background statue? I seem to recall its a saint native to Eastern Europe but I cant recall who it is. Is it Hungarian?
 

baba-prague

There is a bit of an "in joke" in this card, for those who recognise the main figure. It's the actor Henry Irving, who was thought to have been the inspiration for the main character of Bram Stoker's "Dracula".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Irving

The saint is from an old photograph that we found in an antique bookshop here. We think it's St Dominic, but if anyone knows better, I would love to hear your opinion. The book and the flames fitted well with the meaning of the card for us so we used the statue even though we were unsure of the original meaning.
 

Master_Margarita

baba-prague said:
There is a bit of an "in joke" in this card, for those who recognise the main figure. It's the actor Henry Irving, who was thought to have been the inspiration for the main character of Bram Stoker's "Dracula".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Irving

The saint is from an old photograph that we found in an antique bookshop here. We think it's St Dominic, but if anyone knows better, I would love to hear your opinion. The book and the flames fitted well with the meaning of the card for us so we used the statue even though we were unsure of the original meaning.

The book is one of Dominic's attributes, but a book is an attribute of half the saints out there. I'd feel more confident of the ID as Dominic were there a dog with a torch somewhere. It's hard to see the detail on the statue in the Silver deck.

A book plus flames suggests Saint Anthony to me...

:heart: M_M
 

baba-prague

Master_Margarita said:
The book is one of Dominic's attributes, but a book is an attribute of half the saints out there. I'd feel more confident of the ID as Dominic were there a dog with a torch somewhere. It's hard to see the detail on the statue in the Silver deck.

A book plus flames suggests Saint Anthony to me...

:heart: M_M

No, there is no dog, and I also wondered about that. But Dominic was not always shown with a dog and there is the story about his book coming three times out of the flames it was thrown into. It may be Saint Anthony (you mean of Padua?) - I honestly think it's hard to be sure as the statue is quite damaged and there seems to be no text.

Edited to add. Looking around, St Cajetan is another possibility.

The statue was in the original photograph that we chose primarily because of the nuns and the grid. We decided to leave it in as we liked it - so it wasn't actually chosen specifically for the image, it's more that it made its way in. However, we know from past experience that when something like that just sort of makes its way into a picture because it feels as if it fits, then it often turns out to be amazingly apt. I would really love some confirmation about which saint this is, for this reason.
 

Master_Margarita

baba-prague said:
No, there is no dog, and I also wondered about that. But Dominic was not always shown with a dog and there is the story about his book coming three times out of the flames it was thrown into. It may be Saint Anthony (you mean of Padua?) - I honestly think it's hard to be sure as the statue is quite damaged and there seems to be no text. <snip>

No, I was thinking of St. Anthony Abbott (St. Anthony of the Desert) because of St. Anthony's Fire.

One of the joys of these cards is the ambiguity.

:heart: M_M
 

brother Joseph

the saint in the picture

I think the statue is either St Anthony who was known as "the flying saint" or else St Joseph of Cupertino.

Both are known for levitation and it does look like hes about to take off in the picture. I would be able to identify it if I could see the whole picture but I think its kind of blocked by the chair of the hierophant a little bit.

I personally believe its the second one "Joseph" because of the colour of the clothes.

For some reason I thought we had gone over this already and discovered it was a saint from central Europe who has a local patronage in Hungary but was little known.