Granny Jones - The Hierophant

nisaba

Today I'm looking at the Hierophant card from the Granny Jones Tarot. Very many Tarotistas that I know seem to have negative feelings about this card, seeing it as a strict authority-figure, and not picking up the sense of the sacred that, through the centuries, this card has always had. Granny cuts right through all the modern anti-church rubbish with her deft scalpel, and plunges us immediately right into the heart of the sacred.

We see a copse of trees, all rising from the same root. One of them morphs into a man as it grows, a man who lovingly hugs the tree-trunk nearest him. From one hand a disc of gold casually hangs on a leather thong, inscribed with a trefoil, symbol of the Triple Goddess (or, if you prefer, the Trinity). He wears a simple loose blue robe.

The scene is very quiet: the leaves don't rustle, the birds hold their breath. We are witnessing a moment and a place where the divine is manifest on earth, we are looking at a sacred act in sacred space. The bustling world of humanity is far from us, and the gods are very close, perhaps embodied in the trees as well as in the jewel-like sky glimpsed between the rising trunks.

The man that we see, the Hierophant himself, grows from the same root as these trees, and is nourished by the same earth, water and air. Trees can be old - earth and air are impossibly ancient by any measure. So in this sense, like the Hierophants of other decks, this Hierophant is a representative of the past, growing organically from the past into the present and pointing the way to the future.

Ancient roots and ancient nourishment necessarily bring with them ancient wisdom. This Hierophant reminds us, yes, that spirituality is inextricably bound up in nature, but he reminds us of more than that. He reminds us that the present is nourished by the past and supported by the past as inevitably as the tree is nourished and supported by its roots.

And it is here that he melds with more traditional images. I own a great many Tarot decks from a great many traditions, some of which were originally designed up to six hundred years ago, and one thing most of them have in common is that their Hierophants / High Priests / Popes are shown as powerful authority-figures, ruling over their acolytes, passing on the received wisdom of the ages.

Granny's Hierophant doesn't look as if he'd be uncomfortable ruling over acolytes, so much as that he'd consider it irrelevant. He points them to nature to find their own spirituality, and he points them to the firm, supporting structures of the past (which may well incude established Church teachings). He tells them that temples are everywhere, not just in pointy stone structures, and that the past is everywhere.

His lesson is: do not re-invent the wheel. Stand on the shoulders of the spiritual giants of the past. Absorb the knowledge you can from your religious, spiritual, physical and social roots, then blend them into the forest of your own spiritual fertility. When you do this successfully, you become your own spirituality, as certainly as his body has become the trunk of a tree.
 

NikkiB

LOVING LOVING IT!!!! :D

thank you nisba for sharing this with us, i am loving all your posts on Granny, they are beautiful and poetic as well as informative! :heart:
 

nisaba

Thanks, Nik! I appreciate any crumb of appreciation I get.

It's just that this deck itself is so poetic. It grieves me that so many people simply cannot see it.
 

NikkiB

i'm making loadsa notes for your wonderful insights its really helping me to bond with granny :) thank you x
 

nisaba

You might like to look at my profile and find my website link, which is against the roolz for me to hand out here, then read the right-hand side to find the link to the Granny Jones Tarot blog, where everything is going before it gets copied here <smile>.