The Major Arcana and The Hero’s Journey: The Hierophant

This is the key that pushes all my buttons. It’s the “I’m right because God told me so” card.

It’s definitely a picture of a pope. There’s the three tiered papal crown and the triple cross, which symbolizes his influence in all three worlds—formative, creative, and material. He sits between the pillars of duality and gives God’s blessing or benediction to the two priests kneeling before him.

But the history of key five, The Hierophant or The Pope, goes way back, centuries before Jesus was even a gleam in Jehovah’s eye. Way back in the day, Zeus/Jupiter, the great father god of the Mediterranean world, was the only god who could release someone who had committed a great sacrilege from the torment of Furies that pursued him. But that person couldn’t just do the rites and ask Zeus for mercy himself, he had to find someone to do the rites for him, hopefully someone knowledgeable. Because the Furies were old gods, and the new Hellenistic gods like Zeus didn’t mess with the old gods without a very good reason. (Paul Huson, in The Devil’s Picture Book) Is this beginning to look familiar?

Centuries later, the pagan High Priest of Rome was called the pontifex maximus, from the Latin pons, or bridge, and facere, to make. In other words, he was the top guy, the bridge-maker between the gods and men. Today, the Roman Catholic pope is also called the Pontif.

Wikipedia defines hierophant as “a person who brings religious congregants into the presence of that which is deemed holy. The word comes from Ancient Greece, where it was constructed from the combination of ta hiera, “the holy,” and phainein, “to show.” In Attica it was the title of the chief priest at the Eleusinian Mysteries. A hierophant is an interpreter of sacred mysteries and arcane principles.”

I can’t think of any god or goddess to associate with The Hierophant because he is a human being whose purpose is to present the messages of the gods to his people. He’s very different from the High Priestess, who is the archetypal keeper of the mysteries, the inner or hidden realms of religion.

Vav is the Hebrew letter attributed to this card. It means hook or connection. Every column of the Torah begins with the letter Vav, which “hooks” the word of God to the parchment, or material world.

The sign of Taurus, the bull, is associated with The Hierophant and lends its practical, earthy nature to the meaning of the card, whose number is 5, the number of man.

And so what we have here is someone who delivers the messages of the gods to people who, for a multitude of reasons, can’t hear them for themselves. This is very convenient when you are setting up a religion (from the Latin re-ligare, to reconnect), because in most organized religions, the priests reconnect to the divine and interpret what they hear for their flocks. It keeps things neater that way. Everyone is on the same page and arguments are minimized. And besides, priests are specialists in the field of religion and have spent years reconnecting with God. They’ve developed short cuts to the divine and are experts on the problems that beset humanity. Organized religion’s take on the matter is that it’s best to leave these things to the experts.

Even the Protestant sects, who broke away from the Catholic Church because they believed that anyone could talk to God and interpret his words in The Holy Bible. still go to church and sit and listen to a minister (or Hierophant) tell them about Gods word and what it means.

But this is also the card of personal revelation. We are all capable of connecting with the gods and hearing the small, clear voice of the divine. The first trick is to have the faith to believe in what we hear and not relegate it to the dust heap of delusion and wishful thinking. The second trick is to find the courage to act on what we hear.

The ancient Greeks believed that the gods often spoke to them through the mouths of ordinary people. The crazy guy who sat on the corner might have a message for you from Hermes. I am fond of this idea and believe it holds true even today. I know that I’ve often felt moved to say something to a complete stranger for no apparent reason, and the message seemed to be helpful to them. At least they said it was, but maybe they were just humoring me so I’d go away.

This is also the card for someone who is on a mission from God. The religious fanatic who believes they, and they alone, have a direct connection with the true diety. Moses spoke with God frequently. He communed with him up on Mt Sinai and returned to his people with the Ten Commandments. A candidate for fanaticism if ever there was one, and Michelangelo must have agreed. He gave his statue of Moses a marvelously fanatical expression.

When The Hierophant appears in a reading, it could mean that the querent has a message to give to the world in general or to someone in particular, or that an authority figure has a message for her. It could suggest conformity and a need to fit in, or a preference for the outer forms of organized religion. It might even signal the querent’s need to think about his own religion and whether or not it is feeding his soul. If it is reversed, it could mean problems with authority, fanaticism, or nonconformity.

In fiction, The Hierophant should never be confused with the wide-eyed mystic with a vision unless that mystic begins to preach about his vision or takes steps to make it a reality. Ray Kinsella, the farmer in Field of Dreams, sees a vision of a baseball diamond in his cornfield and a voice informs him that “If you build it, he will come.” But he only becomes The Hierophant when he plows under his corn, builds the diamond, and has the courage to not replant it when his mortgage comes due.

The Wizard, in The Wizard of Oz, was a crooked Hierophant. When his balloon landed in Oz, he set himself up as the servant of a powerful, godlike, wizard and took over control of the Emerald City.

Can you think of other Hierophant characters? They can be a main character like Ray Kinsella, a mentor/trickster figure like the Wizard, or any of the other archetypes.