Christian Symbolism in Tarot: The Hierophant
Exploring the archetypal symbolism of Taurus and how it relates to Church authority
18 And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.
19 And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.
- Matthew 16:17-19
Introduction
My colleague and friend,
, has been writing articles exploring the symbolism of Tarot cards at Tetragrammaton.com. They are very good, if you want to learn more about Tarot symbolism then I highly recommend you check them out. However, while I have been greatly enjoying these articles, I was somewhat disappointed by his exploration of the Hierophant card (Nothing personal, Chris).I am quite fond of the Hierophant for two reasons, the first reason being that this card is representative of Holy Tradition. However, Chris and I differ heavily when it comes to our views on organized religion and spirituality, meaning his interpretation of this card is much different than mine.
The second reason I am so fond of this card is because it corresponds to the sign of Taurus. My Sun, Mercury, and Venus are all in Taurus, so I heavily relate to the symbolism of this card. With all of that being said, I am going to respond to some excerpts from Chris’s article and counter his points with a few thoughts of my own.
Orthodox Patriarchs vs The Pope of Rome
The Hierophant or Pope is the head of the Church. He metes out orders from God and rules through hierarchy. For each church under his rule, he ensures that they function and share his dogma.
This is somewhat unrelated to the topic at hand, but I feel compelled to clarify a small yet important detail for those who don’t know this: in the Orthodox Church, we don’t have a system of papal authority like the Roman Catholic Church does. We have nine patriarchs, who govern their local region of the One Church in a decentralized manner. The Patriarch of Moscow oversees Russia, the Patriarch of Alexandria oversees Africa, etc. The Pope of Rome was originally one of these patriarchs, but split away from the other patriarchs of the Church during the Great Schism in 1054.
The concept of papal supremacy and papal infallibility are innovations that were developed by the Roman Catholic church. In Orthodoxy, we do not believe that our patriarchs are inherently unerring messengers of God; there are plenty of patriarchs who have been saints, but there have also been plenty of patriarchs who were heretics. Our patriarchs also do not create doctrines like the Pope of Rome does. All of the dogmas of the Orthodox Church have been determined through several ecumenical councils over the centuries, where the entirety of the Church’s bishops gather from all around the world to settle the official beliefs. There is no single patriarch to ‘mete out orders from God’ as stated in this quote.
The Hierophant card is clearly based off of the Pope, seeing that the Rider-Waite Tarot deck was designed in 1909 under the Western Christian paradigm of Roman Catholicism. So while the symbolism of this card was originally meant to be interpreted as the Pope, I wanted to clarify that Roman Catholic papism is by no means the only way to understand the dynamics of Church authority.
The Hierophant and Embodiment
[Taurus] is also about simplicity and comfort. In this way, fast food, soda, and comfort foods are similar to the Church.
Every zodiacal archetype has its virtues and its vices. Taurus is the fixed earth sign, associated with the physical body and the senses. Sensuality can certainly have its downfall, gluttony and comfort being the vices of this trait.
However, there is also a virtuous side to sensuality that is absolutely necessary for communion with the Divine. The Church is not the spiritual equivalent of fast food and soda as Chris would imply, music festivals and the Superbowl would be more akin to the cheap and convenient pleasures of fast food. The Church is more like filet mignon and caviar; the Hierophant procures the finest pleasures the sense can experiences and synthesizes them all together in name of Christ.
Taurus is associated with art and beauty, which the Church has provided us with for 2000 years. Anyone who has been to an Orthodox Church or knows anything about Orthodoxy knows that there is a massive emphasis on beauty. God is truth, there is no falsehood in Him. Beauty is the most undeniable experience of truthfulness; when we behold something beautiful, it reflects inherent principles of goodness within creation. That is why it is so essential that worship is as beautiful as possible.
Human beings are both a body and a soul, we are made of both heaven and earth. We were not designed by God to be one these things without the other, the fullness of human experience is when these two faculties converge in unity. It is one thing to conjecture about theology and think about God abstractly using the intellectual aspect of our soul. It is an entirely separate matter to experience God in our bodies; we can not truly know God in the fullest sense until this happens. As I heavily expounded upon in my article Communion as a Spiritual Technology, we must eat God and make Him part of our physical bodies in order to truly be one with Him.
The Church Fathers say that the bodily senses are portals to the soul, which us why the Church inundates our 5 bodily senses with the experience of beauty. We can postulate about the goodness of God all day, but it becomes so much clearer when we smell the sweet scent of incense. We can talk about the beauty of the Gospels, but it becomes much more captivating when we gaze at an icon of Christ. We can speak of being raptured in ecstasy by the grace of God, but we do not truly transcend the mundane until we hear the hypnotic chanting. Until we taste God’s Body and Blood, we can not fully understand His glory. As it is said in the psalms, “taste and see that the Lord is good.”
Taurus is associated with the body and the Church is quite literally the Body of Christ. The Hierophant facilitates a physical experience of God, not just a mere intellectual one. Because of the Hierophant, the common people are able to come together in a shared physical space full of beauty where encounter God through bodily experience.
The Hierophant and Tradition
As Taurus, this is a card concerning stubborn commitment to the set way.
I’m a Taurus and I am NOT stubborn, NOTHING you say will convince me otherwise (stupid joke).
Stubbornness can certainly be a bad thing if it means being closed off to the truth for the sake of pride. Often times, we prefer to cling to what is false because it is familiar instead being open to what is unfamiliar yet true. However, stubbornness is entirely justified if our refusal to change our mind is grounded in truth. Tradition is the virtuous aspect of this stubborn aversion to change. As the saying goes, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” This is the attitude of the Church when it comes to tradition. Since God is eternal and unchanging, His revelations to mankind will be the same yesterday as they are today. If His commandments are unchanging, why would we change our interpretations of them?
The Hierophant is the manager of a time capsule in a certain sense; he preserves a way of life that has produced saints in the past, still produces saints in the present, and will continue to produce saints in the future. Compare the image of the Hierophant card to the icon of Christ that I posted directly beneath it: you will see that in the bottom of both images there are two figures looking up towards the subject. In the Hierophant card, it appears to be two tonsured deacons. In the icon of Christ, it appears to be the apostle Peter, who is vested as a bishop, and St. John the Baptist. In both images, we see the principle of passing down tradition. Christ receives all He has from the Father and passes it down through the apostles. The Hierophant is a continuation of this chain, receiving his authority from the Hierophant that came before him and passing it down to the clergy that will come after him.
Noah’s Arc was a forerunner of the Church, it was a place where Noah stored all that was worth preserving and protected it from the chaotic waters of death that swept everything away. Just like the arc, the Church ‘stores’ all of the traditions and saints that have been pleasing to God throughout the centuries, while all other aspects of life are swept away by the merciless torrents of time. This is why Christ tells Peter, who the Pope is the apostolic successor of, that “the gates of hell shall not prevail” against the Church.
The role of the Hierophant is to preserve all that has been proven true. Tradition is our connection to the past, it allows us access to all of the wisdom that comes from our predecessors. Without the preservation of tradition, every single generation of human beings would have to start from scratch when it comes to forming a worldview.
Conclusion
The Hierophant makes that possible through a set of clear methods. He oversees the structured, accessible, universal path to God. His wisdom is standardized, not ephemeral. The Magician and High Priestess are spiritual forces as well, but they don’t follow dogmas in the same way; they have direct, personal routes to the divine. The Church and the Pope, on the other hand, have a grand and strict purpose.
It is certainly true that the Hierophant preserves the methods of worship that were passed down to him. However, I think there is a perennialist implication here that “all spiritual paths lead to God.” This implies the Church merely one path of many viable paths, it just so happens to be the most accessible to the average person.
I believe this is false.
The Magician experiments purely with the external mechanics of ritual, which is why he is associated with Mercury. The High Priestess deals with the internal emotional nature of ritual, which is why she is associated with the Moon. However, our rituals can always be performed incorrectly and our emotional states can always lead us astray. While the Hierophant himself as an individual may be flawed, the duty of his office is to preserve the true method to reach God.
As Christ Himself says, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.”
To summarize, if you draw the Hierophant card, it may indicate a need for tradition or perhaps a need for concrete embodiment within your spiritual life. But keep in mind, I have never practiced Tarot with a Rider-Waite deck. In fact, I have never owned one of these decks. As a Taurus myself, I simply recommend going to an Orthodox Church.