Mary El Tarot - The Hierophant

[Debra]

I don't follow.

This is a Catholic image so I think the hierophant is actually representing the Church as an institution, maybe symbolizing "all organized religion" but still the Christian church is the basic image.

For the Hierophant (Pope) the Bible is the key. It's the Word of God.

The Key opens "compassion," meh...huh?

Obviously this Hierophant is doing what she can to care for the children--she's mustered whatever compassion is available, and yet everyone's still sick including her. She's got depth of feeling--she's not a cold bureaucrat--and it's not doing her or the babies any good.

I think it's a muddle.

[Bat Chicken]

Originally Posted by Le Fanu

That's what the key's for!

Yes! I love that....

I read somewhere that the Hebrew equivalent for 'word' actually means 'vibration'. That might take the idea beyond Christianity?

[Laura Borealis]

I don't know why I didn't think of the Madonna and Child with this. Maybe the two malnourished children threw me off. But earlier I was looking at a selection of Medieval & Renaissance art and I picked up on it.

You want to talk weird hands with skinny, grasping fingers?

[Mi-Shell]

Mother Church
upright:

What poison will you suck from me?
I hold you close, so you can't see
all the colors of fearful symmetry.

I hold you tight, so you can't grow,
experience, what's there to know
Your hunger drains the life from me
Dare I drop you to set me free?

.................................................. ...............Mi-Shell J. April 6 2012

[Mi-Shell]

Mother Church
reverse:

Larger than live, stone deaf and forlorn
Children, dead and guilty before they are borne
conceived beneath pious blankets, brittle and dry
ruled by thin waivers that hide dogma and lie

Raised on wine from aging breasts, sour and stale
and bread devoid of nurture that weathers life's gale
Hands grabbing young innocence in a lecherous caress
then on Sunday communion of moldy nothingness

Dire whispers of secrets buy silence with shame
instill phantoms of self-hate, of mistrust and blame
Allow that to rule your life from cradle to grave
Or will you break out, be a free Soul and brave

.................................................. ...............Mi-Shell J. April 6 2012

[DaisyDragonfly]

I did not like this card when I first saw the scans. Instant reaction. Hated it. Why?

The pendulous, misshapen breasts and elongated fingers. Her sadness. The pale and sickly skin. Those spindly babies. Ugly, ugly, ugly. Plus, I made all the assumptions: this was just a cliche, another representation of the evils of organized religion.

Well, I've bought the deck now. And of course this card appeared in the very first reading I did: a lot of the rest of this post comes from today's daily draw. But since it's appeared, I needed to confront the image and my reaction, time to see what the deck creator was really thinking about. Time to figure out what this card is really about.

So Marie White has made this card about facing your shadow, digging into your dark side. Sort of a precursor to its later incarnation of Temperance. How can you reconcile opposing elements of your nature when you don't know them? If Temperance is to be reached, the gateway must first be travelled through; the Hierophant is the gateway. Get past the ugliness to reach the key she wears around her neck.

It means getting past the things you think are true because you've been told they're true. It means remembering that everything about our society and our culture is a story we've been told, a story we all play our part in continuing to tell. It means remembering that none of the rules we live by are real. They're just rules, words we put on a page in order to make them manifest.

Break them, and all that happens is the illusion is shattered and we see the torn veil of our created reality flapping in the fallout.

Those rules matter, though. They give us security, a foundation which allows us to get up in the morning, do our jobs, watch TV, buy the brands, pay taxes, say thank you, read the notices, follow the advice. They're false constructs, every single one of them, but they're still necessary if we're to have any semblance of society. Without them it is anarchy and dependence on natural law.

Which may not be a bad thing. Animals live by it...but natural law is harsh. It's evolutionary law. The human ability to be compassionate makes evolutionary law unpalatable, not if we can construct something that gives us an alternative, no matter how sickly it becomes...

...and so the world is what is.

So the hierophant looks sickly because the rules we've created are sickly. They elevate some people whilst stamping other people into the dirt. All arbitrary, based on whatever is the current trend. Some people are given endless opportunities; others have none. Nothing to do with the dice roll of genetics, everything to do with where and when you're born. We've created a society which gives some people everything and other people nothing... yet we created it! It could be different. We could have made any world at all.

Yet this is the world we've made.

This version of Hierophant shows us the full sickly - but necessary - scale of those rules and that world. It encourages us to question our part in it. Better to live the rules mindfully than follow them blindly. Better to question our assumptions, challenge our actions, know ourselves and how we live in the world we create.

So now I don't hate this card. Not at all. Maybe it is about religion, but if it is, it's not just the kind with god in it. It's all of them: money, fame, wealth, power. They're all constructs. We're probably better off with them than without them, but it doesn't mean we can't question and test them. Indeed, we're better off when we do.