Josie’s Guide to Tarot: The Hierophant
Oh no, did I just start liking The Pope?
Each Tuesday evening at LA’s premiere lesbian bar Ruby Fruit features TRANScendent Tuesdays: a community-building mixer for gender non-conforming individuals and vendors. Fixtures include trans jewelers, a vocal feminization coach, and tarot readings from LA-based reader River. From River I’ve learned to examine cards with greater depth and compassion — my unforgiving nature takes a few challenges to overcome.
My query: how can I understand my future in education, as teacher and as scholar? From the first card’s Hanged Man through fiery wands, through Death, illuminating I found River’s reading.
Most challenging, the final card in the Celtic Cross pull: The Hierophant.
Out of scores of tarot readings, in my education-oriented reading for the first time I received the Major Arcana’s 5th card. The Hierophant, its name known to most of us through the influence of 18th century French pastor and esotericist Antoine Court de Gébelin upon the now-canonical Rider-Waite-Smith deck. Gébelin’s relating The Hierophant to Ancient Greek priests of the Persephone myth-worshipping Eleusinian Mysteries led to our contemporary occult interpretation. We trace the word hierophant’s etymology to Ancient Greece: ‘hieros’, priest, and ‘phainein’, reveal.
