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 The
tarot card that is named the Hierophant in many
modern decks was traditionally titled The Pope. I
think High Priest or simply Priest serves well as a
cross-cultural name for the card, and that is the
name I will use in this article.
The Priest
is a symbol of organized religion and all that goes
along with it. Traditionally speaking, he can be a
religious or moral authority and a spiritual
teacher. His teaching, however, is thought of as
one-to-many: he addresses a whole community,
disseminating whatever spiritual or religious
knowledge he deems the community needs.
The card
raises many issues for modern Pagans and other
seekers outside the mainstream religions. The
Priest can be seen as a symbol of everything that
is wrong with organized religion: the dogma, the
hierarchy, the corruption and hypocrisy. If the
card is to be saved at all from this bleak picture,
it is likely to be by equating him with some
particular teacher whom the reader actually
admires, or by seeing him as one’s own
capacity to share wisdom with others.
Following
along in the pattern of the Emperor and Empress
cards, I propose seeing the Priest as the
connection between Younger Self and Wiser Self.
(Wiser Self is the term I prefer to use for what is
often called Higher Self, the part of our
consciousness that is connected with spirit and not
caught up in our emotional drives and analytical
thinking.)
Wiser Self
is not an easy mode of consciousness for most of us
to engage. We’re not used to rising above our
own issues and seeing things more calmly and
detachedly. Some people never go there at all.
Those who devote themselves to a spiritual practice
of some sort are more likely to have taken on that
perspective, but it still slips away all too
rapidly when we leave the ritual, the journeying,
or the meditation behind and go about our daily
routine.
So how is
the "wisdom" of Wiser Self to find its way into
daily life? Traditional religions have often
answered that question by translating the insights
of Wiser Self into recipes for good living: basic
ethical precepts, metaphysical models that remind
us that there is a spiritual world beyond the
mundane one, and rituals and practices that
reinforce the wisdom teachings. Enter the Priest,
purveyor of exoteric religion.
Of course,
when Enlightenment is translated into a cookbook,
it loses its essential character. It can also be
easily hijacked to serve other social or political
agendas. When Younger Self is hit with the
Priest’s moralizing and formalisms, the
reaction can range from awe and deference to
discomfort and rebellion. Like the Emperor and the
Empress, the Priest becomes another "adult" voice
telling Younger Self what to do—and scolding
when one transgresses.
As it is
with the other two cards, the solution is to
internalize the archetype. When we engage our own
Wiser Self and bring its wisdom back down into our
lives, we each become our own Priest. Now, the
figure of the Priest is not so intimidating. He is
just one of us, striving, as some wit once put it,
to "eff the ineffable".
In this
conception, the Priest is also the consummate magic
worker. (I regard the dialog between Wiser Self and
Younger Self as the essential feature of magical
consciousness.) The rites and formulas of religion
are in origin magical operations, although they are
often performed by rote by worshippers who feel no
connection to their deeper meaning.
When I pull
the Priest card, I look beyond the trappings of
priesthood in mainstream religions, and see it as
an opportunity to revitalize that magical
connection between Younger Self and the world of
spirit.
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