The Tarot Primer is a text-based, espresso-strength infusion of tarot, channeled wisdom, journal prompts, poetry, life hacks and music delivered straight to your phone via Signal four times a week.
Tarot Primer (23)
THE HIEROPHANT
Written Monday 30 January – Sunday 5 February 2023 (shared here for the eclipse / mercury rx week of 17/04-23/04/230
✉️ The Hierophant as Missive
🔨 The Hierophant is a committed dismantler of isms and ologies.
🙋🏻♀️ They are a questioner of the traditions that give foundations to systems and structures, and invite you to instead seek your own meaning maker.
❤️ They ask: is this meaningful to you? If not, why do you continue?
🧐 While the High Priestess invites you into a higher knowing, the Hierophant invites you into what you already know.
🏛️The Hierophant is your inner librarian. The trusted guardian and guide of all the knowledge you have amassed in this life time (and life times before). A gateway to your wisdom. Here everything you know has been catalogued and carefully tended, waiting for you to return.
🧬The wisdom of your lived experience. The wisdom carried in your body. The wisdom of eons encoded in your DNA. The sacred wisdom of your heart. And yes, the wisdom you have sought in books and in conventional (and unconventional) learning.
🪜 The Inner Librarian encourages you to honour your knowing. To step through the stacks and be awed and amazed at just what is there.
🛑 The Hierophant asks you to question any one need you to give away your power to sit at their feet. Whose wisdom seeks to override your own. They caution against anyone who refuses to enter into the synergy of knowledge as anything other than collaboration and wonder.
🏚️ For a truly wise soul will never ask you to abandon yourself to be with them. They will always offer their insights with humbleness and non-absoluteness. They will never insist they know they truth.
👉🏼 They point out all those you who position themselves as an Expert on You. They remind you, you are, and will always be, the Expert of You and your experience.
🚪 The Hierophant gestures to the massive doors you are standing at. They offer you keys to the Library of You, stepping aside so you might open the doors. Welcome, they say and you step inside.
📖 Journal Prompts
✍🏻 Describe your Inner Library, in as much or as little detail.
✍🏻 How do access your deeper knowing?
✍🏻 How would you define “tradition”? (If you didn’t have to think hard “intellectually” about it?
✍🏻What traditions do you in engage because they’re meaningful and resonant?
✍🏻What ones do you go along with to make other people happy?
✍🏻What is the cost of that to you?
✍🏻Which ism or ology feels most relevant/pressing in your life now? How does it show up in your life?
✍🏻What do you believe in that brings joy, perspective, understanding, anchoring and meaning to your life?
✍🏻 How do you create meaningful action from that place of belief?
✍🏻How will you honour your knowing this week?
🎯 The Hierophant in Action
This week I’m inviting you to observe your Inner Librarian. To see how she moves. What she does. And most of all, what frees her to do her job with ease.
🪶 The Hierophant in Poetry
From Shades of Paradox (2019)
🪞 The Hierophant in Reflection
The locus of “knowing” has been really interesting to explore this week.
The week started with a sense that my Inner Librarian needs movement. I felt her walking the stacks with her finger trailing along the spines of books, or getting around in a converted golf cart in a warehouse sized repository.
The weather hasn’t been great for walking in the afternoon, so I didn’t get a chance to test drive this further. To see if what drops into my head when I’m out walking, is actually an info dump from the Inner Librarian. Like she’s arrived with a pile of books and boom – down on the counter they go.
Then two days ago I got a “slam into a brick wall” kind of knowing that didn’t drop from above. It came from deep inside me as I observed the outer world and I saw it had shifted. My body, heart and soul were in total coherence, while my mind tried to bargain with the deeper truth. (It’s still trying to strike bargains the other three simply won’t underwrite!)
I know what it’s like to ask a question and get a High Priestess answer, and what happened on that footpath was not her sending down missives. This was pattern recognition at an intrinsic level of awareness.
I have a new (and humbled) appreciation of my Inner Librarian and her gifts. As well as the magickal knowing which resides in my body and heart, when my mind doesn’t scream down the house with its version of the house. (Even when I don’t like what that knowing tells me — and believe me, there’s been plenty of inner tantrumming!)
In the future, I want to cultivate more deeper knowing rather than defaulting to higher knowing. To source my wisdom rather than outsource it.
There was also this comment from Simone Seol on IG which fell within the parameters of The Hierophant as system whistleblower.
⁉️Were you able to tap into your Inner Librarian this week? I’d love to know what’s unpacked or revealed itself to you since Monday.
📻 Signal Boost
A repeat broadcast this week for Christina Hira and her 2023 Patreon.
She’s the dearest of my dear hearts, my fellow explorer of soul and shadows spaces plus my poetic bestie. Her depth year reflections blew me away. They helped me understand the changes I was undergoing.
We are embarking on a Year of Uncertainty together and her essays will be a must. Please consider diving in with your spare change (pun intended!) on the Uncertainty Essays tier.
🪩 The Hierophant as Outro
This week I offer you a little Paul Dempsey. I’m sure there were possibly better songs out there but there is something Hey History (Don’t Go Changin’) that nagged for inclusion.
(Maybe it’s been the week, maybe my Inner Librarian also has a wee crush on Mr Dempsey!)
So without further ado, a quiet jam to watch the sun go down (or come up) on this Saturday.
I’ve shared for Eclipse week / Mercury stationing direct 17/04-23/04/23
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