The best teachers create more teachers.
The Hierophant gets a bad reputation. We’ve all heard that it represents blind tradition and outdated institutions. Rules, rigidity, things many of us have a difficult time accepting.
While there’s a degree of truth in that interpretation, there’s so much more to this card.
The Hierophant isn’t about preserving tradition for tradition’s sake; it’s about preserving wisdom.
Whether we realize it or not, we’ve all inherited something somewhere along the line. A recipe, a prayer, a superstition, a habit.
The things we learn from others tether us to our histories and our communities like nothing else. The Hierophant speaks to the passage of knowledge from one person to another, and the influence it has on our identities.
Tradition is Meant to be Alive
There’s a tendency in modern spiritual spaces to treat tradition as an obstacle. And that’s okay; sometimes it is. Sometimes we need to push the boundaries and move beyond what no longer works for us.
Every generation receives ideas from those who came before them, and we should feel welcome to treat our traditions as an ongoing conversation. Test them, question them. Keep what proves valuable, let go of what doesn’t. Add our own knowledge and experience before passing them along.
The Hierophant isn’t asking us to blindly follow the past, it’s asking us to become thoughtful participants in it.
The Self-Actualized Student
A good teacher should encourage you to become capable of thinking for yourself, to tackle progressively more complex problems using your own knowledge and experience as your guide.
Even as students, we should feel supported in asking questions, in having different opinions, and most importantly, in making mistakes. Partaking in tradition shouldn’t limit your own exploration or reduce your trust in your own discernment. I’d be extremely wary of anyone insisting they know the only right way or increasing your dependence on external rather than internal validation.
Why Hemlock Hierophant
The answer is pretty simple. I never wanted to build a brand around having all the answers, because I don’t. I’m much more interested in learning to ask better questions.
To me, the Hierophant isn’t someone standing above everyone else handing down absolute truth. He’s a student as much as he’s a teacher. He studies, learns, shares what he’s discovered. Then he steps aside so someone else can do the same.
That’s the kind of tradition I want to be a part of.
A Few Questions Worth Sitting With
- Where did my spiritual beliefs come from?
- Which traditions have genuinely served me?
- Which ones have I outgrown?
- Am I learning from teachers, or looking for someone to think for me?
- What wisdom am I responsible for passing on, and how can I preserve it?
