The Hierophant as a Person: The Keeper of How Things Are Done

Written by Chaya the Medium.

The Hierophant as a person is the one who knows the proper way and is quietly disappointed when you do not follow it. Here is the character, upright and reversed, in love and at work.

If you want the short answer, the Hierophant as a person is traditional, principled, learned and institutional: someone who believes in doing things the proper way, who teaches, guides and upholds, and who finds meaning in belonging to something larger than themselves. They are the mentor, the elder, the person whose approval means the thing is official.

This is the figure between the pillars with the crossed keys and two acolytes kneeling. He holds the keys. He will give them to those who have learned.

The Hierophant as a person: the character

Tina Gong's the Hierophant guide at Labyrinthos associates the upright card with tradition, conformity, spiritual guidance and institutions. Major Arcana cards are less often read as people than the court cards are, and when they are, they describe a person living out that card's theme rather than a fixed temperament. The Major Arcana overview at Biddy Tarot is a useful second reference.

The Hierophant person is conventional, respectful of authority, knowledgeable and serious about belief, whether religious, professional or cultural. They value ceremony, lineage, qualification and the proper order of things. They are often teachers, clergy, senior professionals, or simply the person in a family who keeps the traditions. They are patient with those who want to learn and impatient with those who want to skip.

They are not narrow, though they can become so. The Hierophant genuinely believes that the accumulated wisdom of a tradition is worth more than one person's improvisation, and they are often right.

Their strengths

Wisdom handed down and well kept. Reliability. The ability to teach. Moral seriousness. A sense of belonging that they extend to others. Respect for what has been tested. Stability in a changing world.

Their shadow

Conformity for its own sake. Judgment of anyone outside the fold. Rigidity about form over substance. Using tradition to avoid thinking. Disapproval as a way of life. Difficulty with anything new, strange or self-made.

The Hierophant reversed as a person

Reversed, the Hierophant as a person is the tradition gone wrong: dogmatic, hypocritical, controlling in the name of what is proper, or someone who follows rules they do not believe in because the rules are safer than belief. They may be a person who enforces a morality they privately break, who cannot tolerate difference, or who has rebelled against every institution without building anything.

At the other end, the reversal describes a Hierophant who has lost faith in the thing they served and does not know what to teach any more. A reversed card as a person is the same theme lived badly, or a person stuck in the card's lesson. It is not a different person.

The Hierophant as a partner

As a partner, the Hierophant is loyal, serious about commitment, respectful of the forms, and inclined to want the relationship to look right as well as be right. They value marriage, family approval and shared beliefs. They need a partner who shares enough of their values to feel at home, and who will say when the form is crowding out the feeling. They are a steady and sometimes stifling love.

The Hierophant at work

At work, the Hierophant is the mentor, the senior figure who trains the juniors, the keeper of standards and procedures. They do well in education, religion, law, medicine, any profession with a tradition. As a boss they are fair, formal and resistant to shortcuts.

How to recognise the Hierophant in your life

Look for the person who corrects your form at the table, who sits on the committee, who knows the proper way and is pleased when you learn it. In yourself, the Hierophant is the part that respects what has been tested, and the part that has stopped testing it. No card can identify a specific real person, and a reader who tells you a Major Arcana card is definitely your ex, your boss or your new match is guessing. What the card can do is describe a theme clearly enough that you recognise who in your life is living it, or which part of yourself is.

What to record before drawing again

Keep three short notes: the question you asked, who the Hierophant might describe, and whether their traditions serve the people in them or only the tradition. The third note separates upright from reversed.

For comparison, the Emperor as a person and the King of Pentacles as a person describe different characters. The the Hierophant card meaning page covers the card in full, and the Hierophant as feelings, the Hierophant as timing and the Hierophant as a yes or no cover the other questions people most often ask of it. For a personal interpretation, my guide to a love psychic reading online explains how I work, and the three-card tarot listing and customer reviews are worth reading before deciding whether to order.