The Year of the Hierophant
Reflections on my 2nd house profection year, and looking forward to the third
One thing you should know about me is that I am a wizard.
Not a witch, a wizard. I’m not a worker of magic, and for me, witchcraft is defined by workings. Spells, rituals, et al. I have no ability and I have no gift, but what I do have is a prodigious ability to hyperfixate on the arcane. Hence, wizard. I’m really more a professor of occult knowledge than a wielder of it.
Growing up, my very Christian mother forbade me from developing any interest in “witchy” matters — despite everything, Korean Presbyterians still retain those Calvinist touches — so of course I devoured everything I could about it in secret. Astrology of the pop sort was acceptable; my white grandmother would read everyone’s horoscopes from the daily paper at breakfast whenever we went to visit for the holidays, and my mother acknowledged that there was some truth to the Chinese zodiac when it came to our personalities, but tarot and all things “Satanic” (like horror) was strongly discouraged.
I got into tarot in a slightly more roundabout way than I did astrology — which is to say I got into astrology like any other self-respecting teenage goth: Sailor Moon and the Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab forum threads. But my tarot journey actually began from the artwork itself.
Back in 2006, when I had just graduated college and was trying to figure out how to write the book I actually wanted to write instead of the book I thought should have written, I stumbled across on artist on Deviantart1 who was creating their own version of the Major Arcana for an art school project. Of course, nowadays, every artist tries their hand at their own personal tarot decks, but back then, it was something of a rarity.
I didn’t know then, that the tarot deck told a story. I had the sense of a journey, especially when I started looking up the meanings of the Major Arcana, but I didn’t realize just what a storytelling journey studying the tarot could be.
And that began what I think might a lifetime study.
38 is the year of the Hierophant, and a second house profection year. My time lord is my Aquarius Jupiter.
I’ve talked about the cards I’ve pulled for new year rituals, as well as an interpretation of my birth chart, and while I do keep an eye on astrological transits and aspects, I tend to consider those more environmental factors in how the next year of my life will go, rather than a guide to my personal development.
And in many ways, I do think of tarot as a guide to self-development. Despite my wizardry, I don’t really use astrology or tarot as a divination tool, or at least, I don’t use them as divination in the way it is popularized in media — as a way to predict (and by extension, prepare) for the future.
Instead, I use tarot as a way to tell the story of myself to myself, as a way to meditate on a theme, or even reveal something hidden.
The story of myself starts with the Hanged Man.
I was born July 9, 1985. 7+9+1+9+8+5 = 39. 3+9 = 12. The twelfth card of the Major Arcana2 is The Hanged Man. My birth card is The Hanged Man.
If you know me, it’s pretty appropriate.
The surface meaning of The Hanged Man is one of sacrifice and martyrdom. The iconography of the Rider-Waite-Smith deck depicts a man being hanged upside-down, which was a common punishment for traitors in 15th century Italy. But the true meaning of The Hanged Man is one of subversion. Being hanged upside-down would give someone a different point-of-view, a different perspective, and the Hanged Man brings a sense of “out-of-the-box,” even rebellious thinking.
Or, you know, troll tendencies.
But more than that, the Hanged Man urges you to surrender. Stop fighting to fit in to what society expects of you, or struggling to change the world to suit you. The Hanged Man’s face is serene and at peace; he has accepted his face and found enlightenment on the other side. To me, the Hanged Man is a card of loving myself, entire. Going against the grain is natural for someone like me, and I must surrender over and over and over again throughout the rest of my life to this different perspective.
And that’s okay.
The story of my 39th year3 is the Hierophant. 7+9+2+0+2+3 = 23. 2+3 = 5. The fifth card of the Major Arcana is the Hierophant, sometimes called The High Priest.
If one considers the Major Arcana, the so-called Fool’s Journey, a story of going from ignorance to enlightenment, then the first five cards of the Major Arcana represent the Fool’s early life. We have the Magician to represent the self, the High Priestess to represent a conscience, the Empress to represent the mother, the Emperor the father, and the Hierophant to represent a coming of age. I am no longer in the early part of my life, but I do have the sense that 38 will be something of a transitional year.
Traditionally, or at least in the Rider-Waite-Smith deck, the Hierophant has always represented “tradition” or “conventions” or sometimes even “marriage,” but if I think about this card in relation to the ones that come before and after, it makes more sense to think of it as a card of transitions. The Emperor, to me, has always been more the card of structure, of order and governance. I suppose it can make sense to have the card following this one to have the exact same meaning, only with regards to the community instead of the nuclear family unit, but I like to find deeper meanings and interpretations where I can.
The Hierophant was also known as the Teacher of Wisdom, and can also represent a mentor figure. A guru, a sage, or a Merlin, if you will. In early life, the Hierophant can be shorthanded to early education, to the time in life when you were learning about the world outside your home. And as I am now closer to crone years than child, I suppose this card means that I am to fulfill a sort of teacher position in my 39th year of existence. And that makes sense in the context of the fact that I am an author of young adult books, but perhaps also because I have been feeling the call to teach and share my knowledge with people again.
In the early part of this year, I created Negative Capability as a place to share journaling prompts in order to deliberately cultivate joy, but while I was coming up with these prompts, I forgot to share just where I was getting so many of these prompts from: tarot. I draw three cards every day, sometimes with a specific question in mind, but mostly to prompt thinking and self-reflection.
So I think I will spend my Year of the Hierophant with y’all, teaching you what I have learned and am still learning about tarot. This will be for my 절친 only, but I am always available to answer questions as best I can.
We shall start next week then, with the card for whom the Major Arcana is named: The Fool.
Until then,
My god, do we remember Deviantart?
According to the internet, your birth card is determined by adding up all the digits of your birthday. If the sum is greater than 21, then add the digits of the sum again. There are 22 cards in the Major Arcana of the Rider-Waite-Smith tarot deck, but you cannot get 0 The Fool.
It annoys me that 39th year means I am 38, not 39, but still.