Out with the Hierophant Year. In with the Lovers.
Before you enter a new year and a new archetype for the collective all excited (it’s the Lovers for 2022), I encourage you to reflect on how that archetypal energy has played out for the collective over the previous two years. If you’ve done this reflection already, you might be a little pessimistic, but there is some room for hope too.
Reflecting on 2021
This past year of 2021 was a Hierophant year, which is year about consensus, societal organization, systems, large institutions, education & official expertise, and acting in the interests of the collective good (the “family”) rather than the individual. (If your view of the Hierophant has been hung up on religion thanks to the image of the Pope in the Marseille and Smith-Waite decks, I encourage you to shake off those shackles and learn how to read the Hierophant more thoroughly with my post on the card. As a Taurus and a teacher, it’s been an important lesson to try to undo those limitations.)
So the mass rollout of free vaccines to fight a global pandemic makes sense. An international event to bring disparate factions together in shared celebration (the Olympics) makes sense. The passage of a bipartisan infrastructure bill in the US to literally transform the systems through which collective services operate makes sense. Significant wins for unions and collective action (in the US) make sense. The transformation of education, medicine, workplaces, and other collective institutions to adapt long-term to new technology makes sense. Are you getting nervous yet?
This year has also taught us all about the limitations and fragility of those systems. Scientific authority, news media, social media, and democracy are all social systems, just as much as religion and education, which means that they require collective consent, and they are easily undermined. School boards and hospitals and election boards in the US have all faced serious threats because democracy is inherently vulnerable to anti democratic actors.
Some significant and nontrivial cults have also emerged from the background.
RIP 2020
As for 2020, that was an Emperor year, but it was also a Death year since it followed 2019’s Hanged Man energy. I‘ll let you reflect on what that year taught us about leadership, individual power, small businesses & entrepreneurs, masculinity & patriarchy, as well as death & illness. And consider how that fed into lessons from 2021.
(And if you’re wondering about Taylor Swift’s fuck-the-patriarchy move in 2021, the second half of the year was the start of her personal Empress year. And Britney Spears’s breakout from her court-ordered patriarchal regime, know that the second half of 2021 was a Sun year for her. The personal and collective are rarely the same. You can read more about that distinction for late-year babies in Mary K. Greer’s Archetypal Tarot or on Benebell Wen’s Sightsee the Tarot episode on the method.)
My thoughts for 2022
So what does that mean for 2022 as a Lovers year? Remember that this is for the collective, not you as an individual—you probably are in a different year (I’m heading into a Death year)—so think in collective terms about strong paired relationships, decisions, divisions, and duality and binaries. (And if you aren’t familiar with these interpretations of the Lovers, let me point you to my “Learning to Read the Major Arcana Well” series and my post on the Lovers.)
So I strongly believe that we will see the collective upheaval of choice at the federal level with vaccination mandates going into effect and with the overturning of reproductive rights in the US (and decades-long precedent in Roe v Wade), which could then bring new challenges to same-sex marriage. I also wonder if bigamy laws will change somewhere significant (maybe in Utah or New York or Germany). Or maybe there are more famous and less just “isn’t this neat?” instances of throuples or poly relationships. I’m sure there will be some hot new dating app too.
I suspect that political partisanship will probably experience a rollercoaster of coming together and pulling apart, especially around midterm elections in the US and with the possibility that the filibuster that “forces cooperation” (ha ha) will go away in the US Senate. (I think it’s just as likely that Manchin will go Independent and decide to caucus with Republicans to make that a nonstarter.)
We might also see the federal establishment of a non-binary option on identification, although that’s unlikely in the US since it’s an election year. It’s much more likely to show up in individual states and other countries. And there will likely be more shocking celebrity breakups and marriages than normal.
There might even be significant corporate “breakups” but with governments focused on the pandemic and the US on elections, I think that this year, which would be great for some monopoly-busting (dividing the unified into its constituent and complementary parts), probably won’t see the kind of anti-trust legislation from which we would all benefit.
But is this true for every Emperor, Hierophant, and Lovers year?
No. Looking back a couple years is not a long-standing pattern. It’s a blip in time, and part of what makes these years so volatile for institutions and traditions (according to astrology) is that freedom-loving Uranus is plonked right in staid and stabilizing Taurus. And that’s still going to be the case for 2022, so more shakeups than usual are expected.
And then?
And with the 2022 midterms leading to a Chariot year in 2023, it will be interesting to see if that will mean divided government in the US, such strong Democratic gains that there are two wings that the President has to wrangle, or the same slim majority that means one unruly horse can steer everything off-course. (I assume 2023 will show us more electric and self-driving vehicles, as well as possibly some major auto industry disasters since Uranus will be in Taurus into 2026.)
Now, are these predictions? Sure. Why not? These are numerological predictions based on my understanding of the major arcana. They didn’t involve rituals or spells or psychic channeling. I’m just proposing some ways that the Lovers energy could play out, and I’m basing these examples on the recent trajectory of events. It’s simple forecasting with an esoteric lens. It’s not magic. And it’s not a guarantee. I’ve not given this much more time to consider than it took to write. But we’ll see how it plays out!
Did you learn something?
If so, you may love my intensive fundamentals course for new and experienced tarot readers, Read Tarot like a Nerd. A new 5-week live session of the course is starting up January 18, and the self-paced version is available all year-round.