Tarot Spread: The Hierophant, Two Ears, One Full-Throated Voice
When I created my Earth Shaker Challenge for Taurus season, I included several spreads connected to the Hierophant. That challenge is still an excellent way to connect to Taurus and the major arcanum associated with that astrological sign, the Hierophant, but I wanted to offer a self-contained spread for connecting with the archetype of the Hierophant.
This is my update to the 6th exercise of the Earth Shaker Challenge, “Two Ears, One Mouth,” and it includes slightly more grounding by tying it to ancestors and organizing along the seven chakras. The original idea of two ears and one mouth came from the sensory attribute of the Hierophant, hearing, and the body part of Taurus, the throat. This is also reflected in the Smith-Waite imagery of the Hierophant card, which shows two disciples or petitioners and one authority prepared to speak.
In this updated tarot spread, we still have two ears, represented by two potentially contrasting messages that need synthesis, one from the divine and one from the mundane world. (You can read more about the Hierophant, hegemony, and the dialectic of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis in my blog post on reading the Hierophant.) And we have one voice, which is the articulation or expression of that synthesis brought into reality.
But then we have more help from the other processing centers within us to help mediate between the “high” and the “low” perspective because the main job of the Hierophant is to mediate between the mundane world and the divine, to be an earthly channel for divine communion. To help with that mediation, we have perspectives from our ancestors, from our sense of personal integrity, and from the impact we have on the world around us. Last, we have reminders from our intuition when we need to express or think about
1. Crown: What message for our divine selves am I asked to help communicate?
2. Root: What message for our mortal selves am I asked to help communicate?
3. Sacral: What perspective can my ancestors provide to make sense of these two messages together?
4. Solar Plexus: What core value of mine helps focus the central point of the synthesis?
5. Heart: How will the combined message impact my community and loved ones?
6. Throat: How can I best communicate this message?
7. Third Eye: What signs in the everyday world can help me remember to express this message? [sensory cue exercise]
See my blog post “Sensory Cues and Intuition” for more on sensory cue exercises.
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