Major arcana

The Hierophant

Trump V of the twenty-two. Drawn by Pamela Colman Smith for the deck first published in London in December 1909.

Waite on its symbolism

He wears the triple crown and is seated between two pillars, but they are not those of the Temple which is guarded by the High Priestess. In his left hand he holds a sceptre terminating in the triple cross, and with his right hand he gives the well-known ecclesiastical sign which is called that of esotericism, distinguishing between the manifest and concealed part of doctrine. It is noticeable in this connexion that the High Priestess makes no sign. At his feet are the crossed keys, and two priestly ministers in albs kneel before him. He has been usually called the Pope, which is a particular application of the more general office that he symbolizes. He is the ruling power of external religion, as the High Priestess is the prevailing genius of the esoteric, withdrawn power. The proper meanings of this card have suffered woeful admixture from nearly all hands. Grand Orient says truly that the Hierophant is the power of the keys, exoteric orthodox doctrine, and the outer side of the life which leads to the doctrine; but he is certainly not the prince of occult doctrine, as another commentator has suggested.
He is rather the summa totius theologiæ, when it has passed into the utmost rigidity of expression; but he symbolizes also all things that are righteous and sacred on the manifest side. As such, he is the channel of grace belonging to the world of institution as distinct from that of Nature, and he is the leader of salvation for the human race at large. He is the order and the head of the recognized hierarchy, which is the reflection of another and greater hierarchic order; but it may so happen that the pontiff forgets the significance of this his symbolic state and acts as if he contained within his proper measures all that his sign signifies or his symbol seeks to shew forth. He is not, as it has been thought, philosophy—except on the theological side; he is not inspiration; and he is not religion, although he is a mode of its expression.

A. E. Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot, 1911, Part II, § 2: his whole entry for the card, as printed.

What Waite says it means

These are the divinatory meanings printed in 1911, quoted as he wrote them. They are reported here as what one named book says, not as a claim that a card means anything or predicts anything.

Upright: Marriage, alliance, captivity, servitude; by another account, mercy and goodness; inspiration; the man to whom the Querent has recourse.
Reversed: Society, good understanding, concord, over-kindness, weakness.

A. E. Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot, London, 1911, Part III, § 3. Out of copyright.

Where it sits in the trumps

The twenty-two trumps run from The Fool, numbered zero, to The World at twenty-one. Waite moved Strength to eight and Justice to eleven, swapping the order older decks use, so a Marseille deck numbers those two the other way round.

A birth date can be reduced to one of these twenty-two. How the birth card is worked out →