Читать книгу Step by Step Tarot - Terry Donaldson - Страница 16

Around you there are many influences at work, only some of which may be apparent from your present perspective.

Now is the time for you to make whatever compromises are necessary in order to be able to continue in your present direction. In ancient times, the Hierophant was the master of ceremonies and thus was the original forerunner of the Masonic tradition, the spiritual tradition through which the ancient mysteries were handed down despite years of religious intolerance and persecution.

The basic meaning of this card is that now is a point in your life when you are ready to say to the world, ‘Here I am’ and the reply of the world will be, ‘And here is the effect of all the causes, good, bad and indifferent, which you have made in the period leading up to now.’

The presence of this card is suggesting that your life has been a rather eccentric one – and probably always will be. But at this point you will increasingly see that even those who you have assumed to be very orthodox or conventional have actually led similar lives, beneath the surface level of immediately visible reality.

You are about to receive an initiation into the way in which the world works – remember, even in some of the trying experiences that lie ahead, that you are surrounded by friends and allies who, for reasons of their own, prefer to remain in the background ready to be of help if needed, rather than be so openly identified with your position.

The Hierophant was the ‘Chairman’ as it were of the Magical Order of the Golden Dawn, a semi-Masonic order set up around the end of the last century to enact symbolic journeys of its members through the doorways and pathways of the Tree of Life. The Hierophant would have to learn long speeches by heart which would then be recited in front of the new members; set-piece speeches in which he would go on about the significance of the cube, or Star of David, or the journey of the soul into the astral plane. He would pass on to the new member ‘keys’ of magical value – sometimes they would be angelic names, or things they could do to enhance their own magical powers in one way or another. Some of these spells would have to do with invisibility, or knowledge, or protection. So it was really a school that he was responsible for running. This school attracted many members of the intelligentsia, including a number of writers, historians and professors, as well as members of ‘high’ society, even as far up as the House of Lords. So, you can see that this card really has a lot to do with hierarchy, structure, traditions and so on. These days mystical knowledge is a lot more freely available than it was in the age when the church and its own form of orthodoxy had a much stronger grip over what got published and what was freely discussed in polite society. So, these days, the appeal of small esoteric societies has waned, as people are now able to get insight into their lives from a much wider range of spiritual practices than ever before.

Another aspect of the Hierophant is the relevance of initiation. In some societies around the world, the male members of the tribe have to go through some kind of initiation in which they are led out into the forest or desert for a certain period and left to face their own fears. The Hierophant is he who leads through the pathway of initiations such as these. They would always be regarded as symbolic turning-points for those concerned, and after being taken, there was no going back to the more juvenile states which preceded them. They always marked the divide between man and boy, woman and girl. In a sense, the ritual of marriage is an initiation in itself, in its original form, as it would originally mark the development of the married couple from childhood innocence to adulthood. In every religion, there are rituals to mark the symbolic passing of the soul through each of its major lifetime landmarks. The rite of a funeral is, in a sense, another example of this.

The Hierophant card touches upon all of these other areas as well.