The Weekend Tarot Reading — Sunday, November 25, 2012

By Sarah Taylor

When a pairing appears in a tarot reading, you know something magical — alchemical — is afoot. When the pairing is from the major arcana, then it is about the furthering of our soul’s purpose through partnership and integration, whether with oneself, another, or others. And, to use an oft-quoted phrase, we are entering into something where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

The Hierophant and The High Priestess are guardians of the spiritual realm, working in different but complementary ways.

Broadly, The Hierophant represents our outer spiritual observance, while The High Priestess is concerned with our inner connection to spirit. The Hierophant is collective, instructive, formalised; The High Priestess is individual, intuitive, free-form. We all have the potential to embody both, but it is how we do this that determines the results we get.

How does this apply practically to your life? It comes down to one word: meaning.

This is the work to bring meaning to your life, and by extension to life itself. This is what defines your life as meaning-full. It has little to do with what our fallible, finite selves would term meaningful: our human needs, wishes, and desires are often driven by fear (which we encounter in the third card), and based on the lie that we are somehow incomplete. It is about acting in accordance with the will of the Divine and aligning your outer (The Hierophant) and your inner (The High Priestess) worlds in the process.

The Hierophant is often associated with marriage, but here I would invite you to consider ‘marriage’ in a broader context. It is commitment — in this case, commitment to the path you choose that defines your life as meaningful. As important as this is, what is equally important is the message of The High Priestess: self-belief and self-worth. One of the shadow aspects of The High Priestess is that of Cassandra, who was blessed with the gift of prophesy, but then cursed so that no one would believe her.

And the point is this: no one needs to believe you. If you are in alignment with yourself and with spirit, if you are committed to finding and creating meaning — by yourself and with others, for yourself and for others — through that alignment, then you are not reliant on people’s opinions, nor do you need them to validate you. In the same way, when you are in alignment, you have the ability to transcend your own negative and damaging thoughts.

Bear this in mind as we move to the Ten of Swords, because what might seem at first glance to dash the state of grace created by The Hierophant and The High Priestess is not only evidence of their power: the Ten of Swords is activated by them.

In Tarot: Mirror of the Soul, Gerd Ziegler writes of The Hierophant:

All defense mechanisms must be dropped in order to come fully into contact with his Being.

The Ten of Swords is negative thinking, and then some. A continuation of the Nine of Swords — where you use your thoughts to damage yourself — the Ten of Swords is what happens when your beliefs are reinforced by experience. Or is it that your thoughts have created your experience? Some of the manifestations of the Ten of Swords are listed on the card itself: broken heart, fear of madness, fear of the destructive energies of accumulated anger.

But what the Ten of Swords really is is the pathway to surrender. You have created the very means by which you can let go; in a Ten of Swords moment, holding on makes no more sense. You understand that the power of your thoughts has been your undoing, and the only way to undo that is to disengage from it.

Your heart is not breaking, even though it might feel that way. You fear madness, but perhaps what is reaching out to you is something that makes so much sense in a world that has so far been nonsense that it only seems like madness. Your fear of your own anger is what has been holding you back from deep expression. It is your fear that has stopped you from seeing your own light and living your truth.

It is at this point of surrender that you are able to see your life in a new light. It is the same light that shines from The Hierophant and The High Priestess, and in it the darkness cannot exist.

It is time to focus on your light and not your darkness. It is time to honour your connection to the light that leads you into alignment with your purpose. In this moment, nothing else is as meaningful.

Astrology correspondences: The Hierophant (Taurus), The High Priestess (Moon), Ten of Swords (Sun and Moon in Gemini)

If you want to experiment with tarot cards and don’t have any, we provide a free tarot spread generator using the Celtic Wings spread, which is based on the traditional Celtic Cross spread. This article explains how to use the spread.