Note: We’re bringing Sarah’s tarot column to you today due to a confluence of weekend circumstances and Mercury-in-shadow communication; she’ll return to her Sunday schedule this weekend. — Amanda
By Sarah Taylor
Well. If this were a reading I was giving to a client, the first thing that would come to me is marriage or an equivalent ceremony of commitment, such as a handfasting. The Hierophant presides over spiritual laws as they are enacted in the physical world. The Ace of Swords is about truth, and in this context the crown circling the blade of the sword is evocative of a ring on a finger. The Three of Cups is a community-based dance of celebration and fertility.
Given that this is a reading that has more universal relevance, the idea of ‘marriage’ opens up to a larger idea of the agreements we make in the presence of Spirit and those we choose to surround us.
It also mirrors the reading of February 23 in a few key ways. It both reinforces its message and symbolises the entering of a new energy that emerges once we have crossed the waters of transition in the Six of Swords, which stood at the centre of the previous reading.
Something new is available to us; it is up to us to reach out and up and take it.
As with last week’s reading, we have a figure who sits between two pillars — The High Priestess then, and The Hierophant now. Whereas The High Priestess is a solitary figure, who communes with Spirit in order to seek out its message — whose message is often unheard or unheeded — The Hierophant is the human representative of the divine when it is contained within human laws. This is why he is often associated with marriage, where two people are joined on the earthly plane according to divine governance.