By Sarah Taylor
If Crow medicine appears in your card spread, you must pause and reflect on how you see the laws of the Great Spirit in relation to the laws of humanity. Crow medicine signifies a firsthand knowledge of a higher order of right and wrong than that indicated by the laws created in human culture. With Crow medicine, you speak in a powerful voice when addressing issues that for you seem out of harmony, out of balance, out of whack, or unjust. … You must put aside your fear of being a voice in the wilderness and “caw” the shots as you see them.
As I performed ceremony to prepare for this reading, Crow flew over me, sounding its unmistakable call. The passage quoted above is part of the entry for “Crow” in the book Medicine Cards, by Jamie Sams and David Carson.
That The Hierophant appears at the centre of this reading is confirmation of Crow’s message: to follow your inner calling towards what you know in your bones to be true, rather than anything that’s ‘true’ simply because you’re told that it is so, or because you are asked to toe a party line. This is about Truth as it is imparted to you; the truth that you feel at heart.
Like the writing on The Hierophant, this is your moment of pause and reflection, being, as you are, your own “teacher,” “advisor,” “initiate,” “inner teacher,” “spiritual father.”
The Hierophant as an active archetype is also aided by The Moon: today we have a New Moon in Virgo — the New Moon marking the time when the veil between the worlds of matter and spirit is thinnest. Just as there is no Sun to cast its light on the Moon in the dark, so we are immersed in our own psychic darkness, reliant on our typically less-practised senses to guide us through the night of the soul. I find the mirroring between the two major arcana cards subtle yet powerful: the gently parted fingers against the faces of both figures, feminine and masculine; the light source behind the Moon revealed over the forehead of The Hierophant.