My card for this sunny Sunday is the Hierophant:
This is maybe the Hierophant card that I can most easily identify with. I must confess that since my childhood, I have never been able to identify with male figures. In most books, the hero was male, so I always looked for a sister or friend who would be "my" figure. I can't find myself in male pages, knights or kings, even if their characteristics suit me quite well. No, it has to be a female figure
I know that the Hierophant is my Taurus card and I like the old chap well enough (sorry, reading Wodehouse does that to me every time, I'll recover soon enough and all that rot), but I can only see him as my road or journey or challenge or anything else - not as really depicting ME. Well, here we have the nice feminine figure of Europa, and the Taurean bull who grabs her and takes her to Crete. Not Zeus' best hour, if you ask me (but don't ask me, ask Jeeves), but she seems to accept her fate.
Then, there are the Pleiades. Who doesn't love the Pleaiades? When I see them through my binoculars, I hear beautiful music. It's the most synesthetic experience I have. Here, the Pleiads are depicted. In the background, some long-haired chappie blesses and teaches, and let's think for a moment -
Rhadamantys. He was the son of Europa and Zeus, and a famous judge. A judge for the dead, according to some accounts, and his name has become synonymous with wise judgement. Now is it far-fetched to see in Rhadamanthys the connecting piece between the Taurus motif (the bull with Europa) and the wise figure of the Hierophant?
Europa will have three sons from Zeus: Minos the King, Sarpedon the warrior, and Rhadamanthys the wise judge. Interesting stuff, these archetypes, they crop up everywhere.
Now here it's obvious that the Bull motif is lunar and thus, according to the rules of Western thinking, feminine - although a bull as such is hyper-masculine in outlook and function in life. His horns, his association with the Moon, explains why he is lunar - I've once read a whole book about it. The white bull in the sky, letting an incarnation of the spring maiden ride on his back - Europa was picking flowers, I think, a bit like Persephone, when she was robbed. In the card, she wears a flowered dress. The colours of spring, Taurus season.
According to myth, Io was an ancestress of Europa - the nymph Zeus turned into a heifer.
Oh, this deck is great. Weird colours, strange compositions, much room for thought and association.
But what does this feminine hierophant, this Europa figure, this lunar symbology mean for me on this day? First of all, it gives me the idea (that I should have had ages ago) to take a picture of my weekday card and my daily card together. For a year now, I have changed daily the Mantegna Tarot card that tells me which day it is, why not put my planetary card next to it and see what happens?
The constellation of solar cards on a Monday and lunar cards on a Sunday has happened quite often. It's Tif'eret and Yesod, and the next station is Malkut, the Earth. I really like that juxtaposition of Sun and Moon. It's harmonious to me.
But let's see. My aspiratoins, dreams, everything I connect with the Sun - btw also the wish to be seen, to be acknowledged (which some Lenormand schools see expressed in the Moon). It's an assertive card. Assert yourself, says the Sun, but beware of hybris (poor Hyperion falling from the solar chariot). Listen to my spiritual authority and wisdom, says Rhadamanthys, but wait for the unexpected.
Again, I can't tell here the personal significance this has for me today. But I have to reconcile myself with anger and frustration towards a person who has wronged me, whether he intended it or not, and his death, which is a loss. First I felt only the loss, then anger and frustration bubbled up. I have to let it all go, like Europa who accepted her fate, abducted (in modern language: raped) by Zeus, a fate she didn't choose. But she became queen of Crete and raised her sons and became the mother of Europe. She didn't choose the role of victim, she built up her own life after Zeus brutally re-arranged hers.
I didn't suffer what Europa suffered, just a little scuff to my ego.
So this is for today, when the different feelings fight in me and Europa reminds me that accepting one's fate has its merits.
Then, there is the traditional Hierophant aspect. Where do I stand spiritually? With the religion of my childhood, Protestantism, which still feels like home to me although it was hollowed out by its own representatives in my native country who seem not to believe a word of what they say? Or am I carving out a way on my own? I'm definitely carving out a way of my own. Will I ever have the courage to identify with the old world witch, am I on that path? Probably I'm a Pantheist
Astrolate half-witch.
Hierophant, I don't fit into any smooth tradition. I have taken over the parts of my family's religion that seem right to me (directly from Jesus' words), I find spirituality in the movement of the stars and nature, and I believe that I have to fit into this world best I can.
Wow, so much text, but it's my day and it's my card.
- 2018 09 02 Celestial hierophant text.jpg (102.64 KiB) Viewed 6899 times
This is the short text from the book - it's the "real" hierophant and not Rhadamanthys, nevertheless I'm so happy I found the connection. (LIke the link between Saturn and Bina: Rhea, the Great Mother and wife of Saturn the god, moon of Saturn the planet)
And here are the Sun card and Celestial Tarot's Hierophant together.
That's where I will put my daily cards from now on.
ETA: I have to add something. Tomorrow, Aldebaran and the Moon will get close and cosy.
I will celebrate that meeting tomorrow night and make a ritual of forgiveness for the person who died without reconciliation with me. Forgiveness will include forgiving myself for my part of the alienation, and forgetting myself for keeping a grudge when the other person has suffered and died. I'll take the card with me.
And what about those who just want to have a Deck of the Week, Card of the Day reading? They can just jump in and leave the planetary lore away. 
