Major Arcana · V
♉︎ Taurus · ו Vav · Thoth: The Hierophant
Seek a teacher, a tradition or a proper way of doing things, or ask whether the rules you follow are really yours.
Vav, the nail or hook, joins things together: as a Hebrew word it means “and”. In the divine name YHVH it is the Son, the six sephiroth of Zeir Anpin around Tiphareth (Vav’s value is 6). The hooks (vavim) of the Tabernacle held its curtains to the pillars (Exodus 27). Case gives it the faculty of hearing, and the Hierophant is the one who hears the inner voice.
The 16th path descends from Chokmah to Chesed, on the Pillar of Mercy. It brings the wisdom of the Father down to the throne of the Masters: the path of revelation, the Eternal Intelligence called “the Paradise prepared for the Righteous”.
Waite’s Hierophant is a pope in a triple crown, raising his hand in blessing between two grey pillars, with two tonsured acolytes kneeling before him and two crossed keys at his feet. Waite reads him as the outer, orthodox teaching; Case’s key word is intuition, interior hearing: the Hierophant is the inner teacher whose voice is heard when the outer self listens.
Crowley’s Hierophant sits on a bull, flanked by elephants (also Taurean), within the four Kerubic beasts of the Apocalypse. On his breast is a pentagram containing a dancing child, Horus, and before him stands a woman girt with a sword, the Scarlet Woman. Nine nails fasten his oriel window. Crowley says that the Hierophant of the new aeon is the initiator who teaches through the child: the new revelation is Horus, the Crowned and Conquering Child, and the Hierophant’s secret is the union of the microcosm with the macrocosm.
Card image: Pamela Colman Smith, Rider-Waite tarot, 1909 (public domain, via Wikimedia Commons).