The Hierophant

Upright

The established way of doing it, and whether it's still serving you. Schools, churches, professions, family rules, the way it's always been done here. Sometimes the tradition is right and your rebellion is just ego. Sometimes the tradition is a cage with nice moulding. This card doesn't tell you which — it tells you to notice you're inside one.

Reversed

Dogma. Or throwing out something that worked purely because it was handed to you. Rebellion is not the same as thinking for yourself; it's just obedience in reverse.

Its correspondence

Taurus — fixed earth, the sign that does not move and doesn't apologise for it. Which is exactly why tradition is filed here. Taurus keeps what's worth keeping. It also keeps what stopped being worth keeping in 1974.

How it's usually misread

He isn't automatically the villain. Everyone learning from a teacher is under this card, and that includes you, right now, reading this.

Knowing the card isn't reading it

Every entry on this site is free, and always will be — meanings are the easy half. The hard half is what a card does in a position, next to another card, for a real question. Learn to Read is the lessons for that, plus a practice partner that critiques your interpretations — $111, once.

Or read this card in your hand: the deck is all 78 drawn the way you see it above.