What does The Hierophant mean reversed?

The Thoth Tarot is traditionally read without reversed cards: the reader judges from the cards around it whether a card is well or ill dignified. This is its ill-dignified or blocked reading: Rejection of rules that have grown tight, or attachment to dogma; the true teacher must also be sought within.

What are the Kabbalah and astrology correspondences of The Hierophant?

In the Golden Dawn system The Hierophant corresponds to the Hebrew letter Vau, path 16 of the Tree of Life between Chokmah and Chesed, the element Earth and Taurus in astrology.

Thoth Tarot · Major Arcana

The Hierophant

teaching · tradition · revelation · initiation · perseverance

A reflective starting point

What is The Hierophant asking you to look at?

Meaning changes with the position, the surrounding cards and your question. Take what follows as a language, not a verdict.

Read this card in a ritual Draw it from your own deck

Upright

Seek or offer teaching; established ways and authoritative advice are useful now. A formal commitment is possible.

At first sight

Institutions, teaching, wise counsel, formal unions and contracts. It points to the search for a guide or to joining a consolidated tradition.

Within you

The inner voice that links experience and meaning, the ability to learn and to pass on; but also your relationship with moral norms and authority.

On the path

Path 16 from Chokmah to Chesed, the letter Vau (the nail, 6) and Taurus, the fixed Earth sign in which the Moon is exalted: Wisdom fixing itself into doctrine. It is the nail that joins the higher world to the lower, revelation becoming patient teaching.

The shadow

Ill-dignified, it signals dogmatism, conformism, hypocrisy, dependence on an external master.

Reversed

In the Thoth tradition a reversed card is read through its dignity with the neighbouring cards; this is its shadow side.

Rejection of rules that have grown tight, or attachment to dogma; the true teacher must also be sought within.

In love, work and spirit

Love. A formalised union, shared values; or a bond lived out of duty more than choice.

Work. Training, mentoring, bodies and institutions; structured contracts and paths that demand constancy.

Spirit. Initiation and transmission: tradition as a vehicle, not as a cage.

Correspondences

Vau ו · path 16 (Chokmah – Chesed) · Earth · Taurus

Crowley's note

The Hierophant of the Thoth deck announces the new Aeon: in the pentagram on his chest the child Horus dances, and before him stands an armed woman; his ambiguous smile guards a secret not yet fully revealed.