Hierophant and the Ego

The hierophant card of the Tarot was the subject of a recent discussion I had with a friend, a Sufi dance teacher. She said she always draws a blank when it appears in a reading. Historically, the card refers to a traditional religious leader. It certainly did not fit with any idea she had of herself or her dance work.

A student of hers, an anthropologist, offered an intriguing interpretation of the card: the hierophant as the giver of blessings or benedictions. Benediction, in old sense of the word, suggests a dual motion of ascending prayers and descending blessings. Up and down, up and down between heaven and earth, a lot like breathing, only a celestial breathing. The hierophant, in this view, is the instrument or intermediary of the heavenly blessing or heavenly breath. While a much more dynamic vision of the card, I had some reservations. Below are my musings as addressed to my friend (with editing).

In the William Blake tarot deck, the hierophant is called Religion. It recognizes the human need for spirituality and warns against the rationalization or codification of spirit through organized systems of religion. Blake had no great love for organized religion. In the Sufi work (according to the work of Sufi Master, Adnan Sarhan), the dance must always come from the moment. As long as you stay in the moment, the energy of spirit flows. The hierophant card can be seen as a warning against "the ego,” the ever lurking enemy of the moment. As soon as one thinks of oneself as "something special," i.e. “religious leader,” the moment vanishes into intellect and ego.

It can be dangerous to see oneself as a mediator or intermediary between your students and heaven. It is really a very traditional view -- that ordinary people cannot connect to the sacred or divine except through the intercession of a priest or spiritual leader. People do not need a mediator because heaven is inside, not outside and above. We do not need an intermediary to the divine because we all are part of the divine.

When a teacher is in the flow of spirit and students are in the vicinity of that energy, their own spirits are entrained. That is the dynamic of the Sufi work as I understand it. When in the moment, one vibrates at a higher frequency. That vibration stimulates or induces a similar vibration in the others. Like plucking a guitar string, the near-by strings also begin to vibrate. The stronger your vibration, the greater the effect. Eventually the students learn to vibrate on their own and thus access their own spirit. Of course the vibration is always stronger when surrounded by the vibration of others flowing in the moment. This is doubly true when near to someone strong in the practice of being in the moment.

The trick and warning of the hierophant is to be a teacher and yet not fall prey to the ego of teacher. Yes, all of the things you must do as teacher are true, like holding the space and making people feel safe and stepping in and taking action when someone falls out of the space, or disrupts the space. So it is necessary to acknowledge your self as a leader or teacher. At the same time, it is heady to be in the front, having people attending to your every word and action. The ego lurks.

In a way we are all teachers. We teach each other important lessons every time we come together (as in The Celestine Prophecy). Being conscious of being teacher is essential, but in an active way, in the verb sense of "I am teaching" as opposed to "I am THE TEACHER." As teacher, which in itself is an active noun, one enters the energy field of teacher, which included space holding and wide attention. Teaching in this way can bring you into another level of consciousness. You attention is alert, you are totally focused and aware, but the focus is outward or, perhaps to put it better, your “inside” expands to encompass the outer boundaries of your group. The group becomes your body and you are the brain or maybe the heart of that body. There can be no thought of the future or past. You must be totally in the moment, feeling through every sense and responding to each moment through intuition or what Adnan calls “intelligence.”

When I am facilitating a grief group or doing a screening/discussion of my films, I connect with the essence of the goddess Demeter -- mother goddess, all encompassing, watchful, loving, insuring her children are safe and growing. When I think of her, I connect to the love part of teaching. As long as I am in that love and in the doing, I can keep the ego trap of the hierophant at bay.