What Does the Hierophant Card Mean in Tarot?

The word “Hierophant” comes from Greek. “Hieros” means “sacred,” and “phainein” means “to show, to reveal.” Thus, Hierophant is the person, or the situation, that shows us the sacred truth behind our many daily occurrences.

If the Hierophant Tarot card appears in your life, whether in a reading or as an online coincidence, you’re being invited to explore your sacred truth. This truth is what lies beneath the beliefs you have incorporated all along. Beliefs about life, about others, and most importantly beliefs about yourself and your ability to create the life you want.

In recent years we have heard so much about beliefs and laws of attraction and manifestation that now for many of us it has become cliché. We’ve gotten tired of listening to it and reading about it, even though only very few of us have done the real work, that of excavating old beliefs from our mental landscape. Most of us live whole months and years without unearthing our sacred reality.

Hierophant reminds us that we are embodied God energy. That we are so infinite that purely out of choice we choose limitations, so we can each experience different ways, shapes and events.

What Does the Hierophant Tarot Card Mean for Love?

If you are not happy in your love life, your deeply seated psychological beliefs are the culprit. Not fate. Not that person you dated. Not the circumstances. And not your heart.

Musical Chairs
Have you always been single? The Hierophant suggests you don’t believe true love will happen for you. Perhaps you believe romance is like musical chairs, and somehow there just isn’t a chair for you whenever the music stops. Because you don’t hold a positive belief about the future in this respect, it’s difficult for you to imagine or visualize the beautiful outcome that you say you want. Your uttered words don’t carry manifesting powers due to your beliefs. You are not able to give form to your dream.

Hamsters Sharing the Wheel
Have you been a serial monogamist with no satisfying end result? Perhaps your beliefs about commitment are conflicted. The Hierophant teaches us that some of us carry equally strong beliefs and their counter-beliefs, and equally desired intentions and their counter-intentions at the same time. When these co-exist, real forward movement is rendered impossible.

With beliefs, democracy isn’t a good solution – we should pick one belief/intention and let it reign as the supreme ruler. Otherwise, the result is repeating cycles, always ending in the same impasse.

Carriage Turning into Pumpkin
Do you not trust that your partner is going to be there for you? Or that they will be loyal? The Hierophant says, you must have a hidden belief about your own inability to choose the right partner. There are as many wonderful partners as there are horrible ones – you are the one bringing them, or not bringing them, into your life.

The Kiss of the Prince
If you are in a satisfying relationship and you come across the Hierophant, don’t fear. He is just reminding you of ways to improve things, such as making sure you and your partner have the same beliefs and intentions for the future.

Do you both want to live in the city? Do you both want to buy a place? What kind of a place do you each imagine? The Hierophant is telling you to synchronize and harmonize more and more.

What Does the Hierophant Reversed in Tarot Mean?

Hierophant Reversed points at those beliefs that have become so ingrained, so normalized in the psyche, that it is now impossible to dig them up and bring them to the surface.

Martin Seligman, a renowned psychologist, calls this phenomenon “Learned Helplessness.” In his experiment, monkeys stopped trying to get rewards because they were made to fail, on purpose, in their first several tries. They lost hope, so they began to “punish” themselves by succumbing to the negative belief they held: “it won’t happen.” Later, even when their cage door was opened, and the reward was placed nearby, they didn’t bother to get up and get it.

A lot of us experience learned helplessness in different areas of our lives. In our relationships we say, “she won’t change, so I won’t try anymore.” At work we say, “this is the way this company is, there’s nothing I can do about it.” About money we sometimes think, “well, it’s the economy, it’s bigger than me, I won’t even try.”

The Hierophant reversed reminds us our sacred truth: We are “Gods reversed,” we still have the universal forces at our disposal; we just forgot.

Zodiacal Association

The Hierophant is associated with the Taurean energy. Stubborn like a bull, open-to-life like a baby. It won’t give up on what it wants, yet it’s also flexible enough to adapt to the environment.

Don’t worry if you are not Taurus – Tarot’s zodiac associations are meant to teach us about different energies and ways of being. The Hierophant has been associated with Taurus because Taurus is a fixed earth sign – being a fixed sign makes it persistent, and being an earth sign makes it stable and consistent.

Think now of your beliefs – when your healthy beliefs are persistent, stable and consistent, you’ll have a wonderful time. When they are the opposite, certain areas of your life will be uprooted, flimsy and unsettled. Try to be flexible and soft enough to explore and change those limiting thoughts.