In her book about the Haindl Tarot Rachel Pollack states:

"Hermann Haindl created these pictures. Following his guidance I have interpreted them. Both of us hope and expect that each person who enters their world will find a fresh meaning."

While Haindl, like in the traditional Hierophant pictures, shows three men, he breaks the hierarchical architecture of the traditional Hierophant by showing the heads of three generations of a family. Grandfather, the old Rabbi, with his long white beard is dominating the picture.

To his right we see the profile of his son, in the front we see the back of a boy's head wearing a skullcap. A bright light, shining through a window in the upper left, is illuminating the faces as well as a key and the pages of an old book. The concentration of the faces on the right part of the picture shows the dominance of the male and intellectual energy in this kind of religious tradition. Religious tradition has always two sides. On one hand it gives structure and security to people, who are looking for guidance, group experience, and shelter by practicing rituals and offering guidelines. On the other hand the structure can become empty and turn into dogma. Belief, that is alive, can be suffocated and the dogmatic structure can become a jail for the soul. In both meanings, the hierophant is something we are all going through quite often.

We enter a new level of experience and because we are overwhelmed and feel helpless, we are looking for orientation and are happy about groups, organizations or institutions that are giving rules and structure to us. The problem is that most of us are growing and developing much faster than a body of an organization and that's why we find out, the structure is getting too narrow for us. We start questioning it , we start attacking it, we are disappointed and feel, we have to leave to be able to go on growing. We experience the shadow part of the Hierophant, the dogma, the empty rituals without meaning and sense and so we go on.

On the next level we will start as the boy on Haindl´s picture, hanging on the words of the wise leader and learning, being thankful for teachings and rules till the process starts again. In my opinion the three generations on this card represent this circle of experiences quite well. We are all three of the figures and because of that we are beyond them. The hierophant represents manifestation of spiritual systems and helps us to bring whatever we believe in down to earth and use and integrate it into our daily life. But whatever be believe in, we should never forget that the Divine is the light shining in the back of the card, not the praying Grandpa.

Mia
Miradji@aol.com