The Hierophant

A hooded pontiff enthroned on a bull holds a wand of three interlaced rings, with the four kerubic beasts (bull, lion, eagle, man) at the corners. Before him stands a woman girt with a sword, the Scarlet Woman; a child in a pentagram shines on his breast; an elephant stands beneath the throne; a serpent and a dove flank the nine nails above.

Vau, the nail, on path 16 from Chokmah to Chesed: the nail that fastens the wisdom of the Father to the mercy of the King, the link between the supernal and the world of order. Vau is also the Son in the Tetragrammaton, the mediating power.

Taurus, fixed Earth, ruled by Venus with the Moon exalted: endurance, fertility, the pleasure of stable things. The decans of Taurus are the Five, Six and Seven of Disks.

Five, and Vau's value 6. Five is Motion, the pentagram, the microcosm entering matter; six is the hexagram and the Son. The card joins them as the initiator who brings the macrocosm into the human.

The Wise Old Man in his institutional dress, and the persona of religious and social authority. Jungian readers ask whether the Hierophant is a genuine mediator of the Self or a collective mask; the child in the pentagram suggests the former.

Waite's pope blesses two tonsured monks; Crowley replaces them with the Scarlet Woman and the child, making the card an image of the New Aeon's initiation rather than the Old Aeon's church.