I suppose the obvious question would be, "why?" Why, and in what way, do you feel it is a valid interpretation of The Hierophant reversed?
I'm occasionally fascinated by the tarot. I drew for some time on a deck of my own design, but it's a bit of a sketch, an abandoned work in progress, composed merely of fragments, I fear. (I discovered rather quickly how big a job it would be.) Here's my Hierophant card in it's current state:
I'm displaying it as a crossing here, because I think it looks better this way and some of my unhappinesses about it seem less important, and also because of the nature of crossing cards generally, and their pertinence to the discussion. The fish appears to be gorging on the head of the priest.
My idea with this card was to somehow capitalize on the mitre of the priest and it's relationship to the Philistine god Dagon,
as well as shades of meaning pulled from images of
the fish as vulva of the Goddess.
So while the mitre is usually represented with the mouth of the fish pointed upwards, my contrivance here is that the Hierophant is birthed from the older traditions, as some fish birth their children from their mouths, and this ancient knowledge is obscured even from his own view, above his head, as he acts as the symbol of conformity to the established order. In the reversed lay, the unworkable conventionality of the established order is fountained or even vomited skyward out of the fish, washing over the suspended or falling sycophantic couple above.
As I said, it's unfinished, and in more ways than one.
For this project I had adopted the notion of selecting color palettes for the triumphs from the plumages of birds which I felt had some significance to the specific arcana, in this case
a kingfisher:
And, oddly enough, Hammer of Los identifies himself as the Halcyon Hierophant,
halcyon being the genus of the kingfisher birds. The association here, that of the groin-wounded
Fisher King of Grail lore, adds another layer of interpretation.
Perhaps. But clearly I'm no Grant Morrison. And my personal dao is so dented and run down that I doubt I could give it away free on craigslist.
My first posting on this thread was not meant as an insult to HoL. It was meant to be a bit cryptic, yes, and as a minor bit of a talisman against bad magic, too. I'll admit, Hammer and I have a sometimes difficult relationship. (It almost feels as if he has adopted me as a pet nemesis, if I may flatter myself a bit.) Nevertheless I felt conniption's characterization was an attack, and offensive, and unfairly colored my message. And so, yes, for protection I summoned
the dickhead. It was, to be sure, a word poorly chosen, though at the time it struck me as most apt, terse and pointed. It summarized my feelings correctly and named a thing, and that was enough for me at the moment.
But now that I am fully chastised, and cleansed by the ritual of suspension, I shall go and sin no more, in the knowledge of the new zero-tolerance line in the sand regarding the dreaded counter-production of ad hominem. Which is, in a way, I think, a very fun idea.
And my regards and all the cosmic, most powerful dao you can handle, HoL.
