2021 The Year of The Hierophant
If you are at all a follower or fan of numerology and tarot, you will already be well aware that 2021 is the year of The Hierophant, as the sum of it’s digits add up of to five (2 + 0 + 2 + 1 = 5). I wrote an earlier blog post about this that many people have been reading recently, and I thought I would update that earlier post with the writing I did for my 2021 Goal and Intention Setting Planner. The planner is available for sale and you will find it helpful if you are looking to set clear and aligned intentions and goals now or anytime this year. Here is the section that I wrote up for Year of the Hierophant:
Welcome to 2021: The Year of the Hierophant
A Hierophant year ushers in a time of examination and questioning of how society functions. There is an awakening awareness of the systems that have been put in place and reinforced with adherence to a prescribed order of operations. You can now see those systems at work and decide whether or not they are adequate to the job of creating our best society in 2021. You may find yourself agreeing to conform to societal roles based upon a positive assessment of how things look to you. In other situations, you will find yourself disagreeing with how things are currently operating and want to rebel, think outside the box, innovate and change things. The main theme during this year of The Hierophant is exploring and questioning the structure of your society and the systems and beliefs that support that structure.
A Hierophant year can carry with it a strong urge to conform to tradition, to stick to the tried and true way of doing things. People don’t like change all that much. Conventionality can therefore be comfortable and arguably very useful. “This is just the way we do things around here,” is an easy answer to every question. That’s how it works. That’s how it’s always been done. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. And surely, there are plenty of times that it can be smart to think “inside the box”, using the lessons that others learned before you. It’s not always necessary to reinvent the wheel. For example, if your car breaks down, wouldn't it just be best to go to the mechanic instead of devising your own way of fixing your car? Unless you're already mechanically inclined, there is no reason to fix your own car. Someone else already has the systems in place for that and you can trust that person (hopefully, if you have a good mechanic!).
What about all the times that the systems in place don’t work for you, though? This is the predominant question of a Hierophant year. You will be empowered to examine, “the way we’ve always done things around here,” to make informed decisions about whether to follow the tried and true or think outside the box. In the example above, you may indeed decide to ditch the old mechanic and try something new. Maybe it’s finally time to buy that electric car you’ve been wanting for years! Or perhaps you don’t even need a car since you are always taking public transportation anyway. You can rent a car when you need to get out of town, and it will be someone else’s job to maintain and insure that car. The Hierophant energy allows you to notice, question, evaluate and even change if you are open to the new. You don’t have to stick to the systems that are already in place.
Cars and mechanics aside, a Hierophant year can be full of deep, meaningful, spiritual questing. Of course, there will be all the usual questions of how to live your best life when it comes to career, relationships, health, home, etc., but this deeper question of purpose and meaning are behind all of the everyday decisions that you make. You will be drawn to the mysteries, to the divine, to what is greater than mundane existence. If you allow the wonder to take hold of you, you can contemplate the bigger picture of what life is all about. Is there a God? Do you have a purpose? Why are you here? These existential questions come up again and again and influence your day-to-day decision making as that niggling wonder of what it all means keeps popping up.
The Hierophant is often depicted in the tarot as the head of organized religion. The word hierophant comes from the Greek hierophantes “one who teaches the rites of sacrifice and worship.” The Hierophant is the ultimate authority on how to commune with the divine. All of this questioning may lead you deeper into your faith and connect you more closely with your religious community. You may turn to your religion for the answers and find them easily answered there. That is, indeed, the point of religion. It’s a structure, a system of belief that lays out for you what to believe and how to practice that belief. Religion puts the power to communicate with the divine into the hands of an authority figure and allows you to follow ritual and tradition set out by others in order to live your best life. That may have a very strong appeal to you in this coming year, as you learn more about those systems and more closely follow your traditions.
On the other hand, your questioning may lead you to find that your religion really doesn't work for you anymore. Perhaps you are considering how you commune with your God and finding that the rituals and authorities of your religious group are interfering with your belief system and your personal relationship with the divine. You may find that you don’t require a gatekeeper to deliver messages between you and the divine and can fill that role on your own. Or maybe you will be drawn to a different set of beliefs and change religions, converting to a religion that more closely matches the beliefs that you hold. In any case, a Hierophant year will constantly bring up matters of spirituality if you are open to that awareness. And that is a beautiful offering, to question your belief systems and relationship with Spirit in order to live an awakened and present life.
Beyond matters of the divine, The Hierophant represents collective identity or the group mind on an earthly level as well. Our civilization has specific ways of operating and teaching us how to think and function in society. These systems help us live together in relative peace and harmony. Proper education, morals, and etiquette are subjective concepts though, and this year you will find yourself wondering who made up all these rules and to what purpose. For example, you could find yourself questioning the nation’s education system, especially in light of all the complications due to the COVID-19 pandemic. What is the best system to educate the nation’s children? Perhaps the school system is working just great for some, but not for others. The Hierophant is a powerful and effective teacher, but often blindly claims authority on how best to teach. Systems must evolve or they will grow stagnant and malfunction. How has the pandemic shown that conventional schooling has its limitations and needs to evolve?
Another example is in the conventional career path and work/life routine. The pandemic has highlighted how unnecessary it is to go to an office and work a traditional 9 to 5 lifestyle in a cubicle with no windows at the corporation. Now that that work life isn’t an option, what does that bring up? For some people that was the perfect job, but now they must consider alternatives. Perhaps you want to work from home, or for a nonprofit, or start your own business. Maybe you want to do something totally unorthodox like sell all your possessions and follow your dreams to live in a van and be a nature photographer. This Hierophant Year has you all set up to do things differently, whether it be at work, at school, at home, or in your community. The alternative would be to devote yourself to getting “back to normal” and somehow getting those malfunctioning systems back in place. This is your choice of where to dedicate your energy.
What dreams do you have that are considered unacceptable by “responsible” society? The Hierophant is here this year to put the spotlight on the establishment and ask you to think very clearly and openly about what is right for you as well as open up your mind about what could be good for other people. Allow for the weirdos out there to do their own thing and make the world more interesting. Make sure you’re giving yourself the opportunity to be a weirdo as well. You can only be you. You’ll also notice how the caste system in our society is set up to allow some people to move ahead and succeed while requiring that most people fall behind, face injustice, are discriminated against for opportunities, and are blamed for misfortune which is outside of their control. Society must evolve to fit the current times, to allow justice and equity for all. The Hierophant can represent the status quo, but when we recognize and confront that status quo, only then are we able to address the changes that need to be made.
The Hierophant represents your cultural heritage, both in society at large and within your smaller family unit. During a Hierophant year you may be taking a closer look at the way tradition works in your family and reconsidering whether your prescribed roles and activities still apply to you and make you feel happy and useful in your family. For example, if you’ve always been the baby in the family and get treated like a silly screw up but now consider yourself to be a responsible adult, deserving of respectful treatment, you will be compelled to speak up for yourself this year. Or if you have always been the responsible one who lends money and offers a place to stay to everyone else, but you are ready to travel the world this year, you need to tell everyone that it’s time to create a bigger support network since you will be unavailable for some time this year. You could also find that your entire family unit is reconsidering its traditions. Do you always need to celebrate holidays the same way and take the same vacations? Quite possibly the answer is yes! You have already devised the best traditions for your family, but if not, allow for the opening up to new traditions within your family or friend group.
Now take tradition out another step from your family unit and expand that out to your community and your society in general. What role have you been playing in this wider context? Are you helping inequities continue by burying your head in the sand? Are you throwing up your hands and saying, “I didn’t create this injustice and I don’t know how to solve it, so it must be someone else’s problem”? Or are you doing something to help your neighbors? Are you leading by example? Are you living as if everyone deserves to be treated fairly and equally as worthy human beings because that is the world you want to live in? Don’t wait for laws and policies to change, because laws and policies follow popular opinion and action, not the other way around.
The Hierophant represents an authority figure and this type of person is often a very wise counselor. This year you may find yourself seeking the guidance of someone or many people who are wiser than you. Your human experience is similar to the experience of millions of people who came before you and you can benefit from lessons already learned. For example, in a love life situation, you may benefit greatly from asking a marriage counselor for advice, or someone who understands how relationships work and evolve. People have been falling in love, living together, or getting married for hundreds of years and there are some tried and true ways of navigating relationships that you can learn from others, instead of floundering around on your own. This year you will benefit from finding a counselor to guide you through your troubles, whatever form they currently take.
The Hierophant energy also comes with a strong urge to share your own knowledge and skills with others. You may find that you are called upon to be the wise counselor for those less experienced than you. The Hierophant is a master at what he does, so you could finally reach a place where you are ready to teach others what you know. It will come easily for you to accept your authority on a subject and get ready to preach what you already practice. Don’t be shy. If people did not want your opinions, knowledge, and experience, they would not be asking you in the first place. Your way of doing things could be very appealing to others so that they want to follow along with your rules. Be careful, of course, not to fall into a tyrannical mode where you require that people follow precisely your way of doing things. There may be a tendency to get a bit full of oneself and start dictating how other people live. Remember that you got to where you are at by questioning the norm, so allow that others can live their best lives by doing some independent thinking themselves.
Constantly questioning what exactly is going on here could have some interesting consequences for you this year. You may find yourself rebelling against the social norm, going against the grain, and trying something unorthodox or original. Examining the structures that dictate how are society works and asking if that is really the best way can lead to innovation and invention this year. You may determine that you can break down restrictions and expand. The Hierophant is the authority figure, but when you question him you assert your own independence of thought. Even if you end up agreeing with his point of view, the important thing here is that you exercised your ability to question.
All of this questioning and examining is to be expected in a Hierophant year. The areas of spirituality, tradition, family values, education, and cultural norms versus independence and originality are highlighted. Sometimes you will stick to your time-tested position and realize that it is the best stance for you. Other times, you will find that you absolutely must break with tradition and start down a new path. This process of examination may be scary, bewildering, chaotic, and exhilarating. This is a year when you decide whether it's finally time to be a rebel and make up your own rules, or if the rules exist for a good reason and you commit to following them. Both paths are likely to present themselves for different life circumstances!
Happy Year of the Hierophant! Remember to download your copy of The Willow Path Tarot Intention and Goal Setting Planner for 2021. Available on my offerings page!