The Hierophant is nothing if not the bridge between god and man. He is a conduit. A big part of the spirit of card V is the Pope. The symbol of the first pope, Peter, is the crossed keys, as he is the one with the keys to heaven; his judgement is the conduit through which the righteous will pass. Here the symbolism and the drama has been ratched down a bit. Our shaman isn't judging anyone, but is certainly hearing something that not everyone is privy to; he knows something is coming, and if conditions are right will be able to articulate to the people around him. The phrase that comes to mind is "spiritual weathervane".

My last look at the card makes me appreciate the androgyny of this person. While my first intimation was that this person is a man, but that may not be the case. V The Shaman could just as easily be an old woman. That, for me, is one of the keys of those who work with metaphysical energy, their propensity towards androgyny, and if not androgyny at least a lack of attachment toward traditionally gendered attachments.

Thinking through the card again, I think that to ignore the importance of reward after hard work would really be detrimental to me. The card really fleshes out the way I think of reward, and adds depth to an otherwise simplistic view of reward. The 10 of Blood could have appeared in order to complicate my understanding of reward. This wasn't the empty gold star of a small child doing well for the teacher, but a well-earned treat for myself. I'm not an animal performing for a snack, but a human being who wants recognition from himself for the work that he's doing. I think this card has been a reminder of how important it is for me to recognize the work I'm doing and reward myself for it, and not forgo that reward by demeaning it into something childish or immature. Though I don't work with reversals, I can see that if this card was reversed it might intimate that there was something superficial or twisted about the work-reward relationship. I don't get that sense at all today about this card.

Thinking through a third time, there is something important about the reward itself. The reward isn't something useless, it's food. It's sustaining. It will become energy that is folded back into the work. It is both satisfying and sustaining in a way that helps the man continue what he was doing, and doesn't distract from it.

The woman wears a mask made from a tree trunk, so that the roots of the tree spread out from the top of her head like wild, woody braids. Only a single eye slit is visible, and it is blank and blank and unyielding. The woman's skin is what is most interesting to me. It has taken on a woody aspect; the exposed area of her skin have whorls and lines like that of tree bark or wood. Her visible left arm fades into the foliage behind her.

Adding to this general sense of unease is the texture of her skin; it's not human. She has either taken on the cast of the mask she wears (leading us to believe that this might either be a vision during a ceremony or a vision from another state of consciousness, such as astral travel), or she is not human in the first place, and is some kind of seductive forest nymph, and we know that conducting those kinds of transaction always requires the greatest care if one is to escape unharmed.

I think context is key to this card. Within a safe space, for instance one of ritual or ceremony, the energies that this card represents might be expressed safely and even positively. Outside of the protective boundaries of ritual it would be hard to anticipate what might happen encountering a woman (or a man for that matter) whose motives are masked and who seems as aggressive as this one does.

ATA

The first thing that strikes me regarding this person (beast?) is that he can't turn his head. His range of motion, and therefore range of vision is apparently incredibly limited. His eyes may be open, but if they are, they're empty. That emptiness, though, may just be the light reflecting from his closed eyelids.

One important question that springs to mind as I'm looking at the card is, "Is the man emerging from the tree, receding into it or is he in stasis?" This image in no way reminds me other other human plant hybrids, for instance, the Green Man. This card has nothing of the jolly growing-ness that the Green Man often has. This is more like an old man with a crooked back who can no longer move with the alacrity he once had; his bones have grown twisted and wrong, so he moves at the best pace he can.

None of that, though, is really interpretation. It's a step below that, just feeling, but I guess it will have to do for now.

The attitudes, though, are what really separates these cards. In 9 of Soul the man is bound, his hands raised in a gesture of surrender. In XII The Sacrifice the man's arms are free and open, as though he is embracing the spear (or diving onto it, depending on which direction you see the card coming from). Both 9 of Soul and VII The Sacrifice represent transformation, similar to the way that XIII Death does, but 9 of Soul shows a struggle against transformation, where XII The Sacrifice shows a man embracing it.

The man in 9 of Soul seems to have finally surrendered, though not before he had to be apparently captured and bound. He stands at the point of decision, though; he has not been gored as the man in VIII Death has. And it's hard to say what that decision will bring. Perhaps like Abraham and Isaac the spear will not pierce the heart of the bound man, but instead flick right and left and set him free of the bonds that hold him. From where we stand we cannot tell, and I believe that the answer lies in the decision that lays before the querent, who I suppose in this case is me.

This card reminds me of an exercise we do in Feri called Walking the Blade. Thorn Coyle talks about it in her book Evolutionary Witchcraft. We visualize in our minds eye a blade of some kind, a sword, a knife, a spear perhaps. We choose a situation where we have a choice and on one side of the blade we place one decision and its possible out come, and on the other side the other decision and possible outcome. Then we visualize ourselves walking the blade. First on the flat side, out to the point of the blade and back, feeling each of the decisions as we do so. Then we flip the blade and walk the razor edge out to the point, and we pause at the point where the decisions meet and flow together to see if there's a third road we can choose that is something different than we had been able to see when we framed the decision originally. Then, if we can, we choose. Perhaps for the man in 9 of Soul, and certainly for the man in XII the Sacrifice, there is a third option he hasn't realized yet, but that will come to him as he balances at the point of the spear.

The Hierophant is nothing if not the bridge between god and man. He is a conduit. A big part of the spirit of card V is the Pope. The symbol of the first pope, Peter, is the crossed keys, as he is the one with the keys to heaven; his judgement is the conduit through which the righteous will pass. Here the symbolism and the drama has been ratched down a bit. Our shaman isn't judging anyone, but is certainly hearing something that not everyone is privy to; he knows something is coming, and if conditions are right will be able to articulate to the people around him. The phrase that comes to mind is "spiritual weathervane".

My last look at the card makes me appreciate the androgyny of this person. While my first intimation was that this person is a man, but that may not be the case. V The Shaman could just as easily be an old woman. That, for me, is one of the keys of those who work with metaphysical energy, their propensity towards androgyny and if not androgyny at least a lack of attachment toward traditionally gendered attachments.

One possible interpretation is that the magician is in fact causing the sun to rise. He is not only the beginning, but the cause of the beginning; the first cause, not just making the sun rise, but making the sun, which is the source of all life on earth, and must therefore be considered our physical beginning as well.

If I wanted to look really hard, and I'm not sure I do, I might take even a step further and say that all four elements are here represented by the sun (fire), the sky (air), the brown fur the magician is wrapped in (earth) and the blueness of his skin (water). I think that's stretching things a bit, but what are tarot cards for if not to stretch things?

What Toppi's illustration gets to is the necessity for invention, innovation, mental strength in concert with physical and emotional strength when uniting the disparate forces that lay before the querant. It's not enough just to be physically and emotionally strong; that's the kind of weathering of a storm that can lead to the breakdown shown in XVI The Tower. There has to be a strong mind as well as a strong arm to achieve the kind of mastery and control that VII The Chariot promises.

ATA

More numerologically, the fours tend to be cards of balance and steadiness. While three is the magic number, fours are totally dependable, often times to their own detriment. I suppose it's not without merit that the uncool are labeled squares, or that the innovative are always trying to think outside the box. That said, we need the box to stand on in order to get outside of it, and I prefer tables with four legs to three, and a car with four wheels to a motorcycle with two. I think that's part of the reason why the discovery of the skull suggests resolution to me, because of the steadiness that comes with four.

ATA