About Romancing The Hierophant
Romancing the Hierophant is the next step in an unabashedly, life-long, strange and frustrating journey with the Tarot. It is also the result of a gradually increasing awareness that something was missing, something that was right under my nose.
By the time the average Tarot reader has developed with the Tarot enough to do a average and consistently accurate reading, he or she has developed a large number of other “secondary” skills that are rarely seen operating separately. Romancing the Hierophant is a site dedicated to reflecting on those skills.
An accurate reading is an exciting experience for both the reader and the client, there is no doubt about that. That was actually the first clue. Over time, and after doing hundreds if not thousands of readings in all forms and formats, it became glaringly apparent that the effect produced residually by an accurate reading couldn’t be accounted for on the basis of its effect of producing information or making a supposition about a persons future. In other words, I noticed quite clearly, that an effective reading was actually an encounter, a full-sensory composite experience that had a profound effect on all present, including myself. I began to reason, therefore, that the talents and skills that went into producing this encounter were equally varied and complex.
And so began a period of experimenting, of continuing regular readings, but always looking out of the corner of my eye, trying to identify and isolate the various operations that together, produced the effect that the Tarot was producing.
This produced another quandary. Though I feel strongly that there are some basic talents that the average reader develops to a high degree, and that those talents and skills can be applied to that persons life outside of the reading in a variety of ways, every individual reader is unique and so brings a different shade of those skills to the table, much like many different decks carry the thread of a common archetype. I could not progress as quickly by myself. Romancing the Hierophant is a site dedicated to bringing out secondary processes that a Tarot reader is already involved in, and focusing on them directly.
The name Romancing the Hierophant implies an certain crystallization of the view that the Tarot is all about the reading, and the feeling that is all it ever will be. The Hierophant is about creating structure and routine, advancing tradition and defined paradigms. Romancing the Hierophant implies my feeling of what happens when we get stuck around one paradigm with a tool that loudly speaks about greater uses.
This site contains information and products designed to shift perspectives by pointing to all of the other processes happening with the average reading and the average reader in the hopes of developing those processes. It is dedicated to expanding the Tarot so that it is seen, not as necessarily an adjunct spiritual novelty, but a psycho-spiritual generator that has limitless applications to an individual’s life, from improving relationships, manifesting goals as well as finding them when they are lost, and running the gauntlet through controlling circumstances and accepting them.
The information and experience can be used to improve the average reading, and that is a worthy goal. But for those Tarot readers who also want to move beyond that, Romancing the Hierophant is dedicated to exploring ways to expand the journey.
