Canceling Idols and Invoking Inner Guidance
On The Hierophant and Challenging Authority. Yellow Brick Road.
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“Whatchu’ doin? Where you at? OH you got plans??? Don’t say that!” (reference song below) is exactly the energy pulling you deeper into the crevices of your couch, cookie crumbs on your tiddies, for some much needed R&R. Just me??? Oh….
It’s Taurus season. It’s giving luxury, it’s giving opulence, it’s giving sweet treats, it’s giving comfort, and most importantly - it’s slowing momentum to give you a chance to consider where exactly you’re going and why you’re so intent on getting there.
In the tarot, The Empress and The Hierophant can both represent Taurus energy. The last few weeks, The Hierophant has been jumping out of the deck nonstop in my daily readings. It depicts a religious leader in a robe, students listening intently at their feet - clinging to each word. By definition, a hierophant is someone who is bestowed with the gift and privilege of deciphering divine message, the person who gets to define the rules, who defines what is true and good. The Hierophant is the Powers-That-Be.
Pulling The Hierophant could literally mean a teacher, therapist, or religious leader is coming into your life. Spirit could be directing you to seek input from an authority figure. As a non-expert, I don’t really love these interpretations. Any interpretation that turns you away from yourself and de-centers you from the message, just skims the surface of the card’s medicine. Especially in context of who society has traditionally deemed worthy - or who has historically deemed themselves worthy - of the throne of self-righteousness and labeled it piety, education, law, and religion (ahem *old, rich, white men*), it’s hard to trust this interpretation and feel safe. Our therapists, doctors, professors, ministers, and elected officials are not always on our team, and we are doing our Hierophant work as a collective by interrogating all of the violent authorities - white supremacy, misogyny, transphobia, fatphobia - existing at the heart of where we seek counsel. We are also interrogating our home and our roots, where these values expose themselves in more insidious ways.
The Hierophant on a personal level represents longterm commitment - what we sow and why - and literal marriage. It screams “are you married to that belief, to that teacher, to that way of being?” Are you willing to stay the course? It asks us to consider who we’ve decided governs the right and wrongs of our life, whether or not the traditions of our foremothers serve us the way they once did if they ever did, and if we can invoke and trust in the power of our inner guidance - our spirit guides and ancestral design - a tad more than we did yesterday.
On Sunday, I enjoyed a day at the park followed by a drink at Miss Ada in Fort Greene - highly recommend. Naturally, the girlies and I had one (1) cocktail and pivoted into wholesome conversation about cults. Shows like The Handmaid’s Tale and documentaries about Jonestown make the condition of being in a cult and enduring the abuse of power under the guise of spiritual freedom to such an extreme seem so...not human. But it is so incredibly human to seek answers for the coincidences, chances, and forceful winds of life outside of our own authority. We are all trying to make sense of concepts much bigger than any of us combined for which we only have anecdotal “evidence” - to make sense of mortality, pain and suffering, intoxicating euphoria, of an escape from the inevitable and sometimes unbearable realization that all of our choices and subsequent consequences are our own to carry, celebrate, and atone for. It is only human to ask:
Who am I to question the unquestionable?
Why am I worthy of the answers I seek, and how could it be they exist within me already?
Is my happiness and fulfillment evidence enough to trust my inner guidance?
It occurs to me that society is kind of obsessed with forcing people to defend their independent beliefs against Big Tradition, and yet we wonder how cults and their likeness exist; how cult culture can become so embedded in who we are that even capitalism has its own brand called “work family” and “startups.” Or more broadly, how we relinquish control of our own authority to groupthink subconsciously every single day and it forms a reality right under our noses. Even those who seek divergence from big churches, small towns, and corporate cubicles end up orbiting another oppressive system because we don’t exist in a society that supports - financially, emotionally, mentally - operating in interest of oneself without being deemed selfish, lost, wayward, or “crazy.”
For example, whenever I mention astrology around a white man (rare because I love myself), there’s an assumption I will follow up with a strong argument for why it’s true. I’ve always been curious about the audacity of demanding someone defend individual practices, but I don’t think the objective “truth” of languages and tools used to decipher magic, alchemy, and divinity matter as long as in your practices you end up right back at center - yourself. If I were looking for a Chad to validate my moral compass, I don’t think I would choose the weirdo ass shit I have but thanks, guy!
Anyway, what I’m trying to say is that we are almost hardwired to feel the principles we use to pave our individual path have to be defended to the very same tradition we’re walking - or Usain Bolt dashing - away from, and it’s really fucking hard. In the case of many, walking away from tradition means losing literally everything. In the case of most, it means losing complacency in a life that makes you feel despondent, hopeless, or simply out of your skin which is enough of a reason.
This week I was asked to do a really high paying job which would require me hosting a discussion with my mother or a mentor. With Mother’s Day around the corner, it invoked sadness and slight insecurity in me to admit that much of who I am and embodiment of my purpose is in protest to many, many mentors and my very own mother. Of course, not all of her because I love my mother and am my mother’s daughter. But I’m myself first. Becoming myself has required significant distance from the person we are supposed to trust and adore above all else, but I am starting to realize my instinct to reject any authority which makes me feel small, wrong, or uncomfortable in my skin - which is louder than the soft, sweet whispers of my inner voice - has to be dethroned. It is not my mother I am rejecting, but her knowing in victimhood and self-hate and torment, her mother’s and grandmother’s knowing in the very same. I know better and I’m owning the responsibility of knowing better over loyalty to tradition I never signed up for.
I was 12 when I chose to be baptized. My parents felt it was important for their children find their own truth, whatever that may be. I didn’t realize how unique of an experience this was, or how formative the space for discovery would be in every way as I’ve developed a spiritual practice and an internal compass. Fucking terrifying - that’s how I would describe being an intrinsically divine human yearning for connection to something greater than myself without hand-me-down traditions to rein in my imagination. I wondered if I would know right from wrong, if I would be scared in my final moments without doctrine to grip to my chest. When my grandmother, who was my surrogate parent in the absence of my father and my only link to church passed away suddenly on a spring day, my brother and I commemorated her life by being baptized at Second Baptist Church in Elgin, Illinois. I was 12 when I discovered the power of choosing my source and defining my own idol.
I didn’t choose Christianity that day, I chose my roots. I chose the nurturing and strength of the god-fearing woman that was my grandmother. I chose the smell of sausage and biscuits on Sunday morning. I chose the monochromatic Sunday’s Best, a matching feathered hat and never-forget-your-earrings. These are the traditions, the definitions of love which have beckoned me like a tidal pull. These are the memories whispered into my consciousness when I’m in a pinch, and it’s time to choose me again. I do have a tattoo on my right arm from Proverbs 31:25. It says “she laughs without fear of the future,” as a living prayer to the woman I am, and I feel no hypocrisy in bearing these Pinterest ass words on my skin because they are as integral to my way of being as Grandma Rosie herself. In fact, my truth is a collage of every philosophy, story, church group, YouTube video, and kind soul I’ve had the pleasure of knowing. I practice mindfulness from Buddhism, yoga from the Rig Veda, and quote bell hooks’ All About Love and Communion as my bible. These are all the world’s offerings in the co-creation of coming into my own source, of metabolizing my environments and storing what resonates.
The word tradition has gone sour on my tongue, but I’ve become increasingly aware of being a relatively traditional person. I hope to have a big family, sit at the dinner table each night, foster a sense of belonging in family which I’ve never known - digging deeper into the rich soil of a life that is purely my own and not the one I was born into. Yes, I love tradition, just not at the expense of progress. I don’t think they’re mutually exclusive concepts. Growth is both fixed and fluid, both constant and fickle - so are our attachments to what we deem to be true and what we grant authority. The Hierophant’s work disturbs what we have grown out of, no longer identify with, shudder in the face, but have yet to release simply because we don’t know a life without it.
Bucking tradition is not necessarily nor mostly systemic/esoteric. This occurs in the minutiae of our physical experience. Asking yourself if you still identify with shaving, if you are still a meat-eater, if you genuinely care about being an ENFJ, if you considering yourself a city person, if you still buy books from Amazon instead of local bookshops are all examples of challenging authority. When I was in preschool, I vividly remember a snotty-nosed brat asking me and my best playground buddy if our favorite color was “pink or purple?” A baby Aquarius, I told him my favorite color was blue, and blue remained my favorite color for like 20 years. Rejecting digestible “femininity” in spite of gender norms - my youthful fight song - only drew me further away from my actual joy of living in a fully pink palace like Meryl Streep in She Devil.
Once I realized my actual goal in protest of pink was to tell the binary to fuck off and live my femme bisexual dreams in an intersectional feminist world and that this could not be done by simply enjoying a color, there was not a single thing stopping me from buying every pink toolkit, appliance, and journal in existence. As ridiculous at it sounds, this is the work of choosing inner guidance and letting it lead you to a better life and a better world. I let a shitty kid put me in a corner and reacted to it for several decades after forgetting the conversation entirely rather than responding to my own voice. You have to define the magic of your life - your divinity - for yourself. Love, trust, family, spirit, endings, and beginnings - they can’t be defined in the image of an idol, parent, teacher, or peer exclusively. Those have to be chosen in your image. This is not a rejection of mentorship, religion, being a student of philosophy, nor a call to violent individualism. I’m calling us to question our dedication to these expressions of our spirit in this short time we have together.
Years ago I went on date with someone who asked me who my idols were, and I didn’t have an answer. At one point, I might have said Oprah purely because of identity and her proximity to power structures I no longer value - now I really just fuck with her obsession with her garden. My idol is Oprah’s garden. I imagine what it’ll feel like to tend to my tomatoes each day, to look at my bounty, laughter in the distance and know exactly how I, Kendra, will fit into that dream. I don’t need Oprah’s path to get there.
One of my earliest gifts was understanding the energetic exchange of deeming someone an idol, or hierophant. Of letting someone else decipher the direct call between you and spirit, energy, the universe, God - whatever you call them - known as intuition. I’m grateful for the downfall of gurus and celebrities; we’d all be a lot better off if we tapped into other people’s energy a bit less and revoked our reverence a bit more. You grant a lot of power to someone or some life you measure yourself against on a regular basis, so it’s important to choose wisely. Or even better, bestow yourself the power of being the blueprint. Become the source.
Of course, nothing occurs in a vacuum - including our life’s creations and our own successes. No one is a true original, but unique in being an amalgamation of every experience in their path. When you feel the force of another, consider what lovely part of you you’re seeing. It’s nice to dip your toes in the eternal blessings of someone else.
The trick is remembering when it’s time to go the fuck home.