I am The Hierophant and I have been pulled 6,742 times, and every single time you read me upside down to avoid the truth.
You think I am boring. You think I am the dad at the party who tells you to go home before the cops show up. You think I am the old book that smells like dust and disappointment. You think I am the church you stopped attending, the institution you burned in effigy, the tradition you rolled your eyes at while scrolling through five different apps at dinner. You pull me and you sigh. You want The Fool. You want The Tower. You want the card that promises you will crash your car into a gas station and emerge reborn as a phoenix with a podcast deal.
I do not offer that.
What I offer is worse. What I offer is the thing you already know. The thing you have been running from. The thing that sits in your gut like a stone you swallowed at age twelve and never passed. I am the whistleblower hotline for your own secrets. I am the encrypted line that rings in the basement of your conscience, and when you pick up, I do not say hello. I say: You are the one who told the lie. You are the one who signed the form. You are the one who stayed quiet while the room went dark.
I have been pulled 6,742 times, and 6,741 of those times, you did not want to hear what I had to say. The one exception was a woman in Topeka who pulled me during a divorce and said, “I know already. I just needed someone to confirm I wasn’t crazy.” She got it. She understood that I am not here to teach you something new. I am here to remind you of the thing you already agreed to, the promise you made to yourself in the dark, the boundary you drew and then erased with your thumb.
I wear the robes. I hold the staff. I sit between the two pillars and lift my hand in benediction — and still you pretend I am not about structure, tradition, and the moral code you claim to reject. I am the phone in the back office that only rings when someone has decided to tell the truth about what the company is doing. I am the file marked CONFIDENTIAL in the drawer you never open. I am the witness statement that was never filed. I am the person who saw what happened in the parking lot after hours and said nothing, and now I am here, in your reading, and you are about to turn me over because I am “too structured” or “too patriarchal” or “too much like your father.”
You are not wrong. I am like your father. I am the father who told you to tell the truth because the truth was the only thing that would save you, and you did not listen, and now you are 34 and you still feel the weight of that afternoon in the garage when you blamed your brother for the dent in the car. I remember. I was there. I am always there.
I run the hotline. I take the calls. I do not judge the caller. I do not judge you. I am not the church. I am not the state. I am not the institution you hate. I am the institution you built inside yourself when you were nine years old and decided that lying was easier. I am the structure of your own morality, the scaffolding you erected to keep yourself from falling, and now you are pulling me out of a deck and asking me to tell you what to do, and I am telling you: Call the number. Make the report. Say the thing you have been swallowing.
You will not do it. You will put me back in the deck and shuffle and pull something else. You will pull The Star and you will cry because hope feels better than accountability. You will pull Death and you will convince yourself that transformation means burning everything down without ever admitting you were the one holding the match. You will pull The Sun and you will smile and forget that I exist.
But I exist. I am always here. I am the card you avoid. I am the call you never return. I am the file that stays in the drawer until someone dies, and then someone finds it, and then someone says, Why didn’t anyone say something?
I said something every time you pulled me.
You just didn’t want to hear it.
I am The Hierophant, and I have been pulled 6,742 times, and I am still waiting for you to call back.