I recently proposed that Mind Card 4 (The Emperor) symbolizes your Higher Self and that Mind Card 5 (The Hierophant) symbolizes You. See Genesis in the first four Mind cards . These ideas were secondary to my main thesis, which is that the story of Genesis has a strong correspondence with the first four Mind Cards, so I did not include all the reasoning. Here’s the rest of it:
· The Emperor has a symbol on his chest, similar to Superman or Green Lantern. The symbol depicts a bird with wings spread, over a circle.
· I propose that the bird seen flying toward the Empress in the preceding card is the same bird that is depicted on the Emperor’s chest. The bird is flying from the Emperor Card’s location (when the cards are presented on the 7x3 grid).
· The bird is pointing downward. Since the Empress represents physicality or Mother Earth, this bird is signaling, “Please, let me into your physical reality.” This interpretation is a recapitulation of the Magician card, with his downward-pointing finger and a bird inside the cube….
· The bird is a tiny symbolic shortcut for the Hierophant card. Where you see a bird anywhere in the tarot, you could replace the bird with the Hierophant card, as if the Hierophant card were an upright standing game piece and the rest of the cards were the gameboard. And since the Hierophant Card is You, as a Player Character, wherever a bird appears in the tarot, it is intended to be You too. (E.g., You are the bird petitioning the Empress for entry into physicality in the Empress card.)
· The circle with wings is the tiny symbolic shortcut for the Emperor Card, or your Higher Self.
· This symbol of the Emperor/Your Higher Self appears in other cards. The bird may have entered Physicality through the Empress on the left, but the Higher Self also continues to act on the right. The winged orb above the Hierophant’s “booth” is the Higher Self. (A combination of the bird and circle from the Emperor’s chest symbol.) The placement of the Higher Self here indicates that it is “above” you (in time/space), protecting you, and guiding you.
· The Winged Orb also appears on Mind Card 7, The Chariot, but the symbol is lower now and below the human figure.
· Another Winged Orb appears in the very last card, The World/The Universe.
· There are two other places where the Higher Self appears in the tarot, but with more subtlety. In Body Card 14 (Temperance, or The Great Way of the Body), the sun behind the figure is depicted as a circle with seven rays. The figure’s wings overlap with the Sun. This is but another way to depict the circle/wings combination. And in Spirit Card 20 (Judgement), the angel in the sky is again superimposed over a circular sun with seven rays. Note that his second wing is not visible, suggesting strongly that the figure is the source of the light, not that the figure is floating/flying in front of the sun. So, your Higher Self greets you when you “arise” after death.
My next essay will discuss the significance of these symbolic placements and the last row of the grid. It’s important stuff and needs a stand-alone article.