V · Major Arcana
The Hierophant
Taliesin
Teaching as transmission — knowledge passed hand to hand and changed by every pair of hands.
Upright
There is an established way of doing this and you would be wise to learn it before departing from it. Seek the teacher, the lineage, the institution. Some doors only open from the inside.
Reversed
Not used in Raynebow readings - reversals are off in the product. Shown here for reference.
Dogma repeated without understanding, or conformity chosen out of fear. Sometimes the reverse: the necessary break from an orthodoxy that no longer holds truth.
Keywords
tradition · teaching · lineage · orthodoxy · spiritual counsel
The Welsh story
Taliesin is Gwion Bach reborn from Ceridwen's womb, set adrift in a leather bag and pulled from a weir. As chief bard he claimed to have been present at every event of history and to have held many forms — he was in the ark, in the firmament, a sword, a star. He is the human vessel through which inherited knowledge speaks, the argument that tradition is a living memory rather than a dead rule.
On the card
The tradition, standing in the yard.