The Root of Confusion

—or—

Don’t be Hierophant’s Fool!

 

By: Juno Lucina

One of the greatest reasons for mis-education, lack of knowledge, and poor communication is a fundamentally flawed understanding of the true meanings of words.  It begins the moment that a child first sees something, and then is told the word to “describe” what he or she is seeing, creating a symbol to use as a substitution for the purpose of expressing the perceived experience. 

Words are meant to be convenient symbols to aid us in communicating what we see, but most of us have gathered our vocabulary through immersion and a sort of societal osmosis…we have developed a messy, half-assed, loose interpretation of the words we use, and so misuse and misunderstanding abound.

The fifth Major Arcana Card, The Hierophant, best expresses the beginnings of this confusion.  The twenty-two cards of the Major Arcana tell the archetypal story of the Hero’s Journey—the story of the Way that an individual incarnated spirit in this world may follow in order to discover the Kingdom Within and return to spiritual wholeness.  The Hierophant relays the phase of the Fool’s (and every person’s) life wherein s/he begins to branch out from the home of origin, enrolling in primary school as well as joining other social groups such as church, clubs, or sports.   Historically, the Hierophant was a spiritual guide who interpreted the mysteries of life for the initiate, and thus the Fool turns to teachers, ministers, coaches, and other professionals to prescribe how he must live in order to function in society.  He is introduced to those aspects of existence that act as the Great Levelers: culture, education, organized belief systems, money, work, patriotism, and, most importantly, conformity.  The Fool learns to use language and symbols to communicate, thus labeling and packaging phenomena rather than experiencing each as fresh and alive; the Fool begins to have and own the symbols of others.  He toils to establish stability.  The Hierophant, familiar with Korzybski’s famous words, “those who rule symbols, rule us,” carefully controls the Fool’s creative use of symbols with rules and restrictions.  However, the lessons of the Hierophant are a necessary stage for the Fool to learn how to balance the influences of the Empress with the Emperor and gain a broader perspective on his journey towards enlightenment. 

Many problems in speaking and reading are a result of not knowing the actual definitions of words.  To avoid confusion in communication, it is crucial to define any word or phrase you do not fully understand before proceeding.  Continuing a conversation or reading past a misunderstood word will result in mental “fogginess’ and difficulty in both comprehension and communication.

For example, if I told you that my mother is concerned about the salacity of the peripatetic course in which my normally lugubrious brother is matriculated, what would be your response?  If you are like most people today, you might wander past the first or second word in confusion, hoping to “catch on” through the context of the sentence, but by the end you would probably feel the beginnings of a headache, meanwhile losing all interest in comprehending my meaning!  But, if instead you knew that salacity means “obscenity,” peripatetic means “relating to the philosophy or teaching methods of Aristotle,” lugubrious means “mournful,” and matriculated means “admitted into a group, especially a college or university,”—THEN my communication would be successful!

English words do not simply “exist”—they have developed over time and each has an origin.  To understand words, of course, a good dictionary is a great place to start (try www.dictionary.com on the web—it’s free!); also, since the English language is an amalgamation of its Anglo-Saxon, Greek, and Latin heritage, a basic primer of the Greek and Latin roots (the middle part of a word), prefixes (the beginning of a word), and suffixes (the ending of a word) of our language can help as well.  Following is a partial (and I do mean partial—there are many more) list of some common roots, prefixes, and suffixes:

 

       Greek and Latin Root Words:                                  Greek and Latin Prefixes-/-Suffixes:

 

However, dictionaries and roots aside, we must still use our common sense and look at words to truly understand and use them effectively, in all their nuances.  To demonstrate the widespread nature of the confusion and rampant lack of looking with regards to words, let’s halt all presuppositions for the moment and look at, afresh, some of the words that we use every day…

 

behave:  BE-HAVE--to “behave” is to BE-HAVED (or owned) by something or someone else.

 

react:  to act again, or because of, something else; to be the effect of another’s cause.

 

responsibility:  one’s ABILITY to RESPOND; one’s willingness to be cause and willingness to
        confront.

 

lie:  words do not develop in a vacuum, and whenever two words sound the same but have divergent meanings (called homonyms), it is no accident.  The word lie in the English language means a false statement deliberately presented as being true, but it has the alternate meaning of remaining still, supine, and unmoving.  From this it logically follows that to the degree that we resist change and action (the second type of lie), we must live in denial and lie (the first type) to our selves and others in order to avoid confronting the actuality of What Is.

 

matter:  we use this word all the time, as in “What’s the matter?” or “This really matters!”  Then again, it also refers to the basic essence of the physical universe, as in something that has mass and exists as a solid, liquid, gas, or plasma.  It doesn’t take much of a mental leap to see that when something “matters” to us, it has great mass and heaviness in our lives.  Perhaps it’s the things that “matter” most to us that weigh us down and anchor us to this physical existence?  (Just a thought.)

 

  Now that you get the idea…have fun looking for yourself and getting to the root of your confusions!

THE KINGDOM WITHIN TAROT

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