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Le Pape, From the Knapp Hall Tarot.

Tarot Symbolism – The Fifth Numbered Card – Le Pape 
First published in The All-Seeing Eye, April 1931, pp.210 - 213
By Manly P. Hall ​

The fifth numbered trump is called by some authorities the High Priest; by others the Hierophant. This card does not appear in the modern Italian Tarot deck, where Juno and Jupiter take the place of the Popess and the Pope. The change has been made presumably because of religious sentiment. All writers on the subject of Tarot symbolism agree that the fifth card represents the Initiator, the Prince of the Royal Secret. With his right hand the Hierophant makes the sign of the Lost Word and with his left he holds the symbol of spiritual sovereignty–the triple cross. Le Pape reveals to us, then, the Pontifex Maximus, the supreme Initiate of the pagan Roman Empire, the ancient head of the College of the Priests. He is Hermes, the Thrice Magister, or Three Times Greatest, Lord of the three worlds–heaven, earth and hell–as revealed by his triple crown. The three horizontal arms of the cross of the Supreme Magus represent the equator and the two tropics, Capricorn and Cancer. In the terms of the Mysteries the central and somewhat longer horizontal bar signifies spirit, limited above by mind and below by matter. The whole form of the triple cross is furthermore the skeleton of the earth over whose spiritual destinies the Hierophant rules supreme, in contradistinction to the temporal authority of kings and princes whose symbol is the orb–the physical body of the earth. In the fifth card, therefore, we behold the Lord of the three degrees, the three worlds, the three dimensions before whom, in the form of two acolytes, bows the illusionary sphere which exists only by virtue of man's acceptance of the concept of duality...
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