Deck: The Charles Dickens Tarot
Card: The Hierophant V Social Mores
Answer: Yes.
On the Hierophant card we see two vicars - one sincere and kind, the other a fraud and a cad. This is symbolic of the dual opinion of religion, religious people, and God Dickens managed to entertain simultaneously throughout his life. He was no great or devout Christian, yet he wrote a book of Christ's life to read to his children.
Also conveyed on this card is the Great Exhibition held in London in 1851. It was designed to champion the fantastical advances and general superiority of Britain's Victorian Era. This it did, but as many foreign visitors commented, it also revealed the stark contrast between those advances and British society's ugly underbelly: poverty, lack of sanitation, child labour, and prostitution. it is not hard to argue that civilization is itself a paradox - the cultivation of altruistic actions in humans who are, at core, animals. The luxuries and freedoms enjoyed by Victoria Brits were bought at the expense of the victims of the Industrial Revolution and Colonialism.
The eye at the centre of the rose window can also be seen paradoxically - the moral eye of society was fixed on how one looked in society and the behaviour of others, but with far less concern placed on personal morality, or: the I. When society looked at itself, it prefered to do so with rose-coloured glasses. Further, the pair of clergymen on this card represent 2 such men very important to Ellen Ternan, the High Priestess and Dickens' long-time mistress. Years after Dickens' death, Ellen married a clergyman and confessed her secret life with Dickens to a priest who was a devotee of the author's work. Although Dickens did much for society by using his influence to expose social injustice, he wasn't able to face up - publicly or otherwise - to his own ethical shortcomings. what is it they say about people who live in Crystal Palaces not throwing stones?
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