5. GATEKEEPER (The Hierophant) — Lyrics From Upcoming FVNERAL Album

We’re inside the second act of the FVNERAL ritual album—“Name the Ghost.”
The ghost is not your mother, not your ex — the ghost is what you had to become to survive

🕯 MISSION STATEMENT

“Gatekeeper” is the funeral of borrowed belief. Imitation dies; integration begins.
This song buries the part of me that memorized the map but never walked the road.

The ghost is the teacher who quotes wisdom to stay safe—who mistakes knowing for living, certainty for worth.
She guards the gate so nothing changes, because change might prove she isn’t in control.

The ritual turns on her: when the keys start rusting and the lessons sound rehearsed, she must decide—keep the door holy and stay outside, or open it and be human.

Aim: turn belief back into motion. Not to destroy the teaching—to live it.
Resurrection here is embodiment.
“I stop guarding truth and let it walk through me.”

FVNERAL is my magickal tarot study—27 tracks, 22 ghosts—each born from a Major Arcana reversed.

🗝 PERSONALITY PROFILE — The Gatekeeper (Hierophant / Vav)

Archetype: The wise bridge that turned to stone.
Shadow motivation: safety-through-certainty; stability confused with holiness.
Core fear: If I stop teaching, I disappear. If I don’t know, I’m not worth love.
Core desire: To matter. To preserve meaning. (She keeps the flame alive, then smothers it under rules.)

Ghost pattern: Perfection disguised as devotion. Feelings filtered into philosophy; anger explained instead of expressed.
Body language: Center cinched (liver / solar plexus heat), teacher’s posture even when alone; slow voice, self-correction mid-sentence; honey over iron.

Daily life (human lens):
Morning checklists; calm accomplished by argument, not arrival; anger becomes “education”; praised for being steady yet hollow; craves praise from those she secretly judges; dissociates through certainty; “helps” to avoid being seen.

How her ghost speaks:
“If you don’t know, don’t move.”
“They’ll think you’re a fraud.”
“Change nothing—protect the lineage.”

How Crow counters:
“Faith breathes, not memorizes.”
“The gate is the body’s door.”
“If truth can’t evolve, it isn’t truth.”
“Bless the map, then walk past it.”

Magick function (Vav): the nail that binds idea to action.
Balanced = integration; imbalanced = fixation.
When the nail rusts, everything stays stuck together long past its purpose.

🖤 ABOUT THE SONG — GATEKEEPER (The Hierophant)

This one is the priest of patterns—the borrowed voice that teaches what it still fears to do.
The Gatekeeper learned safety by quoting rules, not by breathing through doors.
It blesses the lock, polishes the knob, bites the tongue until it tastes like pennies, then calls that reverence.

I wrote this noticing how often I hid inside “right.”
If I stayed helpful, I didn’t have to feel.
If I stayed certain, I didn’t have to risk.
I gave tidy answers like antacids—chalk on the tongue, ache in the gut.
The ritual showed me: authority without intimacy is just armor with scripture stamped on it.

The Hierophant reversed is tradition that forgot the pulse. Doctrine as doorstop. Faith as frame that keeps you out.
The Gatekeeper is that reflex—guarding the threshold so well I never get to walk through.

Healing here wasn’t learning a new rule. It was letting the hinge squeal and going anyway.
Let the kids color on the margins. Let the choir miss a note. Let grace be ungraded.
Crow says: “You can’t call it faith if it never risks you.”

Why it matters: Every gate you guard becomes a grave you tend.
You’re alive. Go through.

🔮 MYTH MAP INSIDE THE SONG — GATEKEEPER (Hierophant / Vav)

Position in FVNERAL: Fifth ghost. The pivot of Pillar One. After Manipulator (voice as deception), Escapist (silence as escape), Smotherer (care as captivity), and Commander (control as compassion), Gatekeeper appears as knowledge as safety.

If Commander said, “I’ll do it all myself,” Gatekeeper says, “I’ll teach them how it should be done.” It’s still control—just dressed as wisdom.

Crow language (plain): The Ghost of Inherited Order.
She doesn’t build the cage—she polishes it.
She preserves the pattern even when the pattern preserves the pain.
She thinks sameness is sacred.
Crow’s verdict: “She guards the gate so well, even truth can’t get through.”

Psychology (human):
The intellectual perfectionist; the spiritual know-it-all who translates emotion into “insight” to avoid feeling it.
She learned that being right was safer than being real.
Authority insulated her from uncertainty.
Now she clings to systems—healing frameworks, moral codes, lineages—anything that explains pain without asking her to touch it.

Somatic (body map):
The “filter” center—liver / solar plexus—runs hot.
Resentment simmers. Nausea when plans change.
Jaw bite, tongue thin, shoulders acting like bookends.
Fatigue becomes philosophy.
The body keeps saying: “You can’t digest belief that isn’t yours.”

Magickal (Vav / the nail):
This is the binding of idea to action.
Healthy Vav = living transmission, wisdom-as-breath.
Rusted Vav = fixation—nailing everything down until nothing can move.
The evolution is loosening the nail: unfasten what was never meant to be permanent; treat tradition like soil, not statute.

Function in the Rite:
We’re still in Gate Two: Name the Ghost.
The work here is to point at the “holy lock” and admit it kept you small.
Name it. Witness it. Bury the badge.
Seal: stop quoting the truth; live it.

Grand structure context — Pillar One (Walls that kept me alive):

• Manipulator — Magician reversed: tongue as mask.

• Escapist — High Priestess reversed: silence as escape.

• Smotherer — Empress reversed: nurture as containment.

• Commander — Emperor reversed: order as armor.

• Gatekeeper — Hierophant reversed: doctrine as doorstop.

After Gatekeeper: the first wall-system is fully named.
The hallway opens. The next movement turns from how walls were built to how bonds split and rejoin—6. SPLIT (The Lovers) — choice, union, integrity.

🗣 CROW AFFIRMATIONS

“I trade knowing for going.”

“God’s not command — God’s cue.”

🖤 CROW TRUTH

Keys rust when clutched.
Faith isn’t the frame; it’s the footstep.
Authority without intimacy is fear in a robe.

🗺 TL;DR — GATEKEEPER

Borrowed voice. Bitten tongue. Door worship.
The ghost calls rules “love” and routine “safety.”
Crow taps the glass: Open or guard?
Faith lives in the step, not the script.

When this card appears in a reading:
The Hierophant reversed asks where you’ve traded aliveness for approval.
It signals belief that became habit—tradition clung to past its truth.
You may be quoting wisdom instead of embodying it, seeking permission instead of passage.
The invitation: bless the lineage, then walk your own way.
Stop teaching what you’re too afraid to try.
The gate isn’t there to be guarded—it’s there to be walked through.

🎵 LYRICS — 5. GATEKEEPER (The Hierophant)

(where I stop guarding the gate and start walking through)

[INTRO]
Funeral continues.
This is the eulogy of the borrowed voice.
I am Gatekeeper.
teach what I still fear to do.
I am the Hierophant — memorized God and forgot myself.
ghost guards what never goes.
Crow asks: [long pause] “Will you open or guard the gate?”

[VERSE 1]
Raised on rules I never wrote.
Burn what’s borrowed — keep what spoke.
“Knowledge unused molds in the throat.”
Dawn salutes me like an old mistake.
swallow the light before I see it.
They say I’m strong; I say I stiffen.
I just hold it in [long pause].
“Ghost says, ‘meaning repeats to survive,’
safety loops tight to keep me alive.”
I want to be held — without purpose.
warmth without witness, just to feel surface.
a moment unarmed from holding the world.
Crow taps the glass — “truth or twirl?”
Keys rust if you never turn them.
Hands unlearn what they can’t affirm.
I’m not wise; I’m wired — I am Gatekeeper.

[PRE-CHORUS]
Ghost said, what’s the use? pull that nail loose.
Grip on grace, grin through grief,
Guilt’s old gospel — cut that talk.
Hierophant hungers for order and praise,
Gatekeeper caged in history’s maze.
Crow says, “Let them misbehave — you can’t save what doesn’t want change.”

[CHORUS]
Gatekeeper, Gatekeeper — tongue bit thin,
Keep my calm till the edges cave in.
Nail that won’t pierce just scratches doubt,
Faith was the frame that kept me out.
Gatekeeper, Gatekeeper — feel safe, stay needed,
Fix what breaks just to feel connected.
Said another thing I didn’t mean,
Love sounds different in routine.

[VERSE 2]
I don’t hold answers — just more questions.
Ghost says it’s safer to be right than real,
authority’s better than uncertainty.
chew feelings till they lose their flavor,
clean, explain, reorganize — panic looks productive.
keep my breakdowns tidy, give advice like antacids.
can’t digest silence.
trade fun for obligation,
still praying someone saw the smoke.
live the law by breaking it open.
Freedom feels nothing like what they said.
Crow says You can’t call it faith if it never risks you.
brave is the hand that tries something new.
If I’m helping you, I don’t have to look at myself.
If I’m useful, I don’t have to feel.

[PRE-CHORUS 2]
Ghost said, what’s the use? pull that nail loose.
Grip on grace, grin through grief,
Guilt’s old gospel — I cut that talk.
Hierophant hungers for order and praise,
Gatekeeper caged in history’s maze.
Crow says, “Let them misbehave — you can’t save what won’t change.”

[CHORUS]
Gatekeeper, Gatekeeper — tongue bit thin,
Keep my calm till the edges cave in.
Nail that won’t pierce just scratches doubt,
Faith was the frame that kept me out.
Gatekeeper, Gatekeeper — feel safe, stay needed,
Fix what breaks just to feel connected.
Said another thing I didn’t mean,
Love sounds different in routine.

[BRIDGE]
Every version of me was just trying to live,
Each one burned, each one forgives.
Crow said, “Child, your misstep’s the motion.
Burn inside for what you believe —
Body keeps faith, won’t let it leave.
Salt the gland, watch belief leak slow,
Kept my world small so the change won’t show.
Now I trade knowing for letting go.”

[CHORUS (reprise)]
Gatekeeper, Gatekeeper — tongue bit thin, … (repeat)

[OUTRO]
Crow picks nails from forgotten graves,
turns them into wings for the ones who stayed.
says: stop quoting truth and live on.
You’ve stood still too long.
walk with me. [long pause]
Crow says: “God’s not command, God’s cue.”
[pause] next voice is you.
gate is sealed.
Next ghost, split reveals.

🪶 CROW BLESSING

May the knob warm under honest palms.
May your mouth unlearn the bite and keep the breath.
May the aisle clear as you rise—no ushers, no tests—just you, walking the truth you used to quote.

🕳 The FVNERAL continues.

Next Ghost: 6. SPLIT (The Lovers) — Two voices meet. One body chooses.