This is one of the few tales in the book that does not provide a succinct moral in medieval typeface at the end. If I had to write one, what would it be? How about this:
"Our successes often arrive at their expense of our beliefs."
I'm reminded of Laurie Anderson's story about the Egyptians using mummy rags to power their steam engines:
"They burned their ancestors for fuel." It sounds so disrespectful, but time is such a erosive force that virtually anything from the past that adds momentum to the present must be considered a viable resource. The Hierophant is any figure who arbitrates this process, bridging the gap between history and the current moment, between the esoteric and the immediate.
He's not what you'd call a safe and transparent figure, because he will never offer any information that could possibly lead to his being deposed. In this way, he often serves just as much as an obstacle as he does as a conduit. Sure, those coins emerged at a crucial moment, but they'd also been sitting there uselessly all along while the man endured constant hardship. Eliminating the middle-man was obviously a wise decision in this case.
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