Major Arcana · 2
The High Priestess
La Papesse (Tarot de Marseille) · The Popess · The Priestess of the Silver Star (Golden Dawn)
A veiled woman seated between a black and a white pillar, a scroll half hidden in her lap. In the Waite–Smith tradition she stands for intuition, hidden knowledge and the wisdom of waiting.
Upright intuition · inner knowledge · mystery · stillness · the unconscious · discretion
Reversed secrets · withdrawal · ignored intuition · surface thinking · hidden agendas · disconnection
- Astrology
- Moon
- Element
- Water
- Hebrew letter
- Gimel
- Number
- 2
- Golden Dawn title
- The Priestess of the Silver Star
- Yes or no
- Maybe
Upright
Where the Magician acts, the High Priestess waits and listens. Readers in the Waite–Smith tradition take her as the voice of intuition, dreams and knowledge that cannot be forced. She suggests that the answer to a question is not yet visible, or that it lies in what is felt rather than said.
Love and relationships: unspoken attraction, a bond with depth and reserve, or a need for patience before anything is declared. She can also describe a partner who keeps part of themselves private.
Work and money: a time for research, quiet observation and discretion rather than bold moves. Information is still emerging; confidential matters should stay confidential.
Advice: be still long enough to hear what you already know. Trust impressions and dreams as material for reflection, and do not rush to fill a silence that may be teaching you something.
Reversed
When the Priestess is inverted, the quiet inner voice tends to be drowned out. Readers describe ignoring intuition, chasing noise and opinion, or a split between what one knows and what one does. Another reading is concealment turned sour: secrets kept for advantage, gossip, or a feeling that something important is being withheld.
In love it can show emotional distance or a partner who will not open up. At work it may warn of hidden information or a decision made on surface facts.
Many readers do not use reversals, and among those who do some see this simply as the Priestess's lessons not yet learned.
The image
Smith's High Priestess sits on a stone seat between two pillars, a black one marked B on her right and a white one marked J on her left — Boaz and Jachin, the pillars of Solomon's Temple. Behind her hangs a veil embroidered with palms and pomegranates, through which a glimpse of water can be seen. She wears a blue robe and a horned crown cradling a full disc, with an equal-armed cross on her breast. In her lap is a scroll lettered TORA, partly covered by her mantle, and a crescent moon lies at her feet. Her robe seems to flow down into the stream that runs through later cards.
History
The Italian decks included a female pope, and the Tarot de Marseille calls her La Papesse. Her meaning in the fifteenth century is uncertain; some historians link her with Faith, others with the legend of Pope Joan, and one theory connects a Visconti card with Sister Manfreda, a woman elected "pope" by a heretical sect, though this remains speculative.
Court de Gébelin renamed her the High Priestess in 1781, removing the Catholic reference by turning her into an Egyptian priestess. The Golden Dawn gave her the letter Gimel and the Moon, and Waite's Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1910) describes her as the secret tradition and the higher meaning of the written law.
Symbolism
The two pillars stand for the opposites — light and dark, active and passive — that she holds in balance, and her seat between them is a threshold. The veil of pomegranates is commonly read as the screen between the visible world and the mysteries; the pomegranate itself recalls Persephone and fertility. The TORA scroll signifies a law whose full meaning is never wholly revealed, and the lunar crown and crescent bind her to the Moon, tides and cycles.
Number two is duality, receptivity and reflection. In the Golden Dawn scheme her path, Gimel ("camel"), crosses the long desert between Kether and Tiphareth on the Tree of Life, which is why she is often called the guardian of the deepest crossing.
In a reading
The High Priestess usually counsels patience or inward attention. Paired with the Moon she deepens the theme of the unconscious and dreams; with the Magician, she forms the classic pair of inner knowing and outer doing. In a position of obstacles she may point to secrecy or reluctance to speak. Many readers treat her as a sign that a question is premature and will answer itself in time.
Sources and further reading
- The Pictorial Key to the Tarot — A. E. Waite, 1910
- A Wicked Pack of Cards: The Origins of the Occult Tarot — Ronald Decker, Thierry Depaulis & Michael Dummett, 1996
- Secrets of the Waite-Smith Tarot — Marcus Katz & Tali Goodwin, 2015
- Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom — Rachel Pollack, 1980