The High Priestess
Thoth: The Priestess (II)
Marseille: La Papesse (II)
“Some things are known before they can be said. Let them come.”
At a glance
Keywords
intuition · stillness · inner knowing · mystery · patience · discretion · receptivity
Yes or no
Lean no, for now
The answer is still forming; wait and listen before you act.
Keywords, reversed
ignored instinct · surface knowledge · restlessness · secrets kept from yourself · overexposure · noise
Yes or no
Lean no
You’re acting on noise, not on what you know underneath it.
Advice for
Wait, watch and write down what you notice. Trust a hunch enough to test it.
Advice against
Don’t force an answer that isn’t ready, or ignore what your gut keeps repeating.
Meaning
The High Priestess is the part of you that knows without being told. She points to intuition, to a quiet watchfulness, and to knowledge that arrives in its own time. Not everything is ready to be spoken or acted on, and the card asks you to be still long enough to hear what is already there.
It often comes when you want an answer now and the situation isn’t ready to give one. Listen to dreams, hunches and the small signals you usually brush aside. Keep your own counsel for a while. Some of what you’re sensing can only be confirmed by waiting, and acting too soon could cost you that knowing.
In the Thoth deck
The Priestess brings a pure, high influence into the matter, and with it change and fluctuation, like the waxing and waning moon. Crowley warns against getting carried off by enthusiasm: keep your balance while inspiration moves through you.
Reversed
Reversed, the inner voice gets drowned out. You may be filling every silence, chasing information, or asking everyone’s opinion instead of trusting your own. Sometimes the card turns outward after a long stillness, toward passion and involvement, and you lose track of yourself in it. Knowledge can stay on the surface: facts gathered, nothing understood. Find ten quiet minutes and ask yourself what you already know but haven’t admitted.
Shadow
Keywords
aloofness · withholding as power · mystery as armour · being unreachable
The High Priestess’s depth can turn into distance. Saying little becomes a way of never being known, and holding back knowledge becomes a quiet form of control. You keep the secret not because it’s sacred but because it keeps you safe, and other people stop trying to reach you.
In your life
Love
Unspoken feelings, attraction with depth, or a bond that grows quietly.
Reversed: things left unsaid too long, or hidden motives.
Work
Research, listening, reading the room before you speak.
Reversed: acting on rumour, or ignoring what you sense.
Money
Hold off; learn more before you commit.
Reversed: acting on a tip you haven’t checked.
Health and energy
Rest, sleep and quiet; listening to tiredness before it shouts.
Reversed: overstimulation and not enough stillness.
Inner life
Meditation, dreams, trusting what rises from within.
Reversed: busy distraction from your own inner voice.
Spiritual keywords
intuition · silence · mystery · the inner temple · receptivity
Timing
Not yet: the answer is gathering out of sight. The card has no season; it waits on readiness, not the calendar.
The image
A woman in blue robes sits between a black pillar marked B and a white one marked J, a veil of palms and pomegranates hung behind her. She wears a horned crown holding a globe, a solar cross on her breast, and a crescent moon lies at her feet. In her lap is a scroll marked TORA, which Waite says is “partly covered by her mantle, to shew that some things are implied and some spoken.”
Crowley describes her as Isis in her most spiritual form, or Artemis, clothed only in a veil of light: light as the veil that hides the spirit. On her knees lies the bow of Artemis, also a musical instrument, for she hunts by enchantment. Below her are the first forms of life, crystals, seeds and pods, and a camel crosses through the midst.
La Papesse (II). A woman in a triple crown and white wimple sits before a hanging curtain, a red mantle over her blue robe. One hand holds an open book across her lap, and she gazes out to one side rather than down at the page: knowledge held, not yet handed on.
Place in the story
The second card answers the first. After the will acts, the High Priestess receives: knowing comes before doing again, and the next card brings that knowing into the body and the world.
As the Priestess (II), Crowley makes her the first of three feminine trumps, the virgin before the mother and the star.
Correspondences
The Moon governs tides, cycles, memory and dreams, the slow pull of what happens beneath the surface. Gimel, the camel, sits on path 13 from Kether to Tiphareth, straight down the middle pillar of the Tree. A camel carries water across the desert; this path carries the highest light to the heart.
| Card | The High Priestess (II) |
|---|---|
| Element | Water |
| Astrology | Moon |
| Hebrew letter | Gimel |
| Path | 13, Kether to Tiphareth |
| Card | The Priestess (II) |
|---|---|
| Element | Water |
| Astrology | Moon |
| Hebrew letter | Gimel |
| Path | 13, Kether to Tiphareth |
Crowley reads the path as the one link between the highest source and the formed self, crossing the desert of the Abyss. He calls her wholly feminine and wholly virginal: possibility before anything is begun.
| Card | La Papesse (II) |
|---|
The Marseille method uses no astrology or Kabbalah.
Card of the day
Today, let something stay unanswered. Notice the hunch, the dream fragment, the thing someone didn’t say, and resist the urge to resolve it straight away. A quiet hour can tell you more than a busy one. If a decision can wait until tomorrow, let it.
Card of the year
Your year card. Add the month and day of your birthday to the current year, then add the digits of the total until it is 22 or less. 22 is the Fool. Or take the 22 Majors out of your deck, shuffle them and draw one.
Over this year, more may happen inside you than around you. It favours study, reflection, therapy, spiritual practice, or learning to trust your own perception. Some answers you want could take months to surface, and pushing for them early tends to muddy them. Keep a journal of dreams and hunches; looking back, you may find you knew things well before you could explain them. Discretion serves you well.
Journal prompts
- What do I already know about this that I haven’t admitted yet?
- When did a hunch of mine turn out right, and what did it feel like?
- Where am I filling a silence because the quiet makes me uneasy?
- Does my inner world feed my daily life, or am I using it to step out of it?
Common misreads
“She means someone is hiding something from you.” More often it’s something in you, not yet ready to be said.
“It means do nothing forever.” It means wait for the right moment. Listening is an action too.
Associations
- Myth and archetype
- Isis behind her veil; Artemis the virgin huntress; the Shekinah, the indwelling presence; the oracle at Delphi; the Maiden, whole in herself.
Sources
RWS image and quotation: A. E. Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1911), The High Priestess; RWS 1909 scan; public domain.
Thoth image and meaning: Aleister Crowley, The Book of Thoth (1944), Atu II, The Priestess, and the general characters of the trumps in use.
Marseille: Nicolas Conver, Tarot de Marseille (1760), BnF btv1b10520316w, La Papesse.
Letter, path and planet: the Golden Dawn’s Book T (Regardie edition).
Meaning in practice: Rachel Pollack, Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom, The High Priestess; Joan Bunning, learntarot.com, The High Priestess.
Practice and archetype: Mark McElroy, A Guide to Tarot Card Meanings (2014, uncopyrighted), The Papess/High Priestess; Arcanis Tarot, The High Priestess, arcanistarot.com.