Card 2:
The
High Priestess
© 2006 Honora Finkelstein
Dressed in virginal blue and white, the High Priestess of the Tarot represents the purest form of the feminine polarity. In Jungian terms, she is the anima of every male’s fantasy, which is encountered only in dreams or in meditation. For both genders, she represents Intuition, an understanding of the true nature of reality that often surprises us when we’re least expecting it, such as when our rational mind is asleep and we’re able to access the subconscious symbols of dreamtime.
Looking for all the world like Mozart’s Queen of the Night in The Magic Flute or perhaps a painting of the Virgin Mary, but with a more ancient pagan goddess headdress, the High Priestess wears the horned crown that represents the phases of the moon, suggesting both that night and dreams can bring us unexpected truth and also that all things are mutable and ever changing under the moon.
Many cultures view the moon as feminine, because it reflects passively rather than shining actively. But don’t be fooled into thinking it’s less important because of this reflective nature. The moon controls the tides on earth, and the dress of the High Priestess flows down and around behind her, becoming one with the waters on the face of the deep. Again relying on Jungian symbolism, water often symbolizes the subconscious, which can only be tapped by trusting our right brains and our intuition, both of which are usually considered part of our "feminine" gifts, regardless of our gender.
The High Priestess sits in the Temple of Solomon, between two pillars marked with a B and a J. One pillar is black and one is white. Like the two halves of a Yin-Yang circle, the two pillars represent the two polarities we must face as we live our lives on earth—masculine-feminine, right-left, up-down, dark-light, pleasure-pain, etc. Solomon was supposed to have been the wisest of all earthly rulers. Coming to terms with the two polarities and recognizing in every moment the need to learn to balance between the two is a mark of true wisdom.
Behind the High Priestess is a tapestry of pomegranates and palm leaves. Together, the pomegranate and the palm may represent two other aspects of the polarities of taking on form and living a life on the physical plane. The positioning of the pomegranates we can see above and around the High Priestess suggests that if we could view the whole tapestry, we would recognize it as a Kabbalistic Tree of Life. As the Tree of Life represents all of life, so what we can access through our intuition is all knowledge—past, present, and to come.
However, in mythology it was six seeds of a pomegranate that Persephone ate when she was in the underworld that required her to spend six months of the year underground. Hence, eating the pomegranate seeds for Persephone was like Adam and Eve eating the apple in the Garden of Eden—eating is the one thing humans do that requires engagement of all five senses. We smell the food, we see its color, we touch it with our fingers and our lips and our tongue, we hear it as we bite into it, and then of course, we taste it. Hence, the pomegranate, like the apple, may represent the lure of the senses in conscious physical life.
The palm was the shade tree of the Middle East, where Tarot symbolism was born, and its gifts were many and varied, offering everything from food and medicine to building supplies. In its role as a healing emollient there is always a balance to be struck between the pleasures and pains of life. As a bringer of the balance, perhaps the palm represents the rare and varied gifts of the subconscious world of intuition.
The High Priestess wears an equal armed cross on her bosom, suggesting control over the four directions, the four cardinal points, the four corners of the earth, the four elements. In her lap is a rolled scroll, upon which we can just read the letters "TARO," further suggesting she has as part of her sacred trust access to all the wisdom of the Book of Books. Again, the symbol suggests past, present, future. And as has been pointed out by many scholars, Taro (or Tarot) is an anagram for Rota, meaning "wheel" and for Tora (or Torah), which represents the five most sacred books of the Jewish people. All Orthodox Jewish men must read passages from the Torah daily so that they have read all five books once throughout the year, starting over at the beginning of each new year. Stan Tenan, who has done some amazing research with the hidden messages in the Torah, has suggested the true purpose of this daily ritual is to bring about an "ego death" through the recitation of passages in a meditative state. Hence, it is a "wheel" of life that teaches a yoking to one’s Divine nature.
How can we ever really know the truth of life? By trusting the High Priestess and getting in touch with our own intuition.
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