The High Priestess

Quick answer

The core meaning of The High Priestess is Inner wisdom and intuition. Upright, it usually points to Intuition, the subconscious, mystery, inner wisdom. Symbolizes silent observatio; reversed, it may suggest Secrets revealed, suppressed intuition, superficiality, emotional instability. M.

Card imagery

A solemn woman sits between two pillars, one black and one white (marked B and J), before a veil embroidered with pomegranates and palms. She holds a scroll (TORA), and a crescent moon rests at her feet.

Upright meaning

Intuition, the subconscious, mystery, inner wisdom. Symbolizes silent observation and listening to the inner voice, finding answers through intuition rather than logic.

Reversed meaning

Secrets revealed, suppressed intuition, superficiality, emotional instability. May indicate ignoring the inner voice, or becoming withdrawn and distant.

Love, Career, Money, and Growth

Love

In love, The High Priestess points to Inner wisdom and intuition. Read it back against how the relationship actually behaves and what you are both choosing.

Career

In career matters, The High Priestess points to Inner wisdom and intuition. Start by working out which resources you control and what your next move is.

Money

In money matters, The High Priestess points to Inner wisdom and intuition. Do not treat a symbolic reading as an investment conclusion — go by facts, budget and your own risk tolerance.

Personal growth

For personal growth, The High Priestess points to Inner wisdom and intuition. Write down the question it raises, then turn that into an action you can actually check.

Yes or No

Upright

Maybe

Reversed

No

This is our own quick read, based on which way the card’s meaning leans. Traditions disagree about individual cards, and a “Maybe” needs to be weighed against the position in the spread and your actual situation rather than taken as a one-word answer.

Waite’s Original Text (1911)

Inner Symbolism (original)

She has the lunar crescent at her feet, a horned diadem on her head, with a globe in the middle place, and a large solar cross on her breast. The scroll in her hands is inscribed with the word Tora, signifying the Greater Law, the Secret Law and the second sense of the Word. It is partly covered by her mantle, to show that some things are implied and some spoken. She is seated between the white and black pillars—J. and B.—of the mystic Temple and the veil of the Temple is behind her: it is embroidered with palms and pomegranates. The vestments are flowing and gauzy, and the mantle suggests light—a shimmering radiance. She has been called Occult Science on the threshhold of the Sanctuary of Isis, but she is really the Secret Church, the House which is of God (Nature) and man. She represents also the Second Marriage of the Prince who is no longer of this world; she is the spiritual Bride and Mother, the daughter of the stars and the Higher Garden of Eden. She is, in fine, the Queen of the borrowed light, but this is the light of all. She is the Moon nourished by the milk of the Supernal Mother.

In a manner, she is also the Supernal Mother herself—that is to say, she is the bright reflection. It is in this sense of reflection that her truest and highest name in symbolism is Shekinah—the co-habiting glory. According to Kabalism, there is a Shekinah both above and below. In the superior world it is called Binah, the Supernal Understanding which reflects to the emanations that are beneath. In the lower world it is Malkuth—that world being, for this purpose, understood as a blessed Kingdom—that with which it is made blessed being the Indwelling Glory. Mystically speaking, the Shekinah is the Spiritual Bride of the just man, and when he reads the Law she gives the Divine meaning. There are some respects in which this card is the highest and holiest of the Greater Arcana.

Original Upright Meaning

Secrets, mystery, the future as yet unrevealed; the woman who interests the Querent, if male; the Querent herself, if female; silence, tenacity; mystery, wisdom, science.

Original Reversed Meaning

Passion, moral or physical ardor, conceit, surface knowledge.

Quoted from A. E. Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1911), illustrated by Pamela Colman Smith. The text is in the public domain.

Myth and symbol origins

Early Italian decks called her the Popess. Waite moved her between the two pillars of Solomon's Temple.

Documented imagery

Attested by surviving objects or texts

She was originally the Popess

In early Italian decks this card is La Papessa, the Popess. The figure on the Visconti-Sforza deck wears a nun's habit and a papal triple crown. One scholarly conjecture identifies her as Manfreda Visconti, a relative of the Visconti family who was elected "papess" by the Guglielmite sect and burned as a heretic around 1300. Another links her to the legendary Pope Joan. Both remain conjecture — but that the card began as an ecclesiastical figure is attested by the surviving decks.

Source Visconti-Sforza deck (mid-15th century); the Manfreda identification is scholarly conjecture

The pillars B and J come from 1 Kings

The black and white pillars behind her, lettered B and J, are Boaz and Jachin, the two bronze pillars of the porch of Solomon's Temple. The veil hung between them is embroidered with palms and pomegranates — both standard decorative motifs of that same Temple, palms carved on the walls and pomegranates on the capitals, all described in 1 Kings. The entire stage set of this card, in other words, is Hebrew scripture, not a Greek sanctuary.

Source 1 Kings 7:21 (the pillars), 6:29 (carved palms), 7:18 (pomegranates on the capitals); Waite 1911 names the pillars J. and B.

Esoteric correspondence

A sourced traditional claim, but constructed inside an occult system

Isis: Waite mentions her, and then disagrees

It is often said that Waite drew the High Priestess as Isis. The text says close to the opposite. Waite writes that she "has been called Occult Science on the threshold of the Sanctuary of Isis," and immediately corrects it: "but she is really the Secret Church." He did give her the horned diadem and lunar globe, which is the Isis iconography, and he did inscribe the scroll on her lap Tora, the Law. But on the equation "she is Isis," the author himself hedged. Worth remembering: reading the primary source beats inheriting someone's summary of it.

Source Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot, 1911, High Priestess (compare the original in the source panel on this page)

Three faces of the moon

The Golden Dawn assigns the High Priestess to the Moon (Hebrew letter Gimel). Classical myth has more than one lunar goddess: Selene is the moon itself, Artemis governs the hunt and maidenhood, and Hecate governs crossroads, thresholds and the passage to the underworld. A priestess seated on a threshold with a veil behind her fits Hecate's remit best. But this is a correspondence made inside an occult system — in classical antiquity these were three goddesses, not three phases of one.

Source Golden Dawn Book T planetary attributions; classical sources for the goddesses themselves

Modern reading

Popular only since the twentieth century; unrelated to where the card came from

Pomegranate equals Persephone? Check the nearer source first

The pomegranates on the veil are widely read as Persephone, who ate the seeds in the underworld and so must return there every year. The myth is real enough (Homeric Hymn to Demeter), but attaching it to this card is a modern reading. Waite wrote only that the veil is "embroidered with palms and pomegranates," with no underworld gloss attached — and palms plus pomegranates is precisely the Temple decorative pairing. The nearer source is already at hand; no need to detour through Greece. The maiden-mother-crone triple goddess frame is likewise modern, from Robert Graves' The White Goddess (1948).

Source Modern popular reading; the Persephone myth is in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter; the triple goddess frame is Robert Graves, The White Goddess, 1948

Written by BESTAROT, not quoted from historical sources. Each claim is tagged by how well it is evidenced; modern interpretive layers are useful for reading, but they are not the card’s historical origin.

Study the theme: Myth and Symbol Origins (Academy chapter 6)