Major Arcana: The High Priestess

Major Arcana: The High Priestess

This entry was posted in Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink.
  1. The Story Unfolds:

    The Fool encounters The High Priestess in a serene garden, surrounded by the abundance of Earth and heaven, privy to the mysteries of life and death.  Her smile, while enigmatic, promises a wisdom that transcends the trivialities of daily life, and her blessing is magical.

    The General Meaning:

    The High Priestess in a reading calls you to go within and connect with the spiritual wisdom we all possess naturally.  The High Priestess knows when to speak and when to remain wisely silent.  Now is the time for intuition, spirituality, quiet, and conscious connection with the feminine magic.  Now is the time of the soul.

    The Message:

    There is a fear of silence that has gripped our Western culture, a suspicion of anything still and quiet.  Everything we see and hear and experience is designed to push us harder–go here, buy that, do this, want him or her, think these thoughts, fight these fights.  "Idle hands are the Devil’s workshop" is, at best, an incomplete statement.

    In a world that values accomplishment above all else, the art of being quiet gets an unfair rap.  We are so terrified of being labeled as lazy or dull.  To be quiet is at best misunderstood as shyness while at worst it can be construed as coldness, snobbery, aloofness, or stupidity.

    So we push and we run and we talk and we experience and we livelivelivelivelive, all in the name of proving we are worthy.

    And we feel so very empty.

    The High Priestess is both entrancing and terrifying in her quiet power.  She guides us to those dark, deep places most people want to forget exist, and there she leaves us to experience the knowing that comes with silence.  The sounds of the earth against our flesh, the feel of the air and water as we breathe in and out, the pull of the moon against the blood in our veins–these are the symbols of the Goddess.  Unlike the cerebral magic of The Magician, The High Priestess calls to a deeper magic, the magic of the seasons, of birth and death and rebirth, of mothers and daughters.

    When Hades stole away with the Goddess Persephone, her mother Demeter went mad with grief.  Until her daughter was returned to her, Demeter wandered the Earth, searching, grieving.  Crops would not grow without Demeter’s grace, and the suffering of the human race eventually prompted Zeus to allow the girl to be returned.  But Persephone was tricked by Hades–she ate pomegranate seeds, thus tying her by the Fates to the Underworld.  For several months of the year, she was allowed to remain above with her mother, who brought abundance and fertility to the world.  But in those months when Persephone resumed her place as Queen of the Underworld, Demeter grieved and winter came, cold and barren, until her daughter was returned in the spring.

    Like Persephone, we are called to explore the dark places of our mortality.  Like Demeter, we are compelled to search for and rescue that part of ourselves that is perpetually innocent and vibrant.  Together, the path of the two Goddesses creates the rhythms that form our lives.  Through seasons of birth, growth, death and rebirth, we follow the path of the High Priestess, quietly, serenely, and with grace.

Leave a Reply