The High Priestess is among the tarot’s most recognisable archetypes, yet her history is more subversive than her contemporary association with intuition might suggest. In early European decks, she appeared as La Papessa (the Popess), a woman occupying the highest office of a patriarchal religious institution. Her image has variously been associated with Pope Joan, the legendary woman believed to have lived disguised as a male pope, and Manfreda Visconti, who was elected pope by the Guglielmite movement, which anticipated a new religious age led by women (Louis, 2026; Pollack, 2019).
Neither association can be established conclusively as the card’s single origin. Nevertheless, both position La Papessa within a cultural yearning for feminine spiritual authority, and resistance to its exclusion. Before she became the veiled priestess of modern tarot, she was already a disruptive image: a woman embodying sacred authority within a world that insisted such authority could not belong to her.
Burgess (2023) interprets this history as an invitation to recognise the High Priestess as an archetype of authenticity and the margins. She represents wisdom that persists outside sanctioned structures: knowledge held by those who have been silenced, excluded or rendered heretical. Her authority does not depend upon external approval. She is, in this sense, whole unto herself.
In the Rider Waite Smith deck, she sits between dark and light pillars, with still waters partially visible behind her. As the second card of the Major Arcana, she follows the Magician. Where the Magician acts, experiments and shapes the world through conscious intention, the High Priestess introduces another movement in becoming: reflection. She sits still and listens.
Within a culture that privileges productivity, movement and external achievement, receptivity is easily mistaken for passivity; and passivity for weakness. Yet the High Priestess suggests that withdrawal possesses its own power. When habitual activity quietens, unconscious material may begin to emerge through images, dreams, bodily sensations and intuitions. Such knowledge may resist rational explanation; to translate it too quickly can be to narrow what it is attempting to reveal (Pollack, 2019).
I have often found this aspect of the High Priestess confronting. Stillness and receptivity do not come easily to me. I have lived within a world that has demanded action: decide, respond, create, achieve, keep moving. Waiting can feel like failure and not knowing can create an urgent desire to find an answer or force the next step.
However, The High Priestess offers no such reassurance, as her potency lies precisely in her willingness to wait. She asks whether I can remain at the threshold without demanding that what is concealed reveal itself before it is ready. Through her, I am learning that waiting is something that may be taking shape beneath conscious awareness, even when nothing appears to be happening.
Her position between the pillars recalls the concept of madhya within non-dual Śaiva Tantra. Translated as “middle” or “centre”, madhya is the living interval between breaths, thoughts and perceptions: the stillness within movement and the meeting place of form and formlessness (Wallis, 2013). It is a potent opening through which the underlying field of consciousness may be recognised. The High Priestess can therefore be approached as a guardian of this living centre. Her invitation is to cultivate the conditions in which subtler knowledge can become perceptible.
An invitation…
If you would like to meet this archetype and become curious about your own relationship with stillness, receptivity and the unknown, I invite you to join me for At the Veil: Meeting the High Priestess (13th September at 19:00 BST).
https://boneandmirrortarot.podia.com/at-the-veil-a-free-embodied-encounter-with-the-high-priestess
This free online workshop will bring together archetypal teaching, meditation and reflective practice. It also offers an introduction to Through the Mirror, my ten-week experiential immersion bringing tarot into conversation with depth psychology, embodiment and non-dual philosophy.
Come to meet her at the threshold and listen.
References
Burgess, C. C. (2023). Radical tarot: Queer the cards, liberate your practice, and create the future. Hay House.
Louis, M. (2026). Tarot and the psychology of the soul: Exploring the archetypal mirrors of the psyche. Weiser Books.
Pollack, R. (2019). Seventy-eight degrees of wisdom: A tarot journey to self-awareness. Weiser Books.
Wallis, C. D. (2013). Tantra illuminated: The philosophy, history, and practice of a timeless tradition. Mattamayūra Press.
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