The High Priestess is one of the cards I find genuinely difficult to read. Not difficult because she's dark, but because she doesn't behave the way I expect.
She turns up in clusters for me. I won't see her for months, and then there she is many times in a row. When she finally arrives, I'm never quite sure what to do with her.
I'm beginning to suspect that she does this on purpose.
What She's Telling You (and What She's Not)
The themes of The High Priestess are obvious enough at first glance, intuition, gestation and all things confusing. She sits between two pillars and she is not moving, because she's perfectly comfortable in the in between.
That's where I get stuck. I am, by nature, a person who wants to know what to do next. Where many cards in the Major Arcana will at least gesture toward some kind of action, The High Priestess won't. She belongs more to the realm of feeling than thinking, and she has no interest in being converted into a plan.
She has something in common with The Hanged Man in this way. Both cards carry a quality of suspension, a deliberate pause before the next move. The difference is that The Hanged Man's stillness feels chosen, even sacrificial. The High Priestess's stillness just feels like she knows something she's not sharing yet.
What She Might Actually Be Asking
If The High Priestess is hard to read, the difficulty might not be in the card. It might be in the question you brought to the reading.
She doesn't respond well to questions like "what should I do?" She's a better fit for "what am I sensing that I haven't put into words yet?" With this question, she stops being a non answer and becomes an invitation to pay attention to something more abstract than logic.
The High Priestess is neither a warning nor a reassurance. She is just asking you to notice what's already there, before you decide what to do about it.
That's what makes her difficult, and probably why she keeps mysteriously showing up in my readings!
Explore The High Priestess in my hand illustrated tarot deck, The Falling Card Tarot.
Jenni McLaughlin is an Australian artist creating strange tarot art. Her illustrated tarot deck, The Falling Card Tarot, and art prints are available in the shop.
