Tarot reading › Major Arcana › The High Priestess

Tarot card meaning

The High Priestess

Key terms:

balance, independence, freedom, autonomy
(indifference, alienation)

Card meaning:

The High Priestess is self-confident and calm, because she achieved the balance between her desires and ways of realizing them. This balance is very rare and even mysterious to many people. The High Priestess holds a book in her hands, from which she draws the knowledge. Wisdom is one of the few permanent values in life. It is a source of spiritual energy, which gives the strength and independence to people.

If the High Priestess feels dissatisfied, she always has two choices. She can either increase her efforts to achieve whatever she desires, or she can reconsider her goals and literally tighten her belt. Both ways lead to the state of internal balance in case they were successfully accomplished. For example: if you are looking for an expensive painting, you can try to get enough money to purchase it. Or you can accept the fact, that you will be satisfied with the reproduction and save a lot of money. Alternatively, you can cope only with the reminiscence of the painting or just take a walk from time to time among similar paintings in the gallery.

To lower your own expectations can be often achieved only through exhausting mental work. If you will not find your favorite brand of cheese in the shop, you will easily take another or try next shop. However, it also happens that you cannot study exactly the school you dreamed of. Or your partner will stop loving you. These are hard times and often you do not have any other option than to accept such situation.

Ordinary oblivion often comes instead of solving the situation – it is usually easier. Like trying to bury unpleasant experience under the fresh snow of new events, but obviously sooner or later the snow melts and you are confronted with the old sorrows again. However, if you succeed in the effort to gain inner reconciliation with a difficult situation, you will find inside yourself a new source of life, which will make you much stronger and more balanced.

The life of the High Priestess is free and independent. The fewer ties to the things she creates, the less must she stick to them – and the less disappointment can each loss cause to her. If you will not insist on keeping an expensive car or a big house or even your job, you will not have to worry about losing them either.

Naturally it is different with human relationships. If someone would completely give up deep emotions and relationships to his beloved ones, he would lose an important meaning of life and become indifferent and his life empty. However, it is important to remember that human relationships are passing just like the physical things are. And clinging to relationships brings only pain and lack of freedom at the end. Human life as well as every relationship is limited.

Therefore not only things but also human lives are ephemeral. The High Priestess rejoices each day, which allows her to enjoy the presence of kindred spirits. She however never forgets, that this state can always cease. She does not waste her time. And if an involuntary farewell comes, she does not grieve. She knows that everything in the world has the beginning and the end. Only then can the High Priestess be stable and satisfied.