The High Priestess

Symbols

• Pillars of Boaz and JachinBlack Boaz and white Jachin — severity and mercy; she sits between as mediator.+

  The letters come from Solomon's porch in 1 Kings 7:21: the right pillar Jachin, the left Boaz. Smith reads right and left from the viewer's side — black B left, white J right — and seats her in the doorway between them.

• Veil of Palms and PomegranatesPalms and pomegranates are embroidered on the veil — later readers traced the Tree of Life in the fruit; the veil parts only for the initiate.+

  The pomegranate is both the underworld fruit and the emblem of fecundity — to pass this veil one must admit both generation and death.

• The TORA ScrollThe scroll named TORA — written law, the other half tucked away in her mantle.+

  Waite glosses the word as 'the Greater Law, the Secret Law and the second sense of the Word', and gives the mantle a task: it partly covers the scroll 'to shew that some things are implied and some spoken'.

• Horned Crown and Crescent at her FeetThe horned diadem holds a globe between its horns — the moon entire; the single crescent at her feet marks the phase of this moment.+

  In the Golden Dawn system the card carries the Moon and the letter Gimel; Waite calls her 'the Queen of the borrowed light'. Smith sets her lunar signs at both ends of the figure: diadem at the top, crescent at the feet.

• Equal-armed Cross at her BreastAn equal-armed cross — the four elements at rest upon her.+

  Waite calls it 'a large solar cross' — the only thing on this lunar card he names as solar. It sits at her breast, midway between the diadem above and the crescent below, white against the blue of her robe.

• Water Behind the VeilWater glimpsed beyond the hanging veil — the space she keeps does not end at the cloth.+

  It is the only open distance in a space otherwise shut by pillars and hanging cloth, and it shows only past the veil's edge, never through it: the picture admits that something lies behind her without showing what.

• Flowing RobeBlue robes falling in long, gauzy folds — the softest surface in a card built of hard verticals.+

  Waite writes that 'the vestments are flowing and gauzy, and the mantle suggests light — a shimmering radiance'. Smith lets the folds run on past her feet toward the lower edge, the one line in the picture that does not hold still.

Story

The composition is a doorway seen straight on. Two pillars, one dark and one pale, stand as its jambs, and a hanging cloth closes the space between them, so the eye that tries to travel inward is stopped at once and sent back to the seated figure in the middle. She faces us with no gesture: her hands only hold, they neither point nor bless. The picture is symmetrical and almost entirely still. The light is even, there is no weather, and nothing marks the hour. What lies behind her is felt rather than shown.

Correspondences

Shadow

Related Cards

The Magician

The Empress

The Moon

Combinations with this card