The High Priestess tarot card meaning: upright, reversed and symbols

The High Priestess is card II of the Major Arcana, the quiet card after the busy Magician. She sits between two pillars with a half-hidden scroll in her lap and says nothing. Her lesson is that silence can be information. This page explains what the High Priestess means upright and reversed, the symbols Pamela Colman Smith drew, and how a fifteenth century Popess became a priestess of mysteries.

At a glance

• Upright keywords: intuition, mystery, patience, inner knowing
• Reversed keywords: repressed knowing, harmful secrets, noise
• Number: II (2) in the Major Arcana
• Element: Water Later tradition
• Astrology: the Moon Later tradition
• Yes or no: Maybe Modern

The element and astrology come from the Golden Dawn system of the 1880s and 1890s, not from the first tarot decks, and the yes or no lean is a modern reading habit. Use them if they help you remember the card, and skip them if they get in the way.

The card: what Pamela Colman Smith drew

Smith drew a still, cool card in blues and whites. Waite described the scroll in her hands as “partly covered by her mantle, to show that some things are implied and some spoken”. That one line is a good key to the whole card.

The two pillars

She sits between a black pillar marked B and a white pillar marked J, the two pillars of Solomon’s Temple in the Bible, Boaz and Jachin. They stand for opposites held in balance: dark and light, unknown and known. She sits in the space between.

The veil of pomegranates

Behind her hangs a veil decorated with palms and pomegranates. You cannot see what is behind it, only glimpses of water. It is a picture of knowledge that is not ready to be shown yet.

The scroll

The scroll is marked TORA, which Waite read as the hidden law. It is partly covered. The card is about what you sense but cannot fully put into words.

The moon

A crescent moon lies at her feet and a lunar crown sits on her head. The moon reflects light rather than making it, and the card links her to cycles, dreams and the slow tides of intuition.

Upright meaning

Upright, the High Priestess stands for intuition, patience, study and inner knowing. She does not rush the answer out into the marketplace. Dreams, gut feelings and the pause between questions may carry more than another opinion would.

In a reading, she often asks you to wait, listen and gather what is missing before you act. Trust a perception you have not fully explained even to yourself. Mystery is not the same as avoidance when the timing really is not ripe.

Reversed meaning

Reversed, the High Priestess can mean intuition drowned out by noise, a truth you are refusing to hear, or secrets that do harm. Hidden motives may be yours or someone else’s.

Give the quiet signal room: journal, reduce input, ask yourself one honest question. If secrecy is protecting a breach of trust, bring light to it where it is safe to do so. Inner wisdom needs space, and sometimes it also needs courage.

Reversals are optional. Many readers never use them and read every card upright, and that is a complete way to read. If you do use them, decide before you shuffle what a reversed card will mean for you, and keep to that choice for the whole reading.

In love, work and spirituality

Love

Upright, trust a quiet sense about the pace of a connection, or a mysterious, private person. Reversed, a discomfort you are ignoring because the story looks fine on the surface.

Work and money

Wait for missing information before a major decision, research, keep your plans private for now. Reversed, information is being withheld, by you or from you.

Spirituality

A deep card for meditation, dreamwork and study. Reversed, it can warn against using mystery to dodge ordinary honesty.

As feelings

As someone’s feelings, the High Priestess shows interest kept private. They feel a lot and say little. You may need patience to learn more.

The High Priestess as past, present, future and advice

• Past: Something you sensed before you could explain it.
• Present: Not everything is known yet. Listen and gather information.
• Future: Answers will come in their own time, often through dreams or quiet moments.
• Advice: Wait, study and trust the quiet signal before you speak.

A Major Arcana card names a theme, not a sentence passed on your life. When the High Priestess shows up among mostly Minor cards, give it extra weight: the theme of intuition runs under the whole question. If it keeps coming back over several days, write down what was happening each time. Patterns like that teach you more about the card than any list of keywords.

Is the High Priestess a yes or a no?

In modern yes or no readings, the High Priestess is a maybe. She points to information that is not yet known, so the honest answer is often “not yet”. Tarot is better at showing the shape of a situation than at handing down verdicts, so if the question really matters, turn it into an open question such as “What do I need to know about this?” and draw again.

Affirmation and journal prompts

Affirmation: I honor what I know inwardly and give it time to become clear.

Reversed affirmation: I stop burying what I sense and face hidden motives with care.

Journal prompts:

• What do I know about this that I have not said out loud?
• When did my intuition turn out to be right, and how did it feel?
• What would change if I waited one more week?

The history and art behind the card

In the Tarot de Marseille pattern the card is called La Papesse, the Popess. On fifteenth century Italian cards she is la Papessa, the female Pope, a crowned woman holding a book. One of the oldest surviving examples, in the Visconti-Sforza deck, may portray a real woman, Manfreda da Pirovano, a relative of the Visconti family who was linked with a small religious sect, though historians debate this. Later Protestant decks sometimes replaced her with Juno to avoid the Catholic image.

Occult writers of the nineteenth century reimagined the Popess as a priestess of hidden wisdom, and Waite renamed her the High Priestess. Smith’s design gathers that later layer: the temple pillars, the Torah scroll and the moon all come from the Golden Dawn’s world of symbols, not from the Renaissance card game.

When A. E. Waite published The Pictorial Key to the Tarot in 1910, he listed these divinatory meanings for the card: “Secrets, mystery, the future as yet unrevealed; the woman who interests the Querent, if male; the Querent herself, if female; silence, tenacity; mystery, wisdom, science.” Reversed, he gave: “Passion, moral or physical ardor, conceit, surface knowledge.” Waite himself called the fortune-telling meanings of the trumps “artificial and arbitrary”, and on this site I read the picture first and treat lists like this as history.

In the modern teaching map called the Fool’s Journey, this card belongs to the first stage, becoming a self (roughly the Magician to the Chariot): tools, intuition, care, structure, tradition, choice and will. This map is a teaching aid made popular by twentieth-century guidebooks such as Eden Gray’s, not a medieval doctrine. Use it when it helps.

A spread for the High Priestess

Use this spread when you have a feeling you cannot quite explain.

1. What do I already sense? The quiet knowledge under the noise.
2. What is still hidden? What I cannot see yet, and should not force.
3. How can I listen better? One practice that gives my intuition more room.

Lay the three cards in a row, read each one on its own first, then read them together as a short story. Write one sentence for each position and one small action you will take.

Common questions

Is the High Priestess a yes or no?

She is usually a maybe or a not yet. Something is still unknown, so wait for more information before you decide.

What does the High Priestess mean in love?

A slow, private or mysterious connection, or a reminder to trust your quiet sense of the person. Reversed, look at what you have been ignoring.

Who is the High Priestess based on?

Early decks called her the Popess. Waite renamed her in 1909 and gave her temple pillars and a scroll.

Related cards

• The Magician: outer action, the partner to her inner knowing
• The Moon: intuition again, but in the dark and uncertain
• The Hermit: another card of quiet and inner wisdom

Keep learning

The High Priestess is part of the lesson The Fool to the Chariot in my free Tarot for Beginners course. To keep walking the Major Arcana, read the card before it, The Magician or the card after it, The Empress, or go back to all the card meanings. For every card with keywords, affirmations and examples, see my book The Novice’s Guide to Tarot. If you would like a printable cheat sheet for all 78 cards, my 45-page Tarot Workbook is on Etsy.

Sources

• A. E. Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (London: Rider, 1910), Part II and Part III, section 3.
• Pamela Colman Smith and A. E. Waite, the Rider-Waite-Smith tarot (London: Rider, 1909).
• Nicolas Conver, Tarot de Marseille (Marseille, 1760).
• Eden Gray, A Complete Guide to the Tarot (New York: Crown, 1970), epilogue “The Fool’s Journey”.
• Lauri Mukkala, The Novice’s Guide to Tarot, entry for The High Priestess.