The High Priestess Tarot Card Meaning: Upright, Reversed

The second card in the deck began its career as a pope. In the Tarot de Marseille, trump II carries the title La Papesse, the Popess, and some versions crown her with a papal tiara. A. E. Waite, who directed the 1909 Rider-Waite deck, rejected that reading and drew a seated priestess between two pillars with a crescent moon at her feet. The change of title is the most consequential edit in the history of tarot iconography, and almost nobody notices it. By our count, none of the 366 possible birthdays draws her as a tarot year card for 2027, because that method only reaches cards 5 to 17. Here is what the tradition says about her, where the picture came from, and where the evidence stops.

A word on how we work. Tarot is a tradition with a documented history, and we separate three layers: what the early decks show, what Waite and his successors added, and what modern writers claim. The third layer is the largest and the least reliable.

The Mechanics: What the Card Shows

The High Priestess is the second trump, following The Magician in the numbered sequence. The Rider-Waite-Smith image, drawn by Pamela Colman Smith, is among the most symmetrical in the deck. The priestess sits at the centre, wearing a robe and a crown, with a crescent moon at her feet. On her left stands a pillar marked B, on her right a pillar marked J. Behind her hangs a veil embroidered with palm leaves and pomegranates. In her hands she holds a scroll lettered TORA.

The pillars carry the weight of the composition. The letters B and J stand for Boaz and Jachin, the names the Hebrew Bible gives to the two bronze pillars at the porch of Solomon’s Temple. The scroll’s letters read as Torah, the Law. The veil recalls the curtain that separated the inner sanctuary from the rest of the Temple. Smith and Waite built a picture of a threshold: the priestess sits where the public building ends and the private one begins, and the veil behind her hides what lies beyond.

Watch for: the scroll is only partly visible. The tradition says that is the point. She holds knowledge, and she does not display it.

Macroscopic Symptoms: The Card’s Paper Trail

Early Italian decks: the second trump shows a woman wearing a papal tiara and papal robes. The Visconti-Sforza deck calls her La Papessa.
Sister Manfreda: some historians, among them the card scholar Michael Dummett, link the Visconti-Sforza figure to Sister Manfreda, a nun whom a heretical sect elected as a female pope. The identification is a scholarly proposal, not a settled fact.
The Pope Joan legend: a medieval story told of a woman who reigned as pope in disguise. Many later writers connected the card to it. Waite rejected the connection.
Marseille pattern: La Papesse wears a blue cape over a red robe, the reverse of the colours on The Pope, the card that follows. For the lineage of the pattern, see our history of tarot.
1909 and 1910, Waite and Smith: the Popess becomes The High Priestess. Waite’s Pictorial Key to the Tarot lists, upright, secrets, mystery, the future as yet unrevealed, silence, tenacity, wisdom and science. It adds the woman who interests the Querent, if he is a man, and the Querent herself, if she is a woman. Reversed, it lists passion, moral or physical ardour, conceit and surface knowledge.
Astrological attribution: the tradition links the card to the Moon, which fits the crescent at her feet. Her place on the Kabbalistic Tree of Life, the path from Kether to Tiphareth, is among the oldest esoteric attributions we found.
Thoth: Aleister Crowley and Lady Frieda Harris painted their deck between 1938 and 1943. Their version carries the title The Priestess.

Why Waite Changed the Title

Waite explained his choices in the Pictorial Key, and his dislike of the Popess is plain. He found the Pope Joan story historically baseless and he wanted a figure suited to the esoteric reading of the cards he had inherited from the Golden Dawn. A priestess served that purpose better than a pope. A pope holds office. A priestess guards a mystery.

The renaming had a cost that readers seldom weigh. The earlier card, whatever it meant, carried a social message: a woman in the vestments of the highest authority in the Church. That message, which may have reflected a real medieval fascination with female spiritual power, vanished when the card became a guardian of hidden knowledge. Almost every modern reading, from the intuition and mystery of the popular books to the divine feminine of the websites, descends from Waite’s choice and not from the original image.

That does not make the modern reading false. It makes it a twentieth-century interpretation laid over a fifteenth-century card, and a careful reader keeps the two apart.

Where She Sits in the Sequence

The major arcana read as a sequence, and a sequence invites pairing. Modern commentators, writing long after the early decks, often set The Magician and The High Priestess side by side: the first card acts, the second waits. The Magician stands, points and displays his tools on a table. The priestess sits, holds a half-hidden scroll and displays nothing. Writers who use this reading describe the pair as the first of the sequence’s opposites, an active principle followed by a receptive one.

The pairing is a modern device, and it deserves a label as one. The fifteenth-century decks show no sign that their makers intended it. Even so, the device explains something real about the card’s appeal. Most of the major arcana show a figure in the middle of an action, an event or a moral choice. The High Priestess shows a figure in repose. In a deck of drama, she supplies the one image of deliberate stillness.

Silence in the Western Esoteric Tradition

Waite’s keyword list includes silence, and the word has a pedigree. Éliphas Lévi, the nineteenth-century French occultist whose writings shaped the Golden Dawn and through it the Rider-Waite deck, taught that the magician needs four qualities: to know, to will, to dare and to keep silent. The fourth is the one the High Priestess illustrates. An esoteric order of that era guarded its rituals under oath, and secrecy functioned as a discipline and a boundary at once.

A modern reader should hold two thoughts together. Silence can be a form of wisdom: the person who listens first often learns more than the person who speaks first. Silence can also be a form of concealment, and the reversed card’s keywords, conceit and surface knowledge, warn against the second kind. The tradition keeps both meanings in play without choosing between them.

Three Readers, Three Priestesses

The card historian sees a Popess. The evidence is the early decks, the Marseille colours and the Manfreda proposal. This reader asks what fifteenth-century Italians thought a female pope meant, and the honest answer is that we know little.
The Golden Dawn occultist sees a guardian of the threshold. The evidence is the Kabbalistic path on the Tree of Life, the lunar attribution and Waite’s pillars. This reader asks what the card teaches about initiation.
The modern counsellor sees an image of the inner voice. The evidence is the practice of reflective reading, and the card works here as a prompt. This reader asks what you already know and have not said.

All three readings are legitimate within their own frame. Problems arise when a writer borrows the authority of the first two to support the third, as when a website cites a medieval Popess to prove that your intuition is sound.

What Waite’s List Does Not Say

A close reading of the 1910 text produces several surprises. The upright entry contains no mention of psychic ability, dreams or intuition. Those words enter later. The entry mentions “the woman who interests the Querent, if male”, which reflects the assumptions of an Edwardian fortune-teller addressing a male client and has aged badly. And the list pairs wisdom and science with silence, which suggests that Waite pictured a learned figure and not a mystic.

None of this should disturb a reader who finds the modern reading useful. It should make the reader suspicious of anyone who claims that the modern reading is the original one.

The Five-Point Binary Grid: High Priestess Tarot Card Meaning, Upright and Reversed

This operational grid is our own diagnostic, not a traditional system.

Spec	Upright	Reversed
Direction	Information held back, waiting	Information forced out or ignored
Waite’s words	Secrets, mystery, silence, tenacity, wisdom	Passion, conceit, surface knowledge
Kinetic energy	Low by design: the card advises observation	High but misdirected: ardour without depth
Systemic friction	Comes from the urge to act before you know enough	Comes from claiming knowledge you have not earned
Containment	Wait, gather facts, speak last	Name what you do not know and ask

Reading the Pillars: Duality in One Picture

The two pillars, one dark and one light in most renderings, give the card its best-known theme, the duality that surrounds the seated figure. The tradition reads Boaz and Jachin as opposites held in balance: strength and establishment, severity and mercy. The priestess sits between them without belonging to either, which is the position of anyone who weighs a decision before choosing a side.

The pomegranates on the veil add a second layer. The fruit appears in the biblical description of the Temple’s decoration and, in the wider mythology of the Mediterranean, carries associations with fertility and with the underworld. Whether Smith and Waite meant these associations or only the Temple reference, we cannot say. They left no commentary that settles it.

A scholar’s caution applies to the whole picture. It draws its symbols from several traditions at once: Hebrew scripture, the Golden Dawn’s Kabbalistic system, and the artistic preferences of an illustrator who worked from Waite’s brief. The card is a composite, and its meaning is a matter of long-running interpretation and not of discovery.

Recorded Symptoms

These are illustrative composites, not real case files.

Symptom 1. A project lead draws the High Priestess the week before a negotiation and reads it as advice to stay quiet. She listens through the first meeting and speaks only at the end. The card fits the advice she already knew to follow, and she would have gained the same benefit from a note in her diary.

Symptom 2. A man draws the High Priestess reversed and reads it as a sign that his partner is hiding something. He spends a week looking for evidence. The card names secrecy in general terms, and the search finds whatever his suspicion prepares him to find.

Insulation Protocols: Using the High Priestess on Your Terms

Separate the card from the question. Write what you already know about your situation before you look at any keyword list.
Treat silence as a choice, not a prophecy. If the card suggests waiting, set an end date for the waiting.
Check the reversed reading against facts. Secrecy is a claim. Find one fact that supports it, or drop it.
Set a review date 30 days out with one measurable check.
Do not redraw. Drawing again until the card is comfortable is extraction of false reassurance.

Plain note: no study shows that a tarot card predicts outcomes. If a reading worries you, stop and talk to a person.

FAQ

What does the High Priestess mean in tarot?

In Waite’s 1910 list the upright card means secrets, mystery, silence, tenacity, wisdom and science, and the future as yet unrevealed. Modern writers compress this to intuition and the subconscious. That is a later reading, not Waite’s wording.

What does the High Priestess reversed mean?

Waite lists passion, moral or physical ardour, conceit and surface knowledge. Modern readers often read the reversed card as secrecy or disconnection from intuition. The two readings differ: Waite’s describes excess of feeling, the modern one describes its absence.

Is the High Priestess the same as the Popess?

Historically yes. The Marseille and Visconti-Sforza cards show a Popess. Waite’s 1909 deck renamed her the High Priestess and redrew the figure. The two names mark two different traditions.

What do the letters B and J mean?

They stand for Boaz and Jachin, the names the Hebrew Bible gives to the two bronze pillars at the entrance to Solomon’s Temple.

Is the High Priestess my tarot year card?

No. Under the method on our year card calculator, birth month plus birth day plus 2027 reduces to a number from 5 to 17 only. Cards 0 to 4 and 18 to 21 are out of reach for every date, which includes the High Priestess, number II.

Aftermath

The tradition says the High Priestess guards what she does not show. The modern reading, a card of intuition and the inner voice, sits on top of a 1910 keyword list that also names conceit and surface knowledge. Neither version is evidence. No study shows that a card, drawn or assigned by birth date, predicts what happens next. Read the card as a prompt to name what you do not yet know, then go and find out. The same method applies to the cards before it, The Fool and The Magician, and to the rest of our tarot section.

External Data Check

Pages about the High Priestess tarot card meaning tend to say that she knows your secrets and that your intuition is always right. Waite’s list does not say that. It lists secrets and wisdom next to conceit and surface knowledge, and it never promises that a reader’s hunches are reliable. Whether intuition is reliable is a testable claim, and the evidence is mixed. The vague, flattering reading feels accurate because of the Barnum effect, not because the card has insight. For the card’s printed history and the Manfreda theory, the Wikipedia entry on The High Priestess summarizes the sources.

Sources

Waite, A. E. (1910). The Pictorial Key to the Tarot: the High Priestess keywords, upright and reversed.
Wikipedia, The High Priestess, and the sources it cites: the Popess titles, the Manfreda proposal, the Marseille colours and the Rider-Waite-Smith symbols.
The First Book of Kings, chapter 7, for the Temple pillars Jachin and Boaz.

We could not verify at the original source: Éliphas Lévi’s maxim to know, to will, to dare and to keep silent, which we know from secondary accounts; the Moon attribution and the Thoth title, which we took from secondary summaries; and the pomegranate associations, which Smith and Waite did not explain.

Last reviewed: 4 November 2026.