Major arcana

The High Priestess

Trump II of the twenty-two. Drawn by Pamela Colman Smith for the deck first published in London in December 1909.

Waite on its symbolism

She has the lunar crescent at her feet, a horned diadem on her head, with a globe in the middle place, and a large solar cross on her breast. The scroll in her hands is inscribed with the word Tora, signifying the Greater Law, the Secret Law and the second sense of the Word. It is partly covered by her mantle, to shew that some things are implied and some spoken. She is seated between the white and black pillars—J. and B.—of the mystic Temple and the veil of the Temple is behind her: it is embroidered with palms and pomegranates. The vestments are flowing and gauzy, and the mantle suggests light—a shimmering radiance. She has been called Occult Science on the threshold of the Sanctuary of Isis, but she is really the Secret Church, the House which is of God and man. She represents also the Second Marriage of the Prince who is no longer of this world; she is the spiritual Bride and Mother, the daughter of the stars and the Higher Garden of Eden. She is, in fine, the Queen of the borrowed light, but this is the light of all. She is the Moon nourished by the milk of the Supernal Mother.
In a manner, she is also the Supernal Mother herself—that is to say, she is the bright reflection. It is in this sense of reflection that her truest and highest name in bolism is Shekinah—the co-habiting glory. According to Kabalism, there is a Shekinah both above and below. In the superior world it is called Binah, the Supernal Understanding which reflects to the emanations that are beneath. In the lower world it is Malkuth—that world being, for this purpose, understood as a blessed Kingdom—that with which it is made blessed being the Indwelling Glory. Mystically speaking, the Shekinah is the Spiritual Bride of the just man, and when he reads the Law she gives the Divine meaning. There are some respects in which this card is the highest and holiest of the Greater Arcana.

A. E. Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot, 1911, Part II, § 2: his whole entry for the card, as printed.

'Her truest and highest name in bolism' is what the 1911 page prints: the first syllable of 'symbolism' is missing. It is kept because this is a quotation, not a summary.

What Waite says it means

These are the divinatory meanings printed in 1911, quoted as he wrote them. They are reported here as what one named book says, not as a claim that a card means anything or predicts anything.

Upright: 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: Passion, moral or physical ardour, conceit, surface knowledge.

A. E. Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot, London, 1911, Part III, § 3. Out of copyright.

Where it sits in the trumps

The twenty-two trumps run from The Fool, numbered zero, to The World at twenty-one. Waite moved Strength to eight and Justice to eleven, swapping the order older decks use, so a Marseille deck numbers those two the other way round.

A birth date can be reduced to one of these twenty-two. How the birth card is worked out →