The High Priestess Tarot Card Meaning

Intuition, mystery, subconscious, duality, withdrawal, secrets

The High Priestess tarot card represents the intimate connection between our ego and our subconscious mind. This archetype is intuitive, mysterious and ethereal, bridging the gap between our personalities and our souls. 

After meeting The Magician and discovering their latent talents, The Fool then encounters The High Priestess. At this point in their journey, The Fool is being guided to explore the depths of the subconscious mind.

We all have two distinct aspects of ourselves that must coexist and work together in order for us to live a full life. Our ego mind is our personality–the voice that is constantly monologuing in our heads. Our subconscious mind is much deeper and quieter, but equally as influential. 

Most people in The Fool’s position have allowed the ego mind to be in full control for almost their whole lives. They don’t even realize they have the power to quiet that voice and listen to their subconscious voice. 

The High Priestess is teaching this lesson to The Fool. The ego mind behaves strictly based on survival needs, and that only gets us so far on our journeys. The subconscious mind, however, is the voice of our most authentic self. It can take us to much greater heights than the ego ever could. 

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High Priestess Tarot Guide

In a reading, The High Priestess is letting us know that it’s time to listen to our intuition and not just our thoughts. We are not our thoughts–we are our soul. And our intuition is the voice of the soul. It has a lot of wisdom to bestow, but our thoughts get in the way. 

Alternatively, The High Priestess tarot card could also indicate a naturally intuitive person. Someone who has strong psychic skills and a special connection to Source Energy. We already have all our own answers, and The High Priestess is showing us how to find them. 

Our two mind types, the ego and the subconscious, are not meant to live separately. They’re meant to coexist and work together. The High Priestess is bridging the gap between these two minds, allowing for more communication to rise up from the subconscious. 

This card illustrates the importance of our dual minds to our entire being. We cannot exist without either of them, therefore we cannot favor one over the other. Rather, The High Priestess helps us perceive and categorize the world around us in a way that makes sense. 

Some things get filed away in the subconscious, others stay up front in the ego. And these things continuously move around in our brains depending on our age, our current situation, our state of mind, plus other factors.

With the help of The High Priestess tarot card, we can strengthen the connection to our own intuition, and even learn to favor that inner voice over the other (not helpful) inner voice. 

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High Priestess Reversed

If a sitter pulls The High Priestess reversed in a tarot reading, it could mean a few different things. Of course it always depends on the context of the reading and the sitter themselves, but a reversed High Priestess typically indicates a total lack of connection with intuition.

It could also indicate some deeply repressed secrets and perhaps some ulterior motives. When this card is reversed, we’re being reminded that we don’t need to detach ourselves from the world in order to feel safe. 

This is a common coping mechanism, but it usually causes pain in the long run. The uncertainty and uneasiness that comes along with ignoring the subconscious mind can be crippling. 

The High Priestess wants you to express your duality, bridge the gap between your two minds, and not fear the unknown. In order to do that, we cannot be overly distracted or stimulated by outside forces. 

Turning inwards is how we discover our own psychic powers. They are not outside of us, but within us. No one else can hear our intuition. It’s up to us to embrace our duality, leave behind the mystery, and establish the connection with our subconscious mind. 

The High Priestess is asking us a very important question–how can we live more in alignment with our intuition and less at the mercy of the ego?