The High Priestess

Arcana

Major Arcana — one of the twenty-two

Number

II — card 2 of the sequence

Place in the sequence

third of twenty-two

Numbered alongside

the four Twos of the Minor Arcana

Upright

Intuition, sacred knowledge, subconscious mind

Reversed

Secrets, withdrawal, silence

Listing position

card 3 of 78 as the deck is written out

Nothing on this page is calculated from your birth details or your name — the readings below are the traditional attributions for The High Priestess, written plainly. The one part of it that is arithmetic, and exact, is how often a card of this kind actually turns up; that has its own section further down.

What The High Priestess means

Listen within. Your intuition is unusually accurate now — don't drown it with advice from others.

The High Priestess is numbered II, card 2 of the twenty-two, and Major Arcana cards are read as the large theme of a stretch of life rather than as the day-to-day events the four suits describe. A Minor card puts one subject — the work, the feeling, the argument, the money — at a particular stage; The High Priestess names the chapter all of that is happening inside.

Its keyword line — intuition, sacred knowledge, subconscious mind — is the short form for a grid, not a second meaning. When The High Priestess lands beside two Minor cards, the usual reading is that it outranks them: they describe the events, The High Priestess describes what the events are for.

The High Priestess reversed

Secrets, withdrawal, silence

Reversed, The High Priestess does not become its opposite. II is the same chapter either way; the reversal turns it inward, or slows it, or points at the version of intuition that has gone wrong. On a chapter as large as II that is a real difference in tone rather than a different card, which is why The High Priestess reversed is written here as secrets, withdrawal, silence and not as the opposite of intuition.

Plenty of readers do not use reversals. Do that and The High Priestess keeps one meaning, and the cards around it decide whether the chapter it names is arriving well or badly.

Where The High Priestess sits in the sequence

The High Priestess stands at II, between The Magician (I) and The Empress (III). Read as a sequence — and most readers do read it as one — the twenty-two run from a first step to a completion, so The High Priestess arrives after manifestation, resourcefulness, power, inspired action and hands over to femininity, beauty, nature, nurturing, abundance.

The number II

The High Priestess is numbered 2, a single digit, so there is nothing to reduce: it is already the root the larger numerals reduce towards. Going the other way, Justice (XI) and Judgement (XX) reduce to II, which makes The High Priestess the plainer statement of a number those cards carry in a more worldly form.

The same number reaches the Minor Arcana directly: the four Twos — Two of Wands, Two of Cups, Two of Swords and Two of Pentacles — are the day-to-day version of what The High Priestess names as a theme. The pair in four different subjects, against one chapter of a life.

Reading The High Priestess in a spread

A Major in a three-card spread usually reframes the other two rather than sitting level with them. The High Priestess in each position:

• First — the setting. The High Priestess as the theme already in place behind the question: intuition, sacred knowledge, subconscious mind.
• Second — the situation. II as what the matter is actually about now, which generally outranks whatever the Minor cards beside it are describing.
• Third — the direction. The High Priestess as a chapter opening rather than an event: the position where a Major reads least like a prediction and most like a description of where things are heading.

In a love reading

The High Priestess describes the theme a relationship is inside rather than an event inside it — intuition, sacred knowledge, subconscious mind applied to two people. That is a broader claim than any Cups card makes, and a vaguer one, which is why II usually wants the cards either side of it before it says anything useful.

In a career reading

On a work question The High Priestess answers about the direction rather than the task: not whether the report gets filed but whether the chapter you are filing it in is the one you meant to be in.II on its own will not tell you what to do on Monday; read it with a Pentacles or Wands card beside it and that card supplies the practical half The High Priestess leaves out.

How often The High Priestess actually comes up

This is the part of a card page that can be checked, so it is worth stating exactly. Three cards drawn from seventy-eight means any named card — The High Priestess included — appears in one three-card spread in 26, or 3.8% of the time. No card in the deck is rarer than another, and any page telling you its own card is unusual to draw is wrong about arithmetic rather than about tarot.

• At least one of the twenty-two Major Arcana appears in 63.6% of three-card spreads. A "big card" showing up is the ordinary case, not a sign.

Reversals do not change any of that. Whether The High Priestess lands upright or reversed is a separate coin from whether it lands at all, which is worth remembering when a reversed card feels like it was aimed at you.

The full set of these figures, including what the most-feared cards actually add up to, is on the tarot page.

The High Priestess — common questions