The High Priestess Tarot Card Meaning: Upright & Reversed
Keywords, Symbols, Colors, Astrology, Love, Timing & Yes or No
She doesn’t reach for anything. Seated between a black pillar and a white one, a thin veil at her back, the moon at her feet, she simply waits for you to stop talking.
The High Priestess is the only card in the tarot deck that answers a question with silence.
Somehow the silence says more.
Welcome to the third entry in my tarot glossary.
The Fool leapt, The Magician built, and now the tarot deck asks you to sit down to listen.
Below you’ll find the card’s symbols, its color psychology, upright plus reversed meanings with keyword lists, what she means in love or as feelings, how other cards amplify or diminish her, her planet, her zodiac sign, timing, whether she leans yes or no, and my own intuitive read after years of pulling her for clients.
Stay to the end, where I tell you what this card whispers to people in grief.
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The High Priestess keeps her scroll half covered, which is her whole personality, though it’s a terrible way to run a business.
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THE HIGH PRIESTESS AT A GLANCE
NumberTwo, Major Arcana
PlanetThe Moon
ZodiacCancer
ElementWater
TimingA lunar month, roughly twenty eight days
Yes or noNeither, the tarot deck’s great maybe
UprightIntuition, inner knowing, mystery, stillness
ReversedIgnored intuition, secrets, disconnection
JUMP TO A SECTION
MeaningSymbolsColorsUprightCard CombinationsYes or NoTimingAstrologyLove & FeelingsLife LessonsReversedQuick Answers
What Does The High Priestess Tarot Card Actually Mean?
The High Priestess is card two of the Major Arcana, the keeper of everything you know without being able to explain how.
Where The Magician works out loud with tools laid out in front of him, she works in the dark, behind a veil, in the part of you that speaks before thought arrives.
Intuition is her entire kingdom.
The card that already heard your question
Her lineage is older and stranger than most of the tarot deck.
Early Italian and Marseilles tarot decks called her La Papesse, the Popess, a female pope.
The card’s history ties her to the medieval legend of Pope Joan, a woman said to have held the papacy in disguise.
Forbidden knowledge sits in her DNA.
Rachel Pollack’s 78 Degrees of Wisdom reads her as the deep unconscious itself, the still water underneath the personality.
She holds the scroll of hidden law, partly covered, since some knowledge only unrolls when you’re ready for it.
What Are the Symbols on The High Priestess Tarot Card?
Pamela Colman Smith gave this card fewer objects than The Magician’s crowded workbench, and every one of them guards a threshold.
Together they describe the geography of the inner world.
- The black pillar, the white pillar: marked B for Boaz, J for Jachin, the pillars of Solomon’s Temple. Opposites held in balance, and the doorway between them.
- The pomegranate veil: the thin curtain between the conscious and unconscious mind. Fruit beside frond, feminine beside masculine, patterned together.
- The pomegranates: Persephone’s fruit, the single taste that binds you to the underworld.
- The crescent moon at her feet: the tides, the cycles, the pull of everything that rises and falls on schedule without asking permission.
- The lunar crown: waxing, full, and waning moon in one headpiece, the crown of Isis. Past, present, and future held at once.
- The TORA scroll: divine law, half hidden in her lap. Wisdom that reveals itself in portions.
- The solar cross: balance of the four elements, worn flat over the heart.
- The blue robe: flowing like water past the edge of the card, consciousness pouring toward its source.
- The hidden water behind the veil: glimpsed at the pillars’ edges, the sea every other Water card in the tarot deck eventually leads back to.
What Do the Colors on The High Priestess Tarot Card Mean in Psychology?
Color reaches the mind faster than symbolism does.
This card’s palette runs cool, quiet on purpose, the visual opposite of The Magician’s reds and yellows.
The contrast is the lesson.
THE HIGH PRIESTESS COLOR PALETTE
Each color is pulled from the card itself, with what it tends to stir in you.
Moonlit blue seen in the robe, hidden water
Calm depth. In color psychology, blue is the signature of stillness.
Pearl white seen in the pillar, moon crown
Clarity, the light of knowing without proof.
Obsidian black seen in the pillar
Mystery, everything real that hasn’t surfaced yet.
Pomegranate red seen in the pomegranates
Life, the single warm note pulling you below the surface.
Crescent gold seen in the crescent moon, veil
Instinct, the cycles that rise without asking permission.
Palm green seen in the palm fronds
Fertility, the living things growing behind the veil.
↑ UPRIGHT
What Does The High Priestess Tarot Card Mean Upright?
What Does The High Priestess Tarot Card Mean Upright?Upright, The High Priestess is the card of intuition, sacred knowledge, and the subconscious mind.
She appears when the answer you’re hunting for externally has been sitting inside you the whole time, patient as furniture.
Your work isn’t to find it, only to get quiet enough to hear it.
Put down the phone, the answer is inland
Trusting a gut feeling you can’t defend in a meeting is exactly her territory.
Most upright High Priestess keyword lists land on the same handful of words: intuition, sacred knowledge, divine feminine, the subconscious mind.
That matches what I see when she lands for someone who’s been asking everyone’s opinion except their own.
The High Priestess upright at a glance
- Core meaning: the knowing is already in you, stillness is how you reach it.
- Relationships: unspoken currents, a connection felt before it’s declared, patience over pursuit.
- Career and finances: read the room, not the memo. Something unstated is steering events, and quiet research pays better than a loud move.
- Health: rest, cycles, and a body sending signals well before symptoms arrive. Read it as intuition rather than diagnosis.
- Spiritual: dreams, synchronicities, and the inner voice growing louder the less you argue with it.
UPRIGHT KEYWORDS
intuition sacred knowledge inner voice mystery stillness the subconscious divine feminine dreams patience waiting
CARDS THAT STRENGTHEN IT
- The Moon deepens the dream language she speaks in.
- Four of Swords gives you the silence required to hear her.
- The Ace of Cups opens the channel she’s been waiting on.
CARDS THAT DIMINISH IT
- Knight of Swords charges past the message entirely.
- Eight of Wands moves faster than reflection allows.
- Seven of Wands turns listening into arguing.
“Be still, and know.”
Psalm 46:10“The quieter you become, the more you can hear.”
Ram Dass
How Do Other Cards Amplify or Diminish The High Priestess?
No card reads alone. In every spread, the neighbouring cards either deepen her silence or drown it out.
I call this adjacency: two or more cards working in unison, building one cohesive story instead of a list of single card definitions.
When The High Priestess gets amplified
An amplifier speaks her language. Stillness beside stillness, water beside water.
+The High Priestess + The Hermit
a deliberate retreat inward. The answer arrives in solitude, not conversation.
+The High Priestess + Queen of Cups
intuition fused with emotional intelligence, the natural empath fully switched on.
+The High Priestess + Page of Cups
messages through dreams, symbols, a quiet nudge that refuses to go away.
When The High Priestess gets diminished
A diminishing card talks over her. It rushes, crowds, or distracts the knowing she’s trying to deliver.
−The High Priestess + The Magician
action before listening. You’re building before you’ve heard the brief.
−The High Priestess + Three of Cups
the group chat drowns out the inner voice. Everyone’s opinion, except yours.
−The High Priestess + Ten of Wands
too busy carrying everything to hear anything.
When two cards disagree, don’t pick a winner. Acknowledging the disagreement is the reading.
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Is The High Priestess a Yes or No Card?
Neither, and that’s not a dodge.
The High Priestess is the tarot deck’s great maybe, the card that hands the question straight back to you.
Her answer is closer to not yet, or more precisely, you already know, and no card is going to say it first.
Reversed, she tips toward no, usually meaning the truth of the situation hasn’t fully surfaced and a decision made now would be made half blind.
In a live reading I steer away from flat yes or no answers anyway, since your free will does the real work and no card can make a choice on your behalf.
She is simply the one card that agrees with me out loud.
What Is The High Priestess’s Timing in a Tarot Reading?
The Moon runs on cycles, and so does this card.
Think in terms of one full lunar month, roughly twenty eight days, or the phrase I keep coming back to in readings: when it surfaces on its own.
Forcing her timeline is like digging up a bulb to check on it.
A month, a moon, or the moment you stop pushing
Some readers tie her to Cancer season, late June into late July, since the Moon rules Cancer.
Monday carries the Moon’s weekday association, a natural day for journaling, dream work, or the conversation you’ve been rehearsing.
When she appears for timing in my readings, I treat her as a tide chart rather than a stopwatch.
The water will bring it in, and you’ll know it when it lands.
What Planet and Zodiac Sign Rule The High Priestess?
The High Priestess belongs to the Moon, ruler of tides, memory, instinct, and the whole unlit half of the mind.
The Moon governs Cancer, which lends the card Cancer’s signature strengths: emotional depth, fierce inner privacy, and a shell that opens only from the inside.
Astrologers tracing the lunar current through her imagery tend to land in the same water.
Water carries this card entirely, feeling before language.
If your chart runs heavy with Cancer placements or a prominent Moon, she tends to feel less like instruction and more like a mirror.
Therapists, artists, night shift thinkers, and anyone who knows things before they can prove them live under this light.
There’s a fuller breakdown of The High Priestess and her esoteric roots if you want to go deeper.
What Does The High Priestess Mean in Love, as Feelings, and as a Person?
The High Priestess is the most mysterious love card in the tarot deck.
Here’s how she tends to read in the questions people ask me most.
- In love, if you’re single: trust what you sense about people before they explain themselves. Your instincts are sharper than your dating apps.
- In love, in a relationship: a deep, unspoken bond, or something important still waiting to be said.
- As feelings: someone is intrigued by you, drawn in, though keeping their feelings private for now.
- As a person: intuitive, private, quietly wise, often reserved, frequently with Cancer energy or a strong Moon.
- As advice: trust what you already sense. Don’t force the conversation before it’s ready.
- Reversed in love: secrets, mixed signals, or a red flag you’ve been talking yourself out of.
What The High Priestess Teaches About Grief and Inner Knowing
Here’s what this card means when it turns up for someone on the other side of a live reading.
Nine times out of ten, she arrives for a person drowning in other people’s advice.
Everyone has an opinion about their marriage, their career change, their grief timeline.
The noise has gotten so loud they can no longer find their own signal underneath it.
The still small voice is never actually silent, only shouted over.
The High Priestess is that principle in a robe.
Rather than handing you new information, she removes the interference between you and what you already carry.
For anyone grieving, this card holds something tender.
The connection to the person you lost didn’t go quiet, it went inward, past the veil she guards.
Those dreams that feel realer than dreams, the moments you sense them in the room, the knowing that arrives out of nowhere: her domain, all of it.
Form changes. Love does not.
She has always known that.
↓ REVERSED
What Does The High Priestess Tarot Card Mean Reversed?
What Does The High Priestess Tarot Card Mean Reversed?Reversed, The High Priestess loses her hearing.
The inner voice is still speaking, and you’ve stopped taking its calls.
Overriding a gut feeling because the spreadsheet disagreed, asking a fifth friend for advice hoping someone will finally say what you want to hear, that’s her upside down.
Secrets kept from everyone, including yourself
Withheld truth is the other face of this reversal.
Sometimes someone around you is holding cards close, and sometimes the keeper of the secret is you, sitting on a feeling so long it has started to ferment.
The standard reading of The High Priestess reversed frames it as disconnection from inner wisdom, a willful refusal to listen that always costs more than the truth would have.
The High Priestess reversed at a glance
- Core meaning: intuition ignored, or truth kept beneath the surface where it can’t heal.
- Relationships: something unsaid sitting in the middle of the room, a partner, or a part of you, refusing to be known.
- Career and finances: surface information hiding the real story, a gut warning overruled, contracts worth rereading before anybody signs.
- Health: signals overridden, sleep sacrificed, the appointment that keeps getting rescheduled. Symbolic, never diagnostic.
- Spiritual: spiritual noise replacing spiritual practice, seeking more input instead of more silence.
REVERSED KEYWORDS
ignored intuition secrets hidden agendas repressed feelings self silencing disconnection noise gossip
CARDS THAT SHARPEN THE WARNING
- Seven of Swords confirms something is being withheld.
- The Devil shows what the secret is costing.
- Nine of Swords is the sound your intuition makes at three in the morning.
CARDS THAT SOFTEN IT
- Four of Swords hands back the quiet.
- The Star restores trust in the signal.
- The Ace of Cups reopens what got shut down.
“Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.”
Carl Jung“Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead.”
Benjamin Franklin
The High Priestess Tarot Card: Quick Answers
Is The High Priestess a good card?
Yes. She’s one of the most spiritually supportive cards in the Major Arcana, pointing you back to your own intuition.
Does The High Priestess mean someone has a secret?
Upright, she points to mystery rather than deception. Reversed, hidden truths are far more likely, sometimes your own.
What does The High Priestess mean in the future position?
An answer arriving through intuition, a dream, or a quiet realization rather than an outside event.
What number is The High Priestess in tarot?
Card two of the Major Arcana, right after The Magician and just before The Empress.
Where The High Priestess Might Be Pointing You Now
If The High Priestess keeps surfacing for you, the question isn’t where to find the answer, it’s what you’re using to drown it out.
Most people know exactly what they know, and stay busy specifically to avoid hearing it.
When you’re ready to sit in that quiet with someone who’ll hold the whole picture, your reading is waiting.
Click here to book your reading to finally hear what has been waiting behind the veil.
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Keep Reading
The Fool · The Magician · The Empress · Reversed cards · Strengthen intuition · Life decisions
About the Author
No airports, no waiting rooms, just a screen and an hour that rearranges what you thought you knew. Chris Bennett is The Tarot Medium, named among the best tarot readers in the world and one of the most trusted psychic mediums working today. Every reading is online, which is how his client list runs through Seattle, Denver, Portland, Minneapolis, Milwaukee, Nashville, Austin, New Orleans, Tampa, Orlando, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Kansas City, Ottawa, Calgary, Halifax, Saskatoon, Perth, Adelaide, Canberra, Darwin, Edinburgh, Bristol, Cape Town, and Pretoria, plus every corner of the United States, Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, and South Africa. He works in evidential mediumship, intuitive tarot, psychic life path readings, and grief support with real psychological depth behind it, with nothing theatrical anywhere in it. Anyone who’d rather read for themselves can begin with his online tarot courses.
