← “Röhrig Cards” deck

The High Priestess

“Röhrig Cards” deck · card #2

🔍

"All true greatness is born of stillness."
Thomas Carlyle

The High Priestess is card number two, the card of male/female polarity, of separation from unity and the attainment of duality. Only by passing through the duality of father and mother can one arrive at the phenomenon of triunity. In the Magician, unity rules: he is the masculine source, activity and beginning. The High Priestess embodies the opposite pole: she is the embodiment of femininity and its transcending aspect. Everything about her image speaks of acceptance, receptivity, stillness and a wisdom that comes from within. It is not without reason that this card is placed under the sign of the Moon, whose image suggests feminine sensitivity — the lunar aspect.

In the Tarot of the Aquarian Age the High Priestess is depicted with closed eyes, because feelings come first for her. She has no need to open her eyes, because she is already well acquainted with the world of maya (illusion). She knows that reality lies only in her inner world — everything else is merely a projection of her craving mind.

Her card corresponds to two dimensions: this world and the beyond, day and night, light and darkness, and thus to all the pairs of polar aspects we encounter in our life: warm/cold, beautiful/ugly, god/devil, and so on. Without one side, we could never understand the other. Everything that forms unity in the Magician now, as a continuation of its search, divides itself into opposites, so that it may experience itself through its opposite.

The man and woman who stand at the stage of the Magician have resolved their existential problems in a more or less satisfactory way. But when they move into the phase of the High Priestess, they begin to suspect that another reality awaits them, one that lies beyond so-called "reality." They set off on an inner journey, lifting a corner of the veil of the High Priestess, Isis, who raises her veil and reveals her secret to the true seeker.

This second figure of the Major Arcana signifies intuition, harmony, wisdom on the spiritual plane, authority, benevolence, guidance, a moral or religious path, calm and silence.

The letter of the Hebrew alphabet in the left corner of the card, GIMEL, means camel — the camel that will carry us on its back across the desert of our imagination's dreams until we reach the oasis that will be our true home.

The rune URUZ (aurochs) symbolizes the strength needed to give form. URUZ, as the mother of manifestation, points us toward the path of creation and, thus, at the same time toward the next card — the Empress.

Open in the app