The High Priestess 2
In the interest of full disclosure, I bring to this card many thoughts and feelings. Before I look at the representations in the Tiger Tarot and the Motherpeace, I’ll share the predetermining sense I have of this persona, The High Priestess.
My familiarity with her comes strongly from the Rider Waite Smith card. Here a woman with a crown representing the phases of the moon sits between two columns, one black and one white. She is a channel herself and with or without judgment provides divination regardless of its rightness and goodness, represented by the white column and it’s evil and darkness, represented by the black column. She does not discern good luck and bad luck, just as in the story of the farmer who makes no judgment about whether his luck is good or bad. But his neighbors judge.
The story of the farmer goes along like this:
Once there was a farmer and he had a herd of horses. They all, but one, were lost due to a hole in the fence through which they departed.
“Oh what bad luck” said his neighbors.
“Good luck, bad luck,” he replied.
His son took the one last horse left them and ventured out to find their horses. He returned with double the amount of horses because his domesticated herd had connected with a herd of wild horses and the son was able to corral them all.
“What good luck,” said his neighbors.
“Good luck, bad luck,” said the farmer, as though he believed in neither.
The son proceeded to ‘break’ the wild horses so that they could work appropriately in the fields. In the process he was thrown and broke his leg.
“What bad luck,” his neighbors said.
“Good luck, bad luck” the farmer responded yet again. He believed in neither, it seemed.
The emperor’s army came to the village to conscript all the eligible young men to fight in a far off war.
The son could not be chosen, due to his broken leg.
And so it goes. I think that phrase is from Kurt Vonnegut and was, both ironically and admiringly, appropriated by Linda Ellerbee when she was a news anchor. I would watch her during graduate school as she seemed to consistently anchor a show in the middle of the night when I would still be awake. That wouldn’t happen now that I am truly an early to bed kind of girl.
The High Priestess is an oracle giver. She has trained in the underground caves with the aromas of the earth’s gasses making her high and lowering her filter. She says the messages that pass through her without consideration for good and bad or evil and right.
The High Priestess in this version has no blockages.
I’ve had that experience when I read cards, or palms, or astrology charts or any of the other instruments of divination that I find available. I’ve said things without judgment and without filter, however not always without regret. Things happen that are beyond one’s control despite those moments of being a clear channel.
The Tiger Tarot High Priestess
Tiger Tarot by Lori Field
The High Priestess is draped in pale pink and a blue skirt with pasties on her breasts and chest covered in an array of jewels that trail down her arms and the front of her outfit. She appears to be the same woman who is on the right side of the Magician card and sports a conical hat with a crescent moon.
The birch forest that she seems to be walking through or leaving is ablaze with light. Upon her head is a tiger faced cherub with butterfly wings. It looks as though there is another face between the trunks of the two leftmost birch. Is it an owl, a symbol of wisdom?
She walks alone with downcast eyes. Bangles embrace both arms with symmetry. She leaves the scene to determine what is real. Her last encounter was with the magician, a master of manipulation of all elements. She needs time away and time to connect with the oracle energy to determine what is real.
Motherpeace High Priestess
Motherpeace deck by Karen Vogel and Vicki Noble
The Motherpeace High Priestess is a woman of color. On either side are two columnar structures. Her skirt is strands of fiber, perhaps a grass skirt. It covers her vulva which throughout ancient and even modern times has been considered a powerful anatomical portal.
Her headdress is the moon. Either side is a crescent and the empty space centrally could be interpreted as the full moon. The moon is connected with the cycles of the earth’s planting and growing and the water’s tides.
Her palms face forward and the central part of the open palm is a place that picks up and gives off energy both psychic and healing. As a palm reader, that is the place I stroke and circle to pick up any messages that are being made available to me.
Priestesses are:
The healers
The oracles
The providers of life, and
Protectors of earth
Before the Oracle of Delphi was Apollo’s voice it belonged to Gaia, the ancestor of all women Goddesses and women were priestesses devoted to her. Gaia is another name for earth.
The High Priestess is a defender of women and the earth, our ultimate life giver. She represents an ancestral lineage that predates patriarchy.
The Motherpeace Priestess has an unabashed power. The Tiger Tarot Priestess carries a sadness and the tiger headed cherub bursting atop her head like a butterfly has a delicacy. It’s as though the tiger cherub has arisen from a chrysalis, just burst forth like Athena born from Zeus’s head. This time it is a woman who is birthing a new kind of child from her head, from her mind. It is a female child who has fierceness and wildness that perhaps will go beyond the rationality traditionally associated with Athena. As we go through the Major Arcana on this journey through the 22 major arcana, let’s look together at what this new being will become.
