Summary of the High Priestess Tarot Card Meaning

After the Fool learns the lessons of directing conscious willpower, they meet the High Priestess, who teaches them to listen to the whispers of the unconscious. The unconscious is different, it is stubborn, resistant, it does not heed the calls of willful intention, and the Fool must instead learn the skill of listening, of opening himself up to its messages. The High Priestess teaches the Fool to be open to these messages, and how to bring its gifts into conscious understanding.

Light: Unconscious, intuition, inner voice, mystery
Shadow: Illusion, madness, blocked understanding, blocked intuition

To learn more, read the full High Priestess tarot card meaning.

When to Use This Tarot Spread

• When something is nagging you, but you’re unsure of what it is.
• When you’ve had a dream that you want help interpreting.
• Heck, when you’ve gotten a tarot or oracle reading that you’d like more clarification on.
• Whenever anything needs more clarification from your gut.

The High Priestess Tarot Card Spread

1. The Mystery - What is unclear? What needs to be revealed? What is still in darkness right now?
2. Avoidance - What are you ignoring? What messages have you been avoiding? What messages do you need to heed?
3. Unconscious Fear - What prevents you from seeing what you need to see? What stands in the way of you integrating the message?
4. Conscious Desire - What do you feel is the best possible outcome from this? How would you ideally like this to resolve?
5. The Work - What needs to be done to help you integrate these messages?
6. Higher Wisdom - What knowledge or advice do you have now when you integrate this unconscious message with conscious thought? What are next steps?

A Note on the Fool's Journey Tarot Spreads: This is part of a series of tarot spreads inspired by the lessons of the Fool’s Journey, represented by the major arcana of the tarot. Since each major arcana card embodies a stage in one’s life journey, a lesson, or an archetype, we can use them as the foundations to explore moments of our own personal journeys. They also happen to be great ways to explore the meanings of each of these tarot cards in a very personal way.

For more of these spreads, please head here.

And if you'd like to purchase the deck depicted in these spreads, you can click here to purchase it! You can also purchase its Marseille cousin.