The High Priestess tarot card from the Simply Tarot deck

The High Priestess Tarot Card Meaning

The Enigma

✦

Intuition • Mystery • Insight

Growing potential, hidden talents or an unknown destiny gradually coming to the fore. Intuitive skills are heightened; you sense change even though you can’t define the exact nature of it as yet. It can precipitate an interest in mysticism or some form of spiritual awakening.

The High Priestess represents secrets and things that are yet to come to light. The Subject shouldn’t try to pursue the detail of what is coming but should be prepared for new information to come to the fore. They aren’t aware of everything at play or every influence that will come to bear as yet.

This means that now may not the right time to be making important decisions or to make any long term commitments. The playing field is about to change and the Subject won’t know whether it will be a completely different game, a different position in the game or indeed if they’ll be playing with a different team altogether.

This card also highlights talents, interest and abilities that are developing in the Subject and they will soon find out something about their overall destiny and direction. They may realise that there is something else they are fated to do. Or that they possess characteristics and abilities they aren’t aware of yet.

⌵

❦

Love & Relationships

Not every feeling wants to be spoken aloud immediately. Beneath the silence, intuition is already sensing what words have not yet confirmed. Emotional truth often arrives quietly, long before people are ready to admit it openly.

◈

Material Life

Not every answer about security reveals itself immediately. Instinct notices subtle cracks long before visible collapse appears, especially where something outwardly stable feels emotionally wrong beneath the surface. Quiet observation protects more effectively than panic ever does.

✎

Notes from the Artist

The High Priestess is portrayed here as a very attractive, mysterious woman attending an altar bearing candles, flowers and a book. It’s as if the person viewing the card has just interrupted her in the midst of some religious/spiritual ceremony or ritual.

She seems inaccessible standing behind her altar and the viewer is left entranced by her, wanting to know what she knows about them and what they need to do, but that information must come when all things are aligned and the time is right.

The High Priestess focuses on a very different side of femininity to The Empress.

She is much more ethereal - almost magical, she is elusive and alluring, she gives nothing away, inviting us to use more of our own intuition.

The Moon features significantly in this image, because all is not clear or ready to know, as yet.

Looking for another card?

From the archive

The Original Artwork, Reimagined

Before The High Priestess became part of the Simply Tarot collection you see today, it was drawn and painted by hand for the original 2011 Tarot House Deck. The style has evolved, but the meaning and character of the card remain at its heart.

Original hand-painted The High Priestess tarot card by Patricia House from the 2011 Tarot House Deck — 2011 **Original 2011 artwork The High Priestess** Hand-painted by Patricia House

A High Priestess, dressed in blue, is behind a stone altar. She has her arms outstretched as if in meditation or in a ritual. — Today **The High Priestess reimagined** The current Simply Tarot artwork

The original first edition

Buy the Original 2011 Deck

The card shown above is part of the original 78-card Tarot House Deck. Every image was drawn and painted by Patricia House before the deck was professionally printed by Cartamundi in the UK. A limited number from the original print run are still available.