The High Priestess (II)
The High Priestess and Its Meaning for Healing
(Keywords: Intuition, mystery, subconscious knowledge, inner wisdom)
Overview of The High Priestess
The High Priestess is the second card of the Major Arcana, representing intuition, the subconscious mind, hidden knowledge, and spiritual wisdom. She sits between two pillars, symbolizing duality—light and dark, conscious and unconscious, known and unknown. The scroll she holds represents sacred knowledge, while the moon at her feet and the veil behind her hint at the mysteries that lie beyond the surface.
The High Priestess calls for inner reflection, deep listening, and trust in one’s intuition. Unlike The Magician, who actively shapes reality, The High Priestess receives, observes, and understands without force. She reminds us that not all answers are found in logic or external sources—some truths must be felt and known from within.
The High Priestess and Healing
The High Priestess offers a deeply spiritual and introspective approach to healing, emphasizing trusting inner wisdom, embracing stillness, and uncovering hidden truths.
Healing Through Intuitive Awareness
Healing often requires listening to the body, emotions, and subconscious signals. The High Priestess teaches that healing is not always about action but about understanding the deeper causes of pain and imbalance. Whether through meditation, dreams, or gut instincts, she urges us to trust what we already know deep within.
Healing Through Stillness and Reflection
Unlike many cards that push for forward movement, The High Priestess emphasizes the importance of pausing and allowing insight to surface naturally. Healing sometimes requires space and patience, allowing emotions, wounds, and answers to emerge in their own time. Trying to rush the process or force solutions may only create resistance.
Healing Through Shadow Work and Unveiling Hidden Truths
The High Priestess governs the subconscious mind, making her a powerful guide in uncovering hidden wounds, suppressed emotions, or past traumas. She encourages deep inner work—journaling, therapy, or spiritual practices that bring subconscious issues to light. True healing comes not from avoiding pain but from understanding and integrating what has been hidden.
The High Priestess Reversed: Overview
When The High Priestess appears reversed, her energy shifts from inner wisdom and trust to disconnection, doubt, and ignoring intuition. The reversed High Priestess suggests that a person may be disconnected from their inner voice, suppressing emotions, or refusing to see the truth.
This card can indicate mental clutter, self-doubt, or an over-reliance on external opinions rather than trusting one’s own instincts. It may also suggest secrets, deception, or repressed emotions that are blocking healing. When reversed, The High Priestess warns that ignoring one’s intuition may lead to confusion, stagnation, or further emotional distress.
The High Priestess Reversed and Healing
The reversed High Priestess highlights the ways in which disconnection from the self and avoidance of deeper truths can hinder healing.
Healing Through Reconnecting with Inner Wisdom
When reversed, The High Priestess suggests that someone is struggling to trust their intuition or may feel lost, unsure, or disconnected from their emotions. Healing in this case requires slowing down, removing external distractions, and relearning how to trust oneself. Meditation, solitude, or even intuitive practices like tarot can help re-establish a connection to one’s inner knowing.
Healing Through Acknowledging Suppressed Emotions
Reversed, this card can indicate denial, avoidance, or buried emotions that need to be acknowledged. Whether it’s past trauma, ignored feelings, or unresolved grief, the reversed High Priestess warns that what is suppressed does not disappear—it waits, affecting well-being in subtle but powerful ways. Healing requires the courage to face and process what has been ignored.
Healing Through Honesty and Clarity
The reversed High Priestess can also warn of illusions, deception, or confusion clouding the healing process. This could come from external sources—misleading advice, dishonest relationships—or from within, such as self-deception. True healing requires seeking clarity, being honest about one’s emotions, and removing distractions or influences that obscure the truth.
Final Thoughts
The High Priestess, both upright and reversed, teaches that healing is a deeply internal process. Upright, she encourages listening to intuition, embracing stillness, and uncovering subconscious wounds. Reversed, she warns against self-doubt, emotional suppression, and deception as blocks to healing.
This card reminds us that true healing is not always about action—it is also about awareness, acceptance, and trust in the wisdom already within us. Whether by learning to trust oneself again, facing hidden emotions, or seeking clarity, The High Priestess is a powerful guide on the journey to inner healing.
Part of the self-designed Healing Tarot deck – coming soon.
