The High Priestess Art and Meaning
About the Deck
Drawn by Court de Gebelin in attempt to show that the Tarot was Egyptian in origin, these cards represent the height of circular logic. They are far more eighteenth-century than they are Egyptian, and in any case they are basically a reproduction of the far older Marseilles pattern tarot deck, with some ideological changes to help him prove his own point.
Provenance
Court de Gebelin. France, 1781.
According to Many Schools of Thought
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings
The High Priestess, the Pope Joan, or Female Pontiff; early expositors have sought to term this card the Mother, or Pope's Wife, which is opposed to the symbolism. It is sometimes held to represent the Divine Law and the Gnosis, in which case the Priestess corresponds to the idea of the Shekinah. She is the Secret Tradition and the higher sense of the instituted Mysteries.
S. L. MacGregor Mathers's Divinatory Meanings
Upright
Science, Wisdom, Knowledge, Education
Reversed
Conceit, Ignorance, Unskilfulness, Superficial Knowledge.
Papus's Divinatory Meanings
Female Inquirer.