The Priestess, also known as the High Priestess, is an Arcana in the Persona series. It is the second numbered card in the Major Arcana, numbered II2, following the Magician and preceding the Empress.
A Tarot de Marseille Popess cardA Rider-Waite-Smith High Priestess card
In tarot, the High Priestess or Popess is the second of the 21 trump cards, which are called "Major Arcana" in esoteric usage. The imagery originates from Italian tarocchi decks, where it was called la Papessa ("the popess"). The Popess card typically features a woman wearing the papal tiara and holding an open book; the image of a female pope would not be unfamiliar in the Middle Ages due to the legend of Popess Joan. Some decks such as the Tarot de Besançon and Swiss 1JJ replace the Popess with the Roman goddess Juno, and the Tarot Flamand replaces it with the Spanish Captain Fracasse (a stock character who would be well-known to the intended audience).
The Rider-Waite-Smith deck changes the imagery from the traditional popess to a more generic high priestess figure; she holds a Torah scroll and sits between pillars labeled "B" and "J" (after the pillars Boaz and Jachin in Solomon's Temple), and her papal tiara is replaced with a horned diadem. According to Waite, the High Priestess's truest name is Shekinah.[1]
Arthur Edward Waite lists the following divinatory meanings in The Pictorial Key to the Tarot: "Secrets, mystery, the future as yet unrevealed; the woman who interests the Querent, if male; the Querent herself, if female; silence, tenacity; mystery, wisdom, science. Reversed: Passion, moral or physical ardour, conceit, surface knowledge."[2]
↑The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1922), Arthur Edward Waite. Published by William Rider & Son Limited. (2nd ed.) pp. 76-79.
↑"The Greater Arcana and Their Divinatory Meanings", The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1922), Arthur Edward Waite. Published by William Rider & Son Limited. (2nd ed.) p. 283.
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