part0044

Pure, exalted and gracious influence enters the matter. Hence, change, alternation, increase and decrease, fluctuation. There is, however, a liability to be led away by enthusiasm; one may become “moon-struck” unless careful balance is maintained. [187]

Image : A naked female figure, crowned with lunar symbols, sits on a chair with a bow upon her knees. She holds her arms apart, casting a veil of interwoven lines before her. At the foot of the card are crystals and plants in the centre of which is a small camel.

In a deck stacked with brilliant images, that of the High Priestess is of yet another order of sublimity. It is testament to the genius of Crowley’s design and Harris’s art in its representation of the highest levels of mystical experience.

The design is both simple and complex; obvious and enigmatic; stark yet opulent. The use of projective geometric is applied to great effect – the natural curve of her arms creates eddies, swirls in space-time, from which gentle arcs then cascade a mirrored net of glass-like shards, a matrix of sharp edges which stretches into infinity.

It is a card which portrays a mathematical and philosophical truth; even a curve is made up of straight edges, and nothing is ever as it seems.

To Crowley (and indeed, to A. E. Waite) this card is most significant in context of its correspondence on the Tree of Life to the path between Tiphareth and Kether. In mystical terms, these two Sephiroth on the Tree relate to the Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel, and the final realisation of Unity in the Universe. [188] The path between them, to Crowley, represents the thought – or the “intelligible radiance” – of the Angel. [189]

She is the “Priestess of the Silver Star”, that “star” being the True Will (Tiphareth), and the Angel is the presence of light when the true Will is realised in its natural home – in unification with the divine (Kether). The net she casts is the light made manifest in our own realisation of the world, through perception, experience and memory – all the things we think we are and are not at all.

As such, she is described by Crowley as “virginal”, representing the influence of that which is beyond all perception (hence, in a lower sense, ‘intuition’) into manifestation. When it is seen as a creative act, coming down the Tree of Life, it is the means of manifestation – the way in which light is formed into matter. When it is seen as an act of initiation, heading up the Tree of Life, it is the attainment of that influence – an identification with the thought of the Angel, a stepping back from the self into the Abyss.

I was taught that this card is one of the significant ‘change’ cards in the tarot; in this card, it is an illustration of ‘transcendent change’. It is a change that is happening, but we cannot really sense what it is changing, its purpose or eventual outcome. The appearance of the card in a reading – as we will see - is a confirmation that there is more going on than meets the eye.

The image of the camel derives from the correspondence of the High Priestess to the Hebrew letter Gimel , meaning “camel”. Crowley sees the card as illustrating the link between the archetypal and formative worlds; the worlds of Atziluth, Briah and Yetzirah on the Tree of Life. The camel crosses the “abyss” that separates the universe experienced as a continuous and unbounded emanation, without duality, and the universe experienced as a bounded structure.

On the Abyss, Crowley quotes from his own writings, the Book of Lies (falsely so-called) , published in 1911 or 1912, depending on whether Crowley was lying in the imprint date of the book. This book is called the official publication for ‘Babes of the Abyss’, the grade approaching the top of the Tree of Life. It deals with the nature of thought, mystical experience and ritual alike, in a wandering but semi-structured collection of 93 brief one-page chapters.

Crowley quotes the 42nd chapter of that book, entitled “DUST DEVILS”. The quote in the Book of Thoth does not include any commentary but is offered to “assist the student” through meditation. However, he did offer some commentary in the Book of Lies, saying that the section dealt with the formation of the ego, and its transcendence by the “Masters of the Temple”, the grade corresponding to Binah on the Tree of Life.

Thus, the card is an illustration of the transcendence of self and the crossing of the Abyss. It also illustrates the formation of the separated self and ego, from the endless “dust devils” of thought and identity that are not things in themselves but transient experiences. The ego is formed by one such sustained eddy, alike that depicted on the card:

The commentary also identifies the Priestess as the ‘Lady of Initiation”, and, in a sense, the “Holy Guardian Angel”.

The pylons on this card replace the traditional pillars of previous images and connect the card to the notion of initiation. The Priestess sits upon the middle pillar as a perfect balance between the pillars of severity and mercy; sometimes in a reading we might say that before we find this middle path, we might have to go to one extreme or the other until at last we return to the central way.

The Crown of the Priestess is a direct reference to her position on the Tree of Life, “issuing downwards from the Crown”, but also as the “path which leads upwards”. [191] It is thus the symbol of the “highest Initiation”. [192] The Crown is Kether, and in a ‘spiritual’ reading of the card would show that the querent – or oneself – is connected to the very highest source in a particular matter. That is to say, no matter the situation being presented to the deck, the appearance of this card shows it is truly meant to be from the very highest level.

The crown takes the form of the headdress of Isis, the most universal of goddesses. In this form, it is rather a merged symbol from that of Hathor – the more maternal goddess. The horns of the cow are holding the sun, rather than the moon. This might be considered as the ‘white sun’ of Kether, the pure point of divine light, held in the arms of Binah and Chockmah on the Tree of Life.

Crowley also writes that the card “makes a direct connection between the Father in his highest aspect, and the Son in his most perfect manifestation”, i.e. Kether and Tiphareth. [193] In this regard, there may be a literal reading possible for this card in a family or psychological context.

This is the “bow of Artemis” and is described by Crowley as a musical instrument, in that Artemis is a huntress who hunts by enchantment. This recalls his poem, ‘The Altar of Artemis’, in an early collection of his poetry, The Soul of Osiris , published in 1911:

The music of Artemis is her “sweet word” being carried throughout all Nature. In the image, we can see how Harris has set up a resonance pattern; the sound of the universe is being reflected upon itself, making a matrix or net of light. We use this in a reading as a symbol of interconnection – when we listen to our intuition, we listen to everything.

We again see the symbolism of this card pre-shadowed in Crowley’s earlier work. Also found in his poem, ‘The Altar of Artemis’ we see the concept of the net of light:

In the first few cards of the Major Arcana, we are seeing very abstract concepts in correspondence with their high position on the Tree of Life. This is evident in the Waite-Smith Tarot, but even more so in the Thoth Tarot. In a reading, we can look at the overall pattern of Major Arcana as a timing device – the higher up the Tree, the longer the situation will take to manifest, generally. If you have several Major Arcana that are lower on the Tree, i.e. later numbers in the sequence, say XV (Devil), XVIII (Moon) and XXI (Universe), the situation is already manifesting and fixing itself, without much opportunity to change it.

The net is the matrix, the universe as a reverberation of a simple rule being applied an almost infinite number of times.

As she corresponds to the path between Kether and Tiphareth, the Priestess card is the “link between the archetypal and formative worlds”, the worlds of Atziluth, Briah, and Yetzirah on the Tree of Life. She connects the unseen and hidden world from which the patterns of existence arise and then upon which we project the archetypes – or they project us.

The “whorls, crystals, seeds, pods …” we see at the bottom of the card, then, depict “nascent forms” of life, pre-born structures that are becoming manifest. [194] They are the illustration of deep structure giving rise to patterns in perceptual reality. [195]

In this symbolism the Priestess can be read as a half-formed feeling of an idea – something almost literally at the back of our mind or the tip of our tongue. She is “possibility in its second stage without any beginning or consummation”. [196] It is not a particularly useful card to receive in a reading as it is entirely ephemeral; we must look to other cards or positions to understand if the idea can come to anything or has any real impact in everyday life – or at least, an impact about which we can do something.

The appearance of the High Priestess indicates something vague and unreachable, a mystery or a secret. At the same time, it suggests that there is something higher at work, a cosmic reason and re-alignment in a subtle fashion. As with every card, it is dependent – but perhaps more so, in terms of actual observable events – on other cards, the position in a spread, and in context of the question and the oracular moment. It can indicate that it is ourselves who must remain enigmatic and unreachable, or that someone else is maintaining a secret. Whatever is on the edge of our minds, on the tip of our tongue, an as-yet-unspoken or unthought thought, is presenting itself with this card.