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Major Arcana II

The High Priestess

Silence, knowledge and perception

  • silence
  • knowledge
  • perception
Card from a black cat between a dark and a light pillar, before a veil of pomegranates, a hidden book and a crescent moon
Major Arcana IIThe High Priestess

Reading the card

Not everything valuable needs to be shown immediately.

The High Priestess invites you to keep a space between what you perceive and what you decide to tell. Observe the nuances, listen to what is still wordless, and let an answer mature before you state it.

Sitting between two pillars and in front of a veil, The High Priestess protects an area that cannot be understood with a single glance. Her silence is not absence: it is unhurried attention, memory and the ability to tolerate the ambiguous. This card proposes to separate an intimate impression from a definitive conclusion. Write down what you perceive, contrast it with the facts, and allow the answer to take shape before sharing it or turning it into a decision.

Documented iconography

Symbols to look slowly.

We separate the motifs inherited from the Rider-Waite-Smith system from any artistic decision of Cat Omens.

  1. RWS Tradition

    The two pillars

    The light and dark pillars frame the threshold between opposites without asking one to eliminate the other.

    The Pictorial Key to the Tarot · Part II
  2. RWS Tradition

    The veil

    The grenades partially cover the background and indicate a knowledge that is not delivered all at once.

    The Pictorial Key to the Tarot · Part II

Origin

What we inherit and what we interpret.

The symbolic structure belongs to a published tradition; the reading and the feline adaptation are an editorial creation of Cat Omens.

Reference system
Rider-Waite-Smith
Editorial layer
Original Cat Omens

Sources consulted