Thoth Tarot · Major Arcana
The Priestess
intuition · mystery · purity · waiting · inner knowledge
A reflective starting point
What is The Priestess asking you to look at?
Meaning changes with the position, the surrounding cards and your question. Take what follows as a language, not a verdict.
Upright
The answer is not yet manifest: trust your intuition and let things ripen. Something important is moving beneath the surface.
At first sight
Hidden knowledge, intuition, developments still in gestation. It advises waiting, observing and listening before you act.
Within you
The inner voice that speaks in images, dreams and premonitions: the receptive, autonomous side of the psyche, which will not be possessed or forced.
On the path
Path 13 from Kether to Tiphareth, the letter Gimel (the camel, 3) and the Moon: the path that crosses the desert of the Abyss and joins the Crown to the Self. The Light veils itself so that it can be contemplated.
The shadow
Ill-dignified, it becomes passivity, coldness, sterile secrecy, or fantasy mistaken for intuition.
Reversed
In the Thoth tradition a reversed card is read through its dignity with the neighbouring cards; this is its shadow side.
Intuition is ignored or confused with fear; isolation, secrets that weigh, a refusal to see what deep down you already know.
In love, work and spirit
Love. A deep but reserved bond, feelings left unspoken; patience and respect for the other person's timing are needed.
Work. A phase of study and observation; confidential information, or information not yet available. Better not to force matters.
Spirit. Meditation, dream work, guarding the purity of your own aspiration.
Correspondences
Gimel ג · path 13 (Kether – Tiphareth) · Spirit · Moon
Crowley's note
Crowley depicts her as Isis and as Artemis, with the bow across her knees and a veil of light that is at once revelation and concealment: her virginity is the intangibility of the spirit.