Two very troublesome cards are trumps II and V, labeled the Papess and Pope in traditional French and Italian decks, but renamed High Priestess and Hierophant by the occultists, who identified them with figures in the ancient mystery religions. In modern tarot books, the High Priestess is often exalted as the channel to the highest mystical truths, whereas the Hierophant is a barrier, the symbol of conventional religion and morality who suppresses all creativity and spiritual impulses in his followers. I doubt this is what the original tarot designers had in mind. But be that as it may, here is my own interpretation of the cards, based on the notion that they are both "victory" cards, representing the attainment of a state of equilibrium. The Papess (as intuition) brings balance to one's physical existence, the Pope (as received religion) brings balance to one's social existence.
I'm working with a system of triads, in which the third card of each triad answers the dilemma established by the first two. Thus, the Fool and Magician (Juggler) pose the dilemma: Do you just let life happen to you, or do you use your mind to impose control? The answer comes from the High Priestess, who invites you to use your subconscious/intuitional faculties to make stories about yourself and your world, so that you are neither controlled nor controlling, but rather participant.
We all live by concocting stories, myths, images of the world. We live in the images, not in the world itself. The High Priestess / Papess represents the simplest, earliest, most basic way of making those myths to live by: intuition. Experiencing the world and then letting come whatever myth will come, neither imposing an intellectual structure nor censoring the myth to suit your emotional needs at the time. Both of those tactics are important, but they come later.
I think she is too early in the sequence to be "rising above" emotions and prejudices. Rather, she's in a simpler state, one before these things have become imposed. I like to think about dreams. They are illogical, not because the dreaming mind has mastered logic and risen above it, but because the logical faculty just isn't operating much in the dream state. The same could be said of emotions. Dreams can be emotional, but the emotions don't seem to have much power to direct the dream; the images run off in their own directions and the emotions (like the intellect) just try to keep up, like powerless attendants.
It's interesting that one of the early sources of the image of the Juggler/Magician was probably the artisan, a figure at a rather low rung of the emerging middle class in the renaissance (positioned between the servant and the merchant in the Tarocchi of Mantegna). His is the world of tools and technology, controlling matter through mastering a craft. Ultimately, this humble cobbler or jeweler gave us suspension bridges, VCRs, spacecraft, and intercontinental missiles. Yes, you do have to be careful with him.
He has every reason to see himself as "higher" than the Priestess, who just works with dream images and hasn't gotten into this business of inventing a complex logical structure in the mind and using it to rework the material world. On the other hand, her practice is balanced, it doesn't go spinning out of control and becoming its own justification, like the Magician's technology can do. Our myths/dreams are stable; the subconscious has a simple repertoire of imagery that humans have used since the dawn of time; it knows its center.
In my system, the High Priestess (Papess) is pre-social. She's not concerned with being a part of any system, she's just concerned with being what she is...and "what she is" is an identity formed of sensations, myths, stories, and dreams. She's the imagination creating itself, but very plugged into the experience of the senses, grounded and centered. It's actually a very direct experience of life. But most of us, as we grow up, have our personalities examined, evaluated, and reshaped by social forces, either external or internalized. After that happens, the High Priestess becomes something rather scary, tapping into the subconscious and not very concerned with the mental or emotional consequences of her myth-making. We spend a lot of time making sure she doesn't rise to the surface. She retains her freedom only in dreams and those rare occasions when some of us deliberately ask her to come forward.
Even viewed in my manner, where she represents a very early stage of spiritual maturation, I can understand the mystique surrounding her. She invites us to reclaim a way of perceiving that we used as children, but were trained out of.
I read somewhere a criticism of Jung to the effect that he conflated the subconscious with the superconscious. Is the subconscious a step down, or a step up? I see a lot of variation (and confusion) on this question in tarot books, and it seems to end up concentrated in interpretations of the High Priestess card. It is commonplace to associate her with the subconscious. But what is that, exactly? Is it a childhood reality that must be acknowledged and reclaimed before moving on, or is it a direct channel to the highest levels of spiritual development? I opt for the former, mostly because I've come to see the cards as depicting a spiritual ascent, and it makes no sense to me to have one of the earliest cards in the sequence represent one of the highest spiritual stages.
What's the next triad? Empress, Emperor, Pope. Everyone seems to agree that Empress/Emperor are a mother/father pair. Mommy the nurturer, daddy the rule-maker. These are the Fool and Magician elevated out of the physical world and into the social world. The Empress prompts us to see our social role in terms of compassion; the Emperor's world is about obedience and order.
How does the Pope/Hierophant resolve this dilemma? By telling us to follow tradition, particularly religious tradition. I think one could make a strong historical/anthropological case that the belief systems that are now reflected in the major world religions have all worked hard to address the compassion/discipline dilemma. They develop some kind of conception that the need for compassion and the need for discipline are both served by a sense of moral duty. For many people today, the Pope (either the card or the real one!) is a symbol of moral conservatism, rigidity, and repression. But if we view him as a symbol of the Christian tradition as a whole, then he also subsumes Jesus's emphasis on supplementing The Law with compassion and mercy.
This, too, is a preparation for the spiritual quest depicted in the higher-numbered cards. A socially immature person, trapped either in Empress-mentality (let's take care of everyone) or Emperor-mentality (punish all the law-breakers)--recognize any political parties there?--doesn't have the kind of moral compass needed to go higher without becoming unbalanced. The Pope's function, it is true, is primarily social, not spiritual in the deep sense. But without acknowledging tradition and using it as a guide to living within the human community, spiritual growth is hollow at best.
So here's another point to consider. If the cards are really a progression, then both Papess and Pope represent ways of getting centered in ordinary life, with the Pope working on a somewhat higher level. Many modern tarot users have a nice streak of counter-culture in them (I include myself), and can get quite livid at the suggestion that the Hierophant is a "higher" state of development than the High Priestess, yet I think that is a possibility worth considering. The High Priestess is a solitary figure; she is the mind alone with its stories. The Hierophant has to make those stories community property, he has to bring that sense of balance outside the individual mind and into the culture as a whole. That's a big job. If history's real hierophants have often bungled it, we can hardly wonder at that. But somehow the traditions of the culture record humanity's best efforts to try to do this important job, and they deserve some respectful attention before we move on to the higher cards.
The transition from High Priestess to Hierophant is the transition from myth (personally meaningful stories) to religion (socially appropriate traditions), and represents a maturation. Of course, the cards will eventually draw us away from the social and back to the personal, but I don't see this as implying that the Priestess's approach is vindicated, and the Pope's is proven wrong. Rather, it's an ascending spiral; you have to come to terms with your social nature before the real inner work can begin.
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Copyright © 1998 Tom Tadfor Little