The High Priestess

The High Priestess - This is the card which has dominion over what will and will not be allowed to manifest at a given time. Did you ever wonder why you could work and work, bitch, demand, weep and sulk, and still your God/dess did not send that one thing, that wealth, fame, soulmate... Well this it the card that addresses that.

When reading the Major Arcana as "the Book of Life" this card is Hecate, the supreme governess of the borders between the normal world and the spirit world. She knows all about the Fool's past life, and his game plan for this life, and will gift him with a new body only if he is deserving, because bodies are in hot demand.

In a spread this card may stand for the querent as the one who must ultimately decide whether or not to "step through the door" of opportunity opened by the Magus; whether to stay engaged in the comfortable known, or to engage an unknown. In mundane terms this is the cerebrum, charged with the duty of seeing to it that we survive, unfortunately survival can be a gilded cage, one that ultimately shortens life, because there is no reason for a stagnant life to go on. On another level this card may be saying that you do not deserve your soulmate (or what ever) yet. Perhaps you haven't learned to love yourself yet. If not, how can you love your other self? You are the same person. And further, sometimes we don't get what we want because it is the carrot spirit is using to drag us forward, out of tradition, out of judgemental attitudes, out of stagnation and into evolution.

The symbolism in the cards reads thus -
Her foot is on the moon because she has risen above her lesser, lunar/estrogenic nature. Hekate was a virgin Goddess. She sits at the gateway of rebirth. The pillars are paired male and female, just as people are on this material plane. The veil behind her is covered with pomegranates, and palms, the tree and fruit most symbolic of motherhood. But this goddess obstructs the way. In her hand is a scroll that says "Tora_", Torah (Hebrew: "learning" or "instruction," sometimes translated as "Law") which likely has the verdict in it as to the Fool's fate, rebirth or wait. She has the symbol of the cross roads on her chest. Her crown is a stylized brain, with frontal lobe, and the two hemispheres as wings or horns. Her clothes are blue-white to indicate her spectral nature, as well as her virginity.