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The hajarel aswad (black stone) set in an outer corner of the Kaaba, can also be rendered as hajarel fehm, ‘stone of wisdom,’ the philosopher’s stone. The word for stone in Arabic is associated with the word for hidden/forbidden. In Sufi law, (as in Gnosticism and as carried over into alchemy), it was through the finding of this philosopher’s stone within that man could be reunited with his essence, the Sufi goal being the regeneration of an essential part of humanity. Interestingly, in Islamic tradition the black stone was originally a white pearl, while in the Gnostic ‘Robe of Glory’ the soul descends to obtain the white pearl.
Naturally formed and hidden in the oyster shell on the ocean bed, the pearl is an ancient symbol of the treasures of the soul. We are all acquainted with the expression ‘pearls of wisdom.’ The pearl is the self-luminous; it is transcendent wisdom: Sophia herself. Yet it is also the ‘pearl of great price.’ Diving for pearls represents metaphorically the unfolding and development of man’s quest for enlightenment. For in order to attain these pearls of transcendent wisdom, one must risk the dive into the unknown, the darkness of the oceans deeps. Hence one of the fundamental meanings of Sophia, as of the High Priestess, is to reveal the ‘treasures of darkness, and hidden riches of secret places.’[34]
The self-luminous pearl points to the mystery of inner light. In the Wisdom of Solomon, Sophia is herself described as: ‘the brightness of the everlasting light, the unspotted mirror of the power of God.’[35] Qabbalistically Sophia is the Shekinah, the feminine aspect of God, the Indwelling Glory and refulgent light. The Shekinah implies the divine presence as contrasted with the divine transcendence. As the High Priestess harmonizes the two pillars, so the Shekinah illuminates the Temple of Solomon when the two pillars are in perfect equilibrium. She is the link of the chain which locks together the divine and human dimensions, and her titles in her period of exile are, fittingly, ‘the precious stone,’ ‘the corner-stone’ and ‘the pearl.’
The work of Qabbalah is to recreate the ladder of ascent by which the Shekinah, the pearl, may return to union with the creator. This implies the divine presence and divine transcendence seeking union with each other; or light seeking, in its own darkness, the light of its own reflection; the reflection being of course one of Chokmah’s attributes, as indeed is the ‘inner robe of glory.’
In the conclusion to the Gnostic ‘Song of the Pearl’ a messenger is sent from the heights to awaken the sleeping soul. Yet the soul must be willing and able to read the message before it can be led back to its origins where it receives again the robe of glory it had shed on descending:
‘Suddenly, I saw the garment made like unto me as it had been in a mirror.
And I saw it wholly in myself, and knew and saw myself through it,
that we were divided asunder, being of one; and again were one in shape.’[36]
Sophia, or the soul, then, seeks herself. She is both the black stone and the white pearl. This is the heart of the meaning of the High Priestess, for her concern is with one’s own relationship to oneself. It is this, most fundamental of all relationships that will determine the nature of our relationships with others. Yet there is here another mystery.
The word ‘Shekinah’, the divine presence, derives from shakhan, meaning ‘to dwell’; it is the true dwelling place of the soul. Yet, just as it was the Shekinah who guided the Israelites ‘on a miraculous journey ... leading them through...deep waters’,[37] so it is the Shekinah, the true home of the soul, who is also the soul’s companion in exile.
Thus unrecognised, the soul’s true home is also its eternal companion, waiting to be re-embraced. She is the mystery of the High Priestess awaiting to initiate us into Self-awareness. For the High Priestess is the goddess within, the presence of the Shekinah in our inner temple. She is Sophia who has accompanied us into our exile, the soul’s companion through the life journey, just as Wisdom accompanied Adam into captivity:
‘She ... went down into the dungeon with him, nor did she leave him when he was in chains.’[38]
The High Priestess is the messenger and companion without whom we could begin neither the descent – nor the subsequent ascent. For, in order to complete the circle, the soul must travel the inner journey homewards. It must navigate again the waters of Lethe, but this time in a contrary direction.[**]
The High Priestess is mistress of duality, or mistress of the mysteries of parallel unity. Yet her hazardous ways are veiled in obscurity through our lack of knowledge. Trusting in her paradoxical, inscrutable wisdom, the soul must dare the passage into the underworld, navigating the mysteries of the unconscious to re-embrace within the light of gnosis. For, mystically the journey into the depths has always been, simultaneously, the journey to the heights.
The myth of the awakening of the unconscious soul by the Spirit of Wisdom passed down into Gnostic hands by way of the esoteric traditions of Egypt, Greece and Sumeria. Indeed, this arduous journey through the veil of the High Priestess is best symbolized in the ancient Sumerian myth of Inanna’s descent through the seven gates of the underworld, to meet face to face with her dark sister-self Ereshkigal:
From the Great Above she opened her ear to the Great Below...
Inanna abandoned heaven and earth to descend to the underworld.
She abandoned her office of holy priestess to descend to the underworld.[39]
Bejewelled, with the ‘seven divine decrees’ fastened at her side, and the ‘crown of the plain’ on her head, Inanna, Lady of resplendent light, is ready to enter the underworld. Yet in the course of her descent she must pass through seven gates at each of which she must shed a personal belonging, beginning with the crown and ending at the seventh gate with all the remaining garments of her body. Thus having shed the ‘seven veils’ which covered her, Inanna stands naked before her opposite, her dark sister Ereshkigal. For Inanna and Ereshkigal, the light and the dark sisters, are together the dual form of the one goddess, ‘and their confrontation,’ so Campbell informs us, ‘epitomizes the whole sense of the difficult road of trials’:
The hero, man or woman, discovers and assimilates his opposite (his own unsuspected self). One by one the resistances are broken. He must put aside his pride, his virtue, beauty and life, and bow or submit to the absolutely intolerable. Then he finds that he and his opposite are not of differing species, but one flesh.[40]
Joining together the Great Above with the Great Below, the doors to which she holds both keys, Inanna descends to be re-united with her underworld aspect. It is the ancient Sumerian Inanna who provides the link between the neolithic Great Mother and the Biblical Eve, Sophia and Mary. ‘Her imagery is the foundation of Sophia (the Hebrew Hokmah, or Wisdom), the Gnostic Great Mother and even the medieval Shekinah of the Jewish Kabbalah.’[41]
Inanna too wears the moon’s horns, and her girdle is the zodiac - the zodiac being the mundane chakra of Chokmah. Like Isis, she is radiant light and sorrowing mother, while with the dark face of Ereshkigal she is the restorer of life through inner death.
In Greek myth Ereshkigal becomes Persephone, ‘she who shines in the dark.’ The myth evokes the mysteries of Eleusis with mother and daughter, Demeter and Kore, brought together in the role of Persephone. In this way the domain of feminine consciousness is extended to encompass both the above and the below, embracing a more complete personality which, like the High Priestess, partakes of the nature of duality to comprehend her roots in infinity.
Persephone, like Black Isis and Ereshkigal, is Queen of the Underworld, protectress of the dead, daughter of the mysteries. As the sorrowing wife of Hades: ‘the Unseen One,’ she holds the keys to the inner kingdoms and unlocks the way within. It is these keys, one of silver and one of gold that we sometimes see in the hands of the High Priestess: the keys to reason and imagination, the sun and moon, the higher and the lower. They are the keys to the levels of consciousness which Persephone, as both mother and daughter, roams between.
Persephone was obliged to remain a part of the year in the Underworld because sh
e had eaten some pomegranate seeds. Accordingly, in one of the best of the modern packs, the Rider-Waite depiction of the High Priestess shows pomegranates on the veil draped between the two pillars which must be passed through for initiation into the mysteries. As Caitlin Mathews points out,[42] in both Hebrew (Chokmah) and Latin (sapere, sapientia) the word for wisdom means ‘to taste.’ This is still evident in our own use of the word ‘sapient’ to indicate both the qualities of taste and wisdom. Be it the pomegranate seeds of Persephone, the apple from the tree of knowledge or the three drops from the magic cauldron, this ‘tasting’ is necessary to the gaining of wisdom. To know and participate in the mystery that is life we must partake of the nourishment of experience. The High Priestess in Chokmah is the wisdom of maturity, the transformative wisdom gained through the taste of experience for it is only the wayfarer who ‘Can burst Joy’s grape against his palate fine/His soul shall taste the sadness of her might.’[43] Appropriately, corresponding to the High Priestess in Chokmah is the letter Beth, which in hieroglyphic writing symbolises the human mouth.
As Prajña-Paramita (prajña = wisdom), the Buddhist version of Sophia appears with the manuscript of that very same transcendent wisdom which she herself personifies, so, from early times, the High Priestess has been shown holding a book, or in some decks a scroll, representing the book of sacred wisdom. Again this is in keeping with Chokmah; for it is in the second sefirah that the twenty-two letters for the transmission of wisdom were ‘engraved and hewed.’
The veil itself is a symbol of the mysteries. In some packs the veil is shown covering the face of the High Priestess; in others it is draped between the two pillars, with the High Priestess sitting before it. Here she guards against anyone passing through to those challenges they are not yet strong enough to encounter, or from facing in themselves what they are not yet sufficiently prepared to meet.
The image of the Veiled Goddess, the Dark Woman of Knowledge, lies at the foundation level of many ancient traditions of spiritual knowledge, the veil representing the means of concealment of the face of the mysteries, the silence of that which cannot be spoken. We still talk today of ‘taking the veil’ for the nuns in Christian tradition who choose to devote their lives to the spiritual path.
Ultimately, however, the veil is ‘the famous veil or Robe of Isis that no “mortal”... has raised, for that veil was the spiritual nature of man himself, and to raise it he had to transcend the limits of individuality, break the bonds of death and become consciously immortal.’[44]
The way of Sophia, the path of the High Priestess is, then, never easy, whether the experiential journey on which she is our guide and companion is inner or external. The card may signify hardship, or difficult lessons in store. Yet the lessons are those we ourselves, guided from within, have chosen as a means to break down the barriers to the Self, and to become more aware of who and what we are. They are the lessons the wisdom of the soul knows we are ready to be challenged by in order to evolve spiritually and to further our self-development. For, we are told in Ecclesiasticus, Wisdom leads her disciple ‘by tortuous ways ... her discipline will be a torment to him, and her decrees a hard test, until he trusts her with all his heart.’[45] But when her ways are met, ‘Then shall her fetters be a strong defence for thee, and her chains a robe of glory.’[46]
The High Priestess is both reconciler and restorer. She is Sophia, at once transcendent as the radiant light, and manifest as the world soul lost and wandering in sorrow. She is Isis searching the world to reassemble the pieces of the dead Osiris, or both Demeter searching in sorrow for her missing daughter, and the daughter who has descended into the world of experience necessary for the continuation of growth. And she is Psyche, meaning soul, who, though warned not to for she is not yet ready, looks by stealth on the brightness of her beloved Eros and thereby loses him. The journey Psyche undertakes to seek Eros is a journey which imposes seemingly impossible tasks and will eventually lead her into the realm of the underworld to face Persephone. Yet the journey is itself the initiation process to raise her to the level of being consciously able to embrace the effulgent light of the pure love she has lost.
As goddess of the mysteries, the High Priestess offers a glimpse of a return to wholeness through inner paths, deepening our understanding by leading us into ourselves to face and experience the hidden, unknown dimensions. The High Priestess, like Inanna, Isis, Sophia, softly illumines the need to allow ourselves to be vulnerable, to put pride aside and set ourselves forward to gain through exposure to experience. Certainly this will mean mistakes and probable sadness, and may even mean failure; yet always there will be gain which can be used to further our chances of success in the future when, through our experience, we have learnt to know ourselves better. For, best summed up in the words of Baring and Cashford, the Spirit of Wisdom is ‘the guiding archetype of human evolution ... an image that embraces all human experience, inspiring trust in the capacity of the soul to find its way back to the source.’[47]
Ratziel, the archangel of Chokmah, is the Bright Angel of the Soul of Man who brings illumination and guidance. Likewise, the High Priestess is she who leads us first in the descent down the tree that we may attain to individual awareness in the Kingdom (Malkuth), and then she is the guide who leads us back again to wisdom, to awareness of individuation, to clothe ourselves again in the robe of glory of our self-hood, just as Inanna was given back her robes on reascending.
The High Priestess is classed as feminine for the soul has always been classed as such, yet her qualities are equally masculine for she is the counterpoise and reconciler of the opposites. Guiding the soul in its concentrated struggle to restore the equilibrium between feminine and masculine, Magician and Strength, she represents equally the male as well as the female aspirant. Situated in Chokmah she is both dynamic and passive, a reflection and a pouring forth, her concern centred in the cosmic significance of polarity.
Finally, in this Tarot card we find the simple message to take heed of the opposite within which forms a counterpoise to the deficiencies of the standpoint of the conscious ego, making up for what we outwardly neglect. The High Priestess is the voice of intuition, the voice of the inner being sharing our experience and able to discern, far better than the conscious ego, the underlying patterns which shape our destiny.
The Queen of Swords and the Queen of Wands
The Queens of Swords and Wands are the hand-maidens of the High Priestess, belonging, like the balancing pillars, one on either side, where they embody different attributes of the Sophia myth.
‘Pearls are for tears’ we say in common tradition, and it is pearls such as these we must accept with the card of the Queen of Swords. As weeping corresponds to the sefirah of Chokmah, so this queen is Sophia, or the High Priestess in her sorrowing mantle. Hers is the face of Isis, Inanna or Sophia we can empathize with, for it is the face of the goddess become human and undergoing pain and sadness. She may once have lived in satisfied contentment, perhaps as wife and mother, but has since discovered that:
...in the very temple of Delight
Veil’d Melancholy has her sovran shrine[48]
and now suffers under the loneliness of trial and loss, weeping for that which is absent in her life.
The Queen of Swords represents the single person, male or female, struggling to make ends meet, and having to survive with sole reliance on their own resources. Like the goddesses who have lost their loved one, she may be widowed or divorced, or simply forced to cope alone in straitened circumstances. Past relationships and the hopes therein may have broken apart and there may now be no-one with whom she feels ready to share her life. Emotionally she may be lonely, yet her solitariness is also her source of strength.
The role of Sophia as ‘the strong woman who survives in the face of adversity and rescues her treasures to display them at a more suitable time’[49] is the role most relevant to the Queen of Swords. Lunar based, she is concerned with the ebb and flow of tides, with accepting with resignat
ion that periods of hardship, just like periods of joy, have their place in the waxing and waning of the continuous, and concurrent, cycles of growth.
She may regret her childless state, or like Isis she may have been left alone with a child on her hands. Where there are children, they will either be too young to share the burdens of responsibility, or they will be old enough to have already left, or to be leaving the parental home. In the first case the Queen of Swords represents usually the single parent, perhaps trying to balance work commitments with the raising of a young child or children. In the latter case she represents the aging parent, left alone to reassemble the strands of the past and present into a pattern meaningful to the remaining years of her life.
The sadness of watching her children leave the parental home, no longer children now but adults, is mingled with the pleasure felt in having raised them to that stage of independence. Here also is the anticipation that, as adults making their own way, an equally strong bond based on the insights of maturity can be given scope to develop. Slowly growing through the stages she has long passed, they will be able to recognise the difficulties she has come through and will gradually, with developed insight, be able to appreciate and understand her on a deeper level, for who she is in herself, as she has tried to understand them.
These two aspects, the infancy and maturity or youth and age, correspond to the crescent moons on the Isis head-dress of the High Priestess. Although the Queen of Swords is the lunar face of the High Priestess, she is never the full moon. Her light is the partial light of the crescent, beginning to wax, beginning to wane, but never revealing the full picture.
With the Queen of Swords there are always aspects which remain hidden. Faces and events of the past which have left their mark glide in and out of memory, seeming through the vicissitudes of time like phantasms belonging to an era which increasingly seems unreal. Forgotten truths float tantalizingly to the surface, but like the light of the moon on water, resist the grasp of the closed intellect and the empirical embrace.
Naturally formed and hidden in the oyster shell on the ocean bed, the pearl is an ancient symbol of the treasures of the soul. We are all acquainted with the expression ‘pearls of wisdom.’ The pearl is the self-luminous; it is transcendent wisdom: Sophia herself. Yet it is also the ‘pearl of great price.’ Diving for pearls represents metaphorically the unfolding and development of man’s quest for enlightenment. For in order to attain these pearls of transcendent wisdom, one must risk the dive into the unknown, the darkness of the oceans deeps. Hence one of the fundamental meanings of Sophia, as of the High Priestess, is to reveal the ‘treasures of darkness, and hidden riches of secret places.’[34]
The self-luminous pearl points to the mystery of inner light. In the Wisdom of Solomon, Sophia is herself described as: ‘the brightness of the everlasting light, the unspotted mirror of the power of God.’[35] Qabbalistically Sophia is the Shekinah, the feminine aspect of God, the Indwelling Glory and refulgent light. The Shekinah implies the divine presence as contrasted with the divine transcendence. As the High Priestess harmonizes the two pillars, so the Shekinah illuminates the Temple of Solomon when the two pillars are in perfect equilibrium. She is the link of the chain which locks together the divine and human dimensions, and her titles in her period of exile are, fittingly, ‘the precious stone,’ ‘the corner-stone’ and ‘the pearl.’
The work of Qabbalah is to recreate the ladder of ascent by which the Shekinah, the pearl, may return to union with the creator. This implies the divine presence and divine transcendence seeking union with each other; or light seeking, in its own darkness, the light of its own reflection; the reflection being of course one of Chokmah’s attributes, as indeed is the ‘inner robe of glory.’
In the conclusion to the Gnostic ‘Song of the Pearl’ a messenger is sent from the heights to awaken the sleeping soul. Yet the soul must be willing and able to read the message before it can be led back to its origins where it receives again the robe of glory it had shed on descending:
‘Suddenly, I saw the garment made like unto me as it had been in a mirror.
And I saw it wholly in myself, and knew and saw myself through it,
that we were divided asunder, being of one; and again were one in shape.’[36]
Sophia, or the soul, then, seeks herself. She is both the black stone and the white pearl. This is the heart of the meaning of the High Priestess, for her concern is with one’s own relationship to oneself. It is this, most fundamental of all relationships that will determine the nature of our relationships with others. Yet there is here another mystery.
The word ‘Shekinah’, the divine presence, derives from shakhan, meaning ‘to dwell’; it is the true dwelling place of the soul. Yet, just as it was the Shekinah who guided the Israelites ‘on a miraculous journey ... leading them through...deep waters’,[37] so it is the Shekinah, the true home of the soul, who is also the soul’s companion in exile.
Thus unrecognised, the soul’s true home is also its eternal companion, waiting to be re-embraced. She is the mystery of the High Priestess awaiting to initiate us into Self-awareness. For the High Priestess is the goddess within, the presence of the Shekinah in our inner temple. She is Sophia who has accompanied us into our exile, the soul’s companion through the life journey, just as Wisdom accompanied Adam into captivity:
‘She ... went down into the dungeon with him, nor did she leave him when he was in chains.’[38]
The High Priestess is the messenger and companion without whom we could begin neither the descent – nor the subsequent ascent. For, in order to complete the circle, the soul must travel the inner journey homewards. It must navigate again the waters of Lethe, but this time in a contrary direction.[**]
The High Priestess is mistress of duality, or mistress of the mysteries of parallel unity. Yet her hazardous ways are veiled in obscurity through our lack of knowledge. Trusting in her paradoxical, inscrutable wisdom, the soul must dare the passage into the underworld, navigating the mysteries of the unconscious to re-embrace within the light of gnosis. For, mystically the journey into the depths has always been, simultaneously, the journey to the heights.
The myth of the awakening of the unconscious soul by the Spirit of Wisdom passed down into Gnostic hands by way of the esoteric traditions of Egypt, Greece and Sumeria. Indeed, this arduous journey through the veil of the High Priestess is best symbolized in the ancient Sumerian myth of Inanna’s descent through the seven gates of the underworld, to meet face to face with her dark sister-self Ereshkigal:
From the Great Above she opened her ear to the Great Below...
Inanna abandoned heaven and earth to descend to the underworld.
She abandoned her office of holy priestess to descend to the underworld.[39]
Bejewelled, with the ‘seven divine decrees’ fastened at her side, and the ‘crown of the plain’ on her head, Inanna, Lady of resplendent light, is ready to enter the underworld. Yet in the course of her descent she must pass through seven gates at each of which she must shed a personal belonging, beginning with the crown and ending at the seventh gate with all the remaining garments of her body. Thus having shed the ‘seven veils’ which covered her, Inanna stands naked before her opposite, her dark sister Ereshkigal. For Inanna and Ereshkigal, the light and the dark sisters, are together the dual form of the one goddess, ‘and their confrontation,’ so Campbell informs us, ‘epitomizes the whole sense of the difficult road of trials’:
The hero, man or woman, discovers and assimilates his opposite (his own unsuspected self). One by one the resistances are broken. He must put aside his pride, his virtue, beauty and life, and bow or submit to the absolutely intolerable. Then he finds that he and his opposite are not of differing species, but one flesh.[40]
Joining together the Great Above with the Great Below, the doors to which she holds both keys, Inanna descends to be re-united with her underworld aspect. It is the ancient Sumerian Inanna who provides the link between the neolithic Great Mother and the Biblical Eve, Sophia and Mary. ‘Her imagery is the foundation of Sophia (the Hebrew Hokmah, or Wisdom), the Gnostic Great Mother and even the medieval Shekinah of the Jewish Kabbalah.’[41]
Inanna too wears the moon’s horns, and her girdle is the zodiac - the zodiac being the mundane chakra of Chokmah. Like Isis, she is radiant light and sorrowing mother, while with the dark face of Ereshkigal she is the restorer of life through inner death.
In Greek myth Ereshkigal becomes Persephone, ‘she who shines in the dark.’ The myth evokes the mysteries of Eleusis with mother and daughter, Demeter and Kore, brought together in the role of Persephone. In this way the domain of feminine consciousness is extended to encompass both the above and the below, embracing a more complete personality which, like the High Priestess, partakes of the nature of duality to comprehend her roots in infinity.
Persephone, like Black Isis and Ereshkigal, is Queen of the Underworld, protectress of the dead, daughter of the mysteries. As the sorrowing wife of Hades: ‘the Unseen One,’ she holds the keys to the inner kingdoms and unlocks the way within. It is these keys, one of silver and one of gold that we sometimes see in the hands of the High Priestess: the keys to reason and imagination, the sun and moon, the higher and the lower. They are the keys to the levels of consciousness which Persephone, as both mother and daughter, roams between.
Persephone was obliged to remain a part of the year in the Underworld because sh
e had eaten some pomegranate seeds. Accordingly, in one of the best of the modern packs, the Rider-Waite depiction of the High Priestess shows pomegranates on the veil draped between the two pillars which must be passed through for initiation into the mysteries. As Caitlin Mathews points out,[42] in both Hebrew (Chokmah) and Latin (sapere, sapientia) the word for wisdom means ‘to taste.’ This is still evident in our own use of the word ‘sapient’ to indicate both the qualities of taste and wisdom. Be it the pomegranate seeds of Persephone, the apple from the tree of knowledge or the three drops from the magic cauldron, this ‘tasting’ is necessary to the gaining of wisdom. To know and participate in the mystery that is life we must partake of the nourishment of experience. The High Priestess in Chokmah is the wisdom of maturity, the transformative wisdom gained through the taste of experience for it is only the wayfarer who ‘Can burst Joy’s grape against his palate fine/His soul shall taste the sadness of her might.’[43] Appropriately, corresponding to the High Priestess in Chokmah is the letter Beth, which in hieroglyphic writing symbolises the human mouth.
As Prajña-Paramita (prajña = wisdom), the Buddhist version of Sophia appears with the manuscript of that very same transcendent wisdom which she herself personifies, so, from early times, the High Priestess has been shown holding a book, or in some decks a scroll, representing the book of sacred wisdom. Again this is in keeping with Chokmah; for it is in the second sefirah that the twenty-two letters for the transmission of wisdom were ‘engraved and hewed.’
The veil itself is a symbol of the mysteries. In some packs the veil is shown covering the face of the High Priestess; in others it is draped between the two pillars, with the High Priestess sitting before it. Here she guards against anyone passing through to those challenges they are not yet strong enough to encounter, or from facing in themselves what they are not yet sufficiently prepared to meet.
The image of the Veiled Goddess, the Dark Woman of Knowledge, lies at the foundation level of many ancient traditions of spiritual knowledge, the veil representing the means of concealment of the face of the mysteries, the silence of that which cannot be spoken. We still talk today of ‘taking the veil’ for the nuns in Christian tradition who choose to devote their lives to the spiritual path.
Ultimately, however, the veil is ‘the famous veil or Robe of Isis that no “mortal”... has raised, for that veil was the spiritual nature of man himself, and to raise it he had to transcend the limits of individuality, break the bonds of death and become consciously immortal.’[44]
The way of Sophia, the path of the High Priestess is, then, never easy, whether the experiential journey on which she is our guide and companion is inner or external. The card may signify hardship, or difficult lessons in store. Yet the lessons are those we ourselves, guided from within, have chosen as a means to break down the barriers to the Self, and to become more aware of who and what we are. They are the lessons the wisdom of the soul knows we are ready to be challenged by in order to evolve spiritually and to further our self-development. For, we are told in Ecclesiasticus, Wisdom leads her disciple ‘by tortuous ways ... her discipline will be a torment to him, and her decrees a hard test, until he trusts her with all his heart.’[45] But when her ways are met, ‘Then shall her fetters be a strong defence for thee, and her chains a robe of glory.’[46]
The High Priestess is both reconciler and restorer. She is Sophia, at once transcendent as the radiant light, and manifest as the world soul lost and wandering in sorrow. She is Isis searching the world to reassemble the pieces of the dead Osiris, or both Demeter searching in sorrow for her missing daughter, and the daughter who has descended into the world of experience necessary for the continuation of growth. And she is Psyche, meaning soul, who, though warned not to for she is not yet ready, looks by stealth on the brightness of her beloved Eros and thereby loses him. The journey Psyche undertakes to seek Eros is a journey which imposes seemingly impossible tasks and will eventually lead her into the realm of the underworld to face Persephone. Yet the journey is itself the initiation process to raise her to the level of being consciously able to embrace the effulgent light of the pure love she has lost.
As goddess of the mysteries, the High Priestess offers a glimpse of a return to wholeness through inner paths, deepening our understanding by leading us into ourselves to face and experience the hidden, unknown dimensions. The High Priestess, like Inanna, Isis, Sophia, softly illumines the need to allow ourselves to be vulnerable, to put pride aside and set ourselves forward to gain through exposure to experience. Certainly this will mean mistakes and probable sadness, and may even mean failure; yet always there will be gain which can be used to further our chances of success in the future when, through our experience, we have learnt to know ourselves better. For, best summed up in the words of Baring and Cashford, the Spirit of Wisdom is ‘the guiding archetype of human evolution ... an image that embraces all human experience, inspiring trust in the capacity of the soul to find its way back to the source.’[47]
Ratziel, the archangel of Chokmah, is the Bright Angel of the Soul of Man who brings illumination and guidance. Likewise, the High Priestess is she who leads us first in the descent down the tree that we may attain to individual awareness in the Kingdom (Malkuth), and then she is the guide who leads us back again to wisdom, to awareness of individuation, to clothe ourselves again in the robe of glory of our self-hood, just as Inanna was given back her robes on reascending.
The High Priestess is classed as feminine for the soul has always been classed as such, yet her qualities are equally masculine for she is the counterpoise and reconciler of the opposites. Guiding the soul in its concentrated struggle to restore the equilibrium between feminine and masculine, Magician and Strength, she represents equally the male as well as the female aspirant. Situated in Chokmah she is both dynamic and passive, a reflection and a pouring forth, her concern centred in the cosmic significance of polarity.
Finally, in this Tarot card we find the simple message to take heed of the opposite within which forms a counterpoise to the deficiencies of the standpoint of the conscious ego, making up for what we outwardly neglect. The High Priestess is the voice of intuition, the voice of the inner being sharing our experience and able to discern, far better than the conscious ego, the underlying patterns which shape our destiny.
The Queen of Swords and the Queen of Wands
The Queens of Swords and Wands are the hand-maidens of the High Priestess, belonging, like the balancing pillars, one on either side, where they embody different attributes of the Sophia myth.
‘Pearls are for tears’ we say in common tradition, and it is pearls such as these we must accept with the card of the Queen of Swords. As weeping corresponds to the sefirah of Chokmah, so this queen is Sophia, or the High Priestess in her sorrowing mantle. Hers is the face of Isis, Inanna or Sophia we can empathize with, for it is the face of the goddess become human and undergoing pain and sadness. She may once have lived in satisfied contentment, perhaps as wife and mother, but has since discovered that:
...in the very temple of Delight
Veil’d Melancholy has her sovran shrine[48]
and now suffers under the loneliness of trial and loss, weeping for that which is absent in her life.
The Queen of Swords represents the single person, male or female, struggling to make ends meet, and having to survive with sole reliance on their own resources. Like the goddesses who have lost their loved one, she may be widowed or divorced, or simply forced to cope alone in straitened circumstances. Past relationships and the hopes therein may have broken apart and there may now be no-one with whom she feels ready to share her life. Emotionally she may be lonely, yet her solitariness is also her source of strength.
The role of Sophia as ‘the strong woman who survives in the face of adversity and rescues her treasures to display them at a more suitable time’[49] is the role most relevant to the Queen of Swords. Lunar based, she is concerned with the ebb and flow of tides, with accepting with resignat
ion that periods of hardship, just like periods of joy, have their place in the waxing and waning of the continuous, and concurrent, cycles of growth.
She may regret her childless state, or like Isis she may have been left alone with a child on her hands. Where there are children, they will either be too young to share the burdens of responsibility, or they will be old enough to have already left, or to be leaving the parental home. In the first case the Queen of Swords represents usually the single parent, perhaps trying to balance work commitments with the raising of a young child or children. In the latter case she represents the aging parent, left alone to reassemble the strands of the past and present into a pattern meaningful to the remaining years of her life.
The sadness of watching her children leave the parental home, no longer children now but adults, is mingled with the pleasure felt in having raised them to that stage of independence. Here also is the anticipation that, as adults making their own way, an equally strong bond based on the insights of maturity can be given scope to develop. Slowly growing through the stages she has long passed, they will be able to recognise the difficulties she has come through and will gradually, with developed insight, be able to appreciate and understand her on a deeper level, for who she is in herself, as she has tried to understand them.
These two aspects, the infancy and maturity or youth and age, correspond to the crescent moons on the Isis head-dress of the High Priestess. Although the Queen of Swords is the lunar face of the High Priestess, she is never the full moon. Her light is the partial light of the crescent, beginning to wax, beginning to wane, but never revealing the full picture.
With the Queen of Swords there are always aspects which remain hidden. Faces and events of the past which have left their mark glide in and out of memory, seeming through the vicissitudes of time like phantasms belonging to an era which increasingly seems unreal. Forgotten truths float tantalizingly to the surface, but like the light of the moon on water, resist the grasp of the closed intellect and the empirical embrace.
The Fool's Journey