II · The High Priestess

The High Priestess is the wisdom of knowledge and experience. This is the time to meditate not to act. Take a careful inventory of your surroundings. Look outside yourself. Compare your beliefs with the world around you. Put your assumptions to the test. Test your hypotheses. Falsify your beliefs. Be the naturalist, the scientist, the student—the world of facts is infinite. Try and learn some of them.

Where the Magician represents innate genius, the High Priestess represents the wisdom that comes from close reading of the text, be it the words of a book, the windows of a building, or the isotopes of Bohrium. She is the great student of history and science. Where the Magician tries to access the noumena through self-reflection and self-expression, the High Priestess seeks to understand the great mysteries of life by looking outside herself, by paying attention to the very small and the very large. Where the Magician strives to make it new, the High Priestess studies the past be this the formation of stars and galaxies or nuclei of cells and atoms. Where the Magician is set apart by their genius, the High Priestess seeks to reconcile the experience of all people through the pursuit of truth. Where the Magician uses deductive logic and works from first principles, the High Priestess is an empirical thinker whose careful observations are used to describe the world through inductive propositions. Where the Magician is often prescriptive, she is most often descriptive. She would never tell someone what to do directly, but show through example and experience what she believes to be the correct path to knowledge. She sits in stillness. From there she's able to access realms others pass by without noticing. She uses silence and non-action to harness this power. She is no solipsist. Where the Magician acts, the High Priestess ruminates.

She holds the keys to the doors of knowledge, light, and life. For her, learning is a kind of repeated birth. She never trusts appearances and is never prey to illusion; she is sober. Anyone can acquire her wisdom. You simply follow the path that leads to understanding, keep a taste for life, and know the value of the things around you.

She hides her hard-earned knowledge in a world of men. Do not take her reserved reticence for humility. She is incredibly proud of the hard work she's done to gain her immense knowledge. She is quite judgmental, but would scarcely let you know. Few know what she really thinks. Unlike the Magician she does not divulge her ideas readily. She is no showman. But if she does deign to teach you something, listen carefully. Pay attention!