2. The Popess / High Priestess: Inner Nature
I open the pages of the book at random, mimicking The Popess. I decide that I will find significance in whatever I stumble upon – and I do. (I was bound to, wasn't I?)
The first couple of sentences aren't the meaningful ones, but the next few are. (It's my game, thank you, and I’ll do it my way.) And so I allow myself a paragraph or two to find my Popess meaning. Here is what my eyes fall upon:
'You have talked and reckoned more than is good for you', said Gandalf. 'How do the side and shoulder feel now?’*
My gaze turns away from the book, which rests on on my lap. I stare into space, just like the Popess, book balancing on my knees, allowing the words do their work on me.
La Papesse
The image to the right show the Popess from the Jodorowsky/Camoin version of the Tarot de Marseille. Note the egg at her back, and her spirit-white complexion.
Shortly after my Nature Awakening, I discovered the Body Scan meditation; an ancient Buddhist practice which draws direct attention to the body sense, how different parts of the body feel in the moment. It can be so liberating to remember and recognise our physical animal-ness, our humanness. We are more than our thoughts, more than Mind!
'You have talked and reckoned more than is good for you,’ said Gandalf.
Haven't we all? Don’t we forget about our bodies, about the felt-sense, lost in our dizzy whirlwind minds?
We are body, earth, solidity.
‘How do the side and shoulder feel now?’ Notice that invitation. Right now, as you read this. What’s going on in your body? Really feel into the body, each part at a time, letting go of any tension. Your body is Nature, and it is desperate for your attention.
La Papess/The Popess/The High Priestess doesn't share her knowledge or experience, her realisation, with others. The curtain is pulled up behind her. This isn’t because she's stingy: it’s just that sometimes, experience can't be shared. How can you share your body scan with me, how it really feels?
The body, the mind, she keeps her spiritual experience to herself, because some things cannot be verbalised. She doesn't look at her book, it rests on her knees, open wide as she stares ahead, perhaps taking it’s messages in, meditating on its wisdom. She reads perpetually, not to get to the end of the book – she never does – but to absorb it's poetry, over and over. The poetry does its work, but it’s the effect of the words that matter, not the words themselves. Does this make sense?
What an incredible gift we have, to let the eyes wander over the pages of a book, for a world of visions to come alive in the mind. You can speak all you like about a book that changed your life, but will another person ever experience what you did? These visions, the worlds that live within you, they must be explored alone; they change your life whilst your partner farts on the sofa besides you, or your annoying neighbours can be heard arguing through the walls.
This inner world is Nature, too. Our intuition is our Nature. Nature is not ‘out there’. The Popess holds the mysteries within, without needing to shout about them. She is mystery itself – a female Pope, no less (little wonder that the powers-that-be in renaissance Europe sought to ban her image from the cards). Whether she is the Waite-Smith High Priestess with a Moon sliver at her feet (or a card iunfluenced by her imagery, like the Osho Zen image pictured below), or the ghostly-pale figure in Jodorowsky’s Tarot of Marseille, incubating a little egg behind her, she works with natural forces without the need to express them to all and sundry.
Inner Voice
Left: The Osho Zen’s version of the Popess / High Priestess. Notice the Moon imagery and the watery depths beneath her.
Good luck trying to explain The Popess or the High Priestess when she appears in your readings. (In my personal experience, she rarely does.) She is the silent magic that you embrace when you meditate or lose yourself in a work of art. Pure Nature. Her words do not do justice to the roads that she travels inside of herself – and she is absolutely fine with that.
Our internal, natural experiences are sometimes best kept secret. The Popess wants you to know that it’s okay.
That’s all for now, friends. Thank you for being here – and please check out my Tarot Therapy Sessions if you’d like us to work together. You can also sign up for the Tarot Blog newsletter (different to my main newsletter) below to receive email updates on every new post.
Smiles from Scotland,
Stephen
*Tolkien, J.R.R, Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, (George Allen & Unwin, 1954)
