- II The Priestess
The Priestess (or High Priestess) is a card that many people think they are supposed to love but can't quite understand why. She is certainly not as approachable as the Empress or as encouraging as Strength; she is more like the Catholic school head teacher who rapped Justice on the knuckles to show her the ways of virtue. Aleister Crowley had this to say:
"Pure, exalted and gracious influence enters the matter. Hence, change, alternation, increase and decrease, fluctuation. There is, however, a liability to be led away by enthusiasm; one may become "moon-struck" unless careful balance is maintained."
He kind of misses the crystalline aloofness that seems to suit the more exalted expression of the Moon, and that derives from her reputation for inscrutability as intimated by A.E. Waite, who defined her as "Secrets, mystery, the future as yet unrevealed; silence, tenacity; mystery, wisdom,
science." The text after Crowley's linking word "Hence" doesn't seem to follow logically from his opening ideas. The artwork of Frieda Harris more than makes up for this lapse; where Crowley gives the impression of illuminated benevolence, the figure itself - standing behind a shimmering veil of Synthetic Projective Geometry grillwork - seems thoroughly disinterested in human affairs. We have to go to her, she won't come to us.
Crowley captures it a little better in the main text of the Book of Thoth:
"She is clothed only in the luminous veil of light. It is important for high initiation to regard Light not as the perfect manifestation of the Eternal Spirit, but rather as the veil which hides that Spirit. It does so all the more effectively because of its incomparably dazzling brilliance. Thus she is light and the body of light. She is the truth behind the veil of light. She is the soul of light."