Card of the day: the High Priestess

I seem to be getting a lot of majors lately.

In the past I’ve often found the high priestess to be quite sinister. There she sits, nestled between the twin pillars of Boaz and Jachim, all inscrutable-like. She clutches the secret scrolls of the Torah close to her bosom. She holds the information, and it is not for you to decide what she may deign to tell you.

But today I read a passage in Rachel Pollack’s wonderful Seventy-eight Degrees of Wisdom that resonated with me.

The disciplines we call the ‘occult sciences’ begin with a strong awareness of all these splits and limitations. They then go on, however, to another idea, that there exists a key, or plan, to bring everything together, to unify our lives with our hopes as we release our latent strength and wisdom. People often confuse the purposes of the spiritual disciplines. Many think the Tarot is for fortune-telling, that alchemists want to become rich by changing lead to gold, that Kabbalists work spells by saying secret words, and so on. In reality, these disciplines aim at a psychological unification. The ‘base metal’ that the alchemist wishes to change to gold is himself. Accepting the doctrine that we have fallen from a perfect state to a limited one, the occultist does not believe we must simply wait passively for some future redemption by an outside agent. On the contrary, he or she believes it our responsibility to bring about that redemption by finding the key to unity.

Rachel Pollack, Seventy-eight Degrees of Wisdom

I’ve known for a while that magick is simply the extension of psychology—or possibly the other way around—and there’s no new information here, but it’s presented in a way that has made me realize a few things. Occult disciplines are roadmaps to psychospiritual wholeness, and like any roadmap it’s not mandatory to follow instructions to the letter. You can pick and choose from multiple sets of directions, and take detours to see a few sights along the way. But it’s difficult to deny the value of those guidelines from an authoritative source.

At this stage in the Fool’s Journey, the Fool is still very new. We know from the Magician that he has the capacity within him to develop and grow: all the tools are there, but he still needs guidance on how to use them. The High Priestess embodies that wisdom that, at this stage, the Fool still needs to be taught.

Sometimes, in occult and spiritual matters just as much as in the realm of the purely psychological, it’s okay to seek a little professional help.