Veiled Wisdom: How to Live Intuitively in a Linear World — Lessons from the High Priestess

Learn how to live intuitively in a fast-paced, logic-driven world through the symbolism of the High Priestess Tarot card. Discover practical tools, ancient wisdom, and insights for intuitives and spiritual seekers.

In a world obsessed with logic, speed, and quantifiable results, living intuitively can feel like trying to speak a forgotten language. For those who rely on inner knowing, symbolism, and emotional depth to navigate life this can be truly disorienting. You may feel unseen, misunderstood, or even accused of being irrational.

Fortunately, there is an archetype that understands you perfectly: The High Priestess of the Tarot. She doesn’t live by surface appearances or external systems. She lives behind the veil, where symbols, patterns, and quiet truths guide her every move. If you’ve ever felt like your way of knowing doesn’t fit the world you live in, the High Priestess is your ally.

This post explores how her symbolism offers powerful guidance for anyone trying to live more intuitively in a linear, left-brain world.

The Veil: Honor the Unseen

Behind the High Priestess is a veil covered in pomegranates—a symbol of mystery, fertility, and hidden truth. The veil marks the threshold between the seen and the unseen, the conscious and the unconscious.

In daily life, this reminds us to respect what can’t be measured: feelings, dreams, body language, synchronicities. Not everything real can be proven. Living intuitively means acknowledging the unseen world as just as valid as the visible one.  In fact, if you’re an intuitive, your inner world may frequently seem more important than your outer world.

The Moon: Trust Emotional Cycles

The crescent moon at the Priestess’s feet is a classic symbol of intuition, emotion, and cycles. In contrast to the linear, upward march of modern life, the moon reminds us that all things move in rhythms—inner and outer.

This is actually one of the oldest principles of occultism and is discussed extensively in The Kybalion.  Everything on the Earth Plane – everything – moves in cycles.  The tides go in and out.  The Moon waxes and wanes.  Spring gives way to winter.  Even great nations spring up and then fade away.

To live intuitively is to trust your emotional tides. Some days are for action; others for withdrawal, reflection, or stillness. Honoring this inner rhythm—even when it defies external expectations—is a revolutionary act.

The Scroll: Keep Inner Wisdom Sacred

The scroll in the Priestess’s lap is partially hidden and marked “TORA,” suggesting sacred knowledge that isn’t meant for everyone—or even always fully for yourself. This teaches a key lesson of intuitive living: you don’t have to explain yourself.

In a linear world, people often want justification, proof, or evidence. But intuition doesn’t always offer that. Like the scroll, your inner knowing may be incomplete, symbolic, or private. Protect it. Don’t feel pressured to decode everything aloud.

Intuition is frequently about knowing that you know something without knowing how you know it.  You don’t have to defend that to anyone who wants to pick it apart with linear logic.  Sonia Choquette offers a wonderful tip for dealing with it when someone is attacking your intuition:  just smile at them and say, “It works for me.”

The Pillars: Balance Inner and Outer Worlds

The High Priestess sits between two pillars marked B and J (Boaz and Jachin), drawn from the ancient Temple of Solomon. They symbolize polarity—light and dark, masculine and feminine, logic and intuition.

To live intuitively in a linear world, you must balance both forces. Intuition doesn’t reject logic; it expands it. Learn to speak the world’s language when needed, but stay rooted in your own. The magic is in integration.

The Solar Cross: Stay Centered

On the High Priestess’s chest is a solar cross—an ancient symbol of wholeness, representing the four directions, seasons, and elements. Unlike the Christian cross, this symbol is universal. It tells us to stay centered within the circle of life, grounded in your own compass.

Living intuitively means checking inward before reacting outward. It means making decisions from alignment, not anxiety. The solar cross reminds you: you carry your center within you.

It’s also worth noting that the cross is centered over her heart chakra, the energetic mid-point between the lower chakras and the upper.  Intuition pulls in insights from the universe but grounds them in daily life.

Practical Ways to Live Intuitively

Create space for silence and solitude: That’s where intuitive messages come through.  Remember to be patient with that, too.  Intuition speaks in symbols, not type-written messages.  When we sit down to meditate we probably won’t get a telegram from the Universe telling us what to do.  But . . . a particular book that we need to read may fall off of a shelf or a friend may casually say the perfect word to trigger insights.

Journal or use symbols: Tarot, dreamwork, or creative writing can help you listen inward.  The Major Arcana of the Tarot in particular is crammed with archetypal symbols.  Every one of those speaks to Deep Mind and starts a dialog with intuition.

Let go of constant justification: Trust what you know, even if you can’t explain it.  If other people don’t understand what you plainly see, then fuck them.  You’re not the extrovert-whisperer and you don’t need to explain your inner vision to someone who’s blind.

Honor emotional and energetic cycles: Don’t force productivity; honor your timing.  Despite the many New Age gadgets and programs that we may encounter now days, there is NO way to force intuition.  In fact, quite the opposite:  the more relaxed we are, the more likely we are to have a free flow of intuitive insights.  The more we force it, the more it flits away.

Balance logic with knowing: Use your left brain to support your right-brain insights—not to silence them.  Think of left-brain logic as a sort of an editor that connects the dots for you.  The first thing that comes is the intuitive flash:  “Hmmm . . .  I think this is how it actually is, even though it looks differently.”  Then we can use logic to figure out where the insight came from or to explain it to others, but we should never, ever, let logic tell us that our intuition is wrong, simply because we can’t justify it.

It’s Not Impractical – It’s Sacred

The High Priestess doesn’t offer quick answers. She teaches us to dwell in questions, to honor mystery, and to trust the quiet voice within. In a culture addicted to speed and clarity, living intuitively is a radical form of wisdom.

If you feel like you see through the veil or live just outside the edges of ordinary awareness, you’re not lost. You’re listening. And you’re not alone.

Let the High Priestess be your reminder: intuitive living isn’t impractical—it’s sacred.

My new ebook, “The Alchemy of the Mind: Transforming Your Life With the 7 Principles of The Kybalion,” is now available on Amazon.

The High Priestess

The meaning of The High Priestess card in the Tarot, including definitions for the upright and reversed positions.

highpriestess

There is no other card in the deck that took a deeper dive into Hermetic imagery than this one.  The two columns represent Boaz and Jachin, said to have guarded the entry to King Solomon’s temple.  The TORA scroll represents the divine wisdom and secrets of Jewish Kabbalism. One imagines that the exact directions for this card came from Arthur Edward Waite, rather than the fertile imagination of Pamela Colman Smith, who painted it.

Leaving aside the rather glaring irony that women were not even ALLOWED in the inner sanctum of Solomon’s Temple (unclean creatures, doncha know?)  we can move right along and affirm that the Lady on the card is a lunar Goddess. The crescent moon at her feet is a common symbol of the lunar Goddess and is found even in Christianized versions of her such as the Virgin of Guadalupe’.

The real message in the imagery of this card, though, is about balance between opposites and the center point where intuition reigns.  The cross on her chest is the solar cross rather than the Christian cross, its’ four arms all of exact equal length from its’ center. She sits exactly between the white and black opposites of the columns.  The crown she wears is a solar disk surrounded by crescent moons, emphasizing the opposites of night and day.

By now most of us are familiar with the left brain/right brain dichotomy.  While not absolute, the left brain tends to be more involved in so-called rational, logical thinking, while the right brain tends to be more involved with imagery, emotion, and artistic endeavors.  Mysteries, omens, subconscious patterns tend to percolate and grow in the right brain. At a certain point they may cross over into the left brain and become a conscious realization. That phenomenon is often described as the, “Ah, ha!” moment when something which was previously puzzling and odd suddenly makes sense.  It’s also described as intuition and intuition is what the High Priestess is all about.

When the High Priestess appears in your reading it means that it’s time to start paying very careful attention to your intuition and subconscious.  Answers to problems which have been bothering or blocking you can be found in dreams, sudden insights, or hunches. This card points out the need to trust your deep Self.  Listen to your inner voices. If you’re having trouble hearing them then take the time you need to meditate or go sit by yourself in isolation. Let the answers bubble up from your subconscious and trust those answers.

If the card applies to a person in the questioners life it may be a very intuitive, mysterious, but fairly asexual person.

Reversed:  The questioner isn’t paying attention to his or her intuitive nature.  This is a card of being out of touch with your inner Self. The pomegranates on the tapestry in this card hearken back to the myth of Persephone, a Goddess of crops and Spring who was kidnapped by Hades, dragged into hell, and then forced to live there half the year because she had eaten a single pomegranate seed.  It was a myth which was meant to explain the changing of the seasons: when she was living in hell the world turned into winter and the crops died.

It can have a deeper meaning with the reversed presence of this card.  The creative, intuitive, feminine right side of the brain is being overpowered and held hostage by the logical, sequential, male left side of the brain.  Intuition and creativity are being ignored in favor of so-called rational thinking. There is a need here to reconnect with your primal self. Take the time for meditating, long hot baths, dancing, art.  Get back in touch with your creative energy.

Just as an interesting side note it’s been absolutely fascinating watching the rise of the new women’s movement in the United States.  Starting with the massive march on Washington, D.C. right after Trump’s inauguration and running through today’s Me Too movement, we’re seeing a massive awakening of Right Brain perception in the United States.  The Divine Feminine is asserting itself and the Goddess is alive and well.  No doubt the High Priestess is hiding a smile.

If you have questions about this card or its meaning in one of your readings, please don’t hesitate to leave a comment.  I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.

“Just the Tarot,” by Dan Adair – a kindle ebook available on Amazon