The High Priestess says Listen to Your Guts.
Hey. Your guts have something to say.
When the High Priestess appears, she’s telling you just that: listen to your guts.
Heed them—they’ve got heaps to tell you. You can trust this person. Take the long way home. It’s time to move. Speak up for yourself. You have something to learn from this. Let it go. Spend some time alone. Ask for help. Phone a friend. Enough’s enough. Try again.
Specifically, they have something to say just to you, about a situation stitched into the fabric of your very own cut of reality.
Psychologists say these hunches, these “gut feelings” are formed on the basis of past experiences and cumulative knowledge, which allow us to understand something instinctively, semi-immediately, without the need for conscious reasoning.
In a scientific way, our intuition can be dulled down to our brain on autopilot, or rationalized by the phenomenon of “highway hypnosis,” wherein we drive for miles or walk our daily commutes getting lost in thought but somehow find ourselves at the right destination. These nonconscious processes extend past routine activities, into decision-making, and voila. Your intuition stealthily guides your every move.
In a mystical way, our intuition compiles and builds upon and informs itself in each moment. We’re being blasted, constantly, with a cacophony of physical sensory experiences and our mental currents weave and wind around those. All of this energy—emotional, psychological, and spiritual—collides in our solar plexuses. Out of that noise, our intuitive voice is born.
The High Priestess is the guardian of our intuitive centers, reigning between realms of the conscious and subconscious mind. She treads the deep waters beneath seemingly shallow surfaces; she fiddles with profound influences at play.
She asks: what’s beneath everything? what’s in there, buried deep, lodged into the corners of your subconscious? your past self, reminding you not to do that thing again? your mistakes, and the wisdom garnered from them? ancestral knowledge? past lives? the symbols of your dreams?
She is the protector of this sacred place inside all of us. She challenges us to work at informing this center, to mindfully engage with ourselves and be present, as to flesh out and gather what each new experience has to teach us. This voice is a gift, she reminds us, and we are called to honor this gift by utilizing it wisely.
When we still ourselves and tune in to our insides, we can hear the faint frequencies of our innermost truths. Our guts have been collecting experience and data and knowledge and wisdom; our guts have been conspiring to connect with us.
The High Priestess says: conspire with them. Your guts have got the answers.
Emily Mundy is a poet, prose writer and the co-author of the Dark Days Tarot guidebook. Subscribe below for more content like this delivered each new moon.