Tarot Exegesis • Part 1: The Fool, The Magician, The High Priestess

Welcome to Creative Codex, I am your host, MJDorian.

This recording is supplemental material for the main Tarot series—that is episodes 50 and 51. I’ve created this extra series with the intention of helping listeners to better understand the deep symbolism of the cards—specifically the 22 cards of the Major Arcana.

In this episode we’re going to explain the symbolism of the first three cards of the Major Arcana, including The Fool, who is often numbered zero or given no numeric value. If you’re a beginner or an intermediate student of the Tarot, this will be very helpful for you.

For more seasoned practitioners who want to delve into more of the esoteric aspects such as the Kabbalistic meanings of the cards, I highly recommend the book, The Tarot by Paul Foster Case.

On this minisode we’re going to be primarily using Alejandro Jodorowsky’s The Way of Tarot and Rachel Pollack’s 78 Degrees of Wisdom—as their exposition on the cards provide us both widely accepted interpretations and uniquely valuable insights.

During our study, we’re going to refer to specific symbolic imagery of the Tarot. What you may have already noticed is that there are thousands of Tarot decks out there, all with their own twists and variations. So we need to narrow down our study to two Tarot decks which are widely revered and accepted by Tarot practitioners: the Waite-Smith deck (from 1909) and the Tarot de Marseilles (from 1709).

Note: In older writings on the Tarot you will hear the Waite-Smith deck referred to as the Rider-Waite or simply the Rider deck. This is in reference to the company which first published the deck: The Rider Company. A recent sea change in Tarot tradition has been to acknowledge—and rightfully so—the contributions of the original artists of these decks. And in the case of the Rider-Waite deck that is Pamela Coleman Smith. Like the deck’s namesake, Arthur Edward Waite, Smith was also a member of the Golden Dawn. Waite and Smith were collaborators on the design of this celebrated deck, whose artwork has forever influenced all successive Tarot art.

So, out of respect to the artist, we now say the Waite-Smith deck, to give credit where credit is due. Who cares about the company that published it? Another company would have undoubtedly picked it up. It’s yet another example of women artists in the early 20th century not getting the recognition they deserve—until now.

Without further ado, let’s begin.

CARD 0: THE FOOL

The artist William Blake once wrote “If a man would persist in his folly, he would become wise.”

It’s unlikely that Blake was talking about The Fool of the Tarot, but all the same, it serves as a wonderful introduction into the significance of The Fool card. It is the only card of the Tarot which exists in a liminal state. Modern decks give it the numerical value: 0. But decks from the earliest years of Tarot don’t number The Fool at all, allowing him to appear anywhere in the Major Arcana.

My personal view is that The Fool symbolically represents the soul of the individual, existing in yet above the reality of the cards, navigating them like our soul in stages of reincarnation. 

And as we’ll see, The Fool is associated with aspects such as innocence, purity, and freedom, which are traditionally associated with the soul. But in his purity, The Fool does not yet have wisdom, and that’s why he must incarnate and make the journey through the cards—very much the way we must make our journey through life. This brings us back to Blake’s quote: “If a man would persist in his folly, he would become wise.”

The Fool card has many variations throughout the history of Tarot, but here are some key universals: it depicts a figure in motion either shown as a court jester or a fanciful man making his way toward a cliff’s edge. The figure carries a long stick over his shoulder with a bag or satchel on its end. And there is an animal leaping at his heels, following him, most often a dog.

Here are some keywords Tarot practitioners associate with The Fool:

Innocence, freedom, purity, energy, movement, wandering, the soul.

Let’s take a look at what Alejandro Jodorowsky has to say about The Fool. In the book, The Way of Tarot, he writes:

The Way of Tarot, Alejandro Jodorowsky:

“The fool has a name, but he does not have a number. It is the sole Major Arcana card not to be defined numerically. He represents the original boundless energy, total freedom, madness, disorder, chaos, or even the fundamental creative urge. In traditional card games, he gave birth to figures like the Joker or the wild-card that can represent any of the other cards at any time without ever being identical to any one of them. The key phrase of The Fool could be ‘All paths are my path.’”

Now let’s compare that with Rachel Pollack’s interpretation in the book, 78 Degrees of Wisdom:

78 Degrees of Wisdom, Rachel Pollack:

“The Fool represents true innocence, a kind of perfect state of joy and freedom, a feeling of being one with the spirit of life at all times; in other words, the ‘immortal’ self we feel became entrapped in the confusions and compromises of the ordinary world. Perhaps such a radiant self never really existed. Somehow we experience our intuition of it as something lost. Virtually every culture has developed a myth of a Fall from a primeval paradise.

‘Innocence’ is a word often misunderstood. It does not mean ‘without guilt’ but rather a freedom and a total openness to life, a complete lack of fear that comes through a total faith in living and in your own instinctive self. Innocence doesnot mean ‘asexual’ as some people think. It is sexuality expressed without fear, without guilt, without connivance and dishonesty. It is sexuality expressed spontaneously and freely, as the expression of love and the ecstasy of life.

The Fool bears the number 0 because all things are possible to the person who is always ready to go in any direction. He does not belong in any specific place; he is not fixed like the other cards. His innocence makes him a person with no past, and therefore an infinite future. Every moment is a new starting point. In Arabic numerals the number 0 bears the shape of an egg, to indicate that all things emerge from it. Originally the zero was written as a dot; in Hermetic and Qabalistic tradition the universe emerged from a single point of light. And God in the Qabalah is often described as ‘nothingness’ because to describe God as any thing would be to limit Him to some finite fixed state. Those Tarot commentators who argue whether the Fool belongs before, after, or somewhere between the other cards seem to be missing the point. The Fool is movement, change, the constant leap through life.

For the Fool no difference exists between possibility and reality. 0 means a total emptiness of hopes and fears, and the Fool expects nothing, plans nothing. He responds instantly to the immediate situation.”

Jodorowsky, in The Way of Tarot, goes on to analyze the symbols of the card. It’s important to note that he is strictly referring to the imagery of the Marseilles Tarot of 1709 and not the Waite-Smith. I’ve provided an example of the two cards side by side in the related Patreon post for this recording and in the transcript, I’ve included a link in the text description of this episode. Jodorowsky states:

“…The animal following The Fool, perhaps a dog or an ape (two animals that imitate man), is resting his paws on the bottom of his spinal column at the level of the perineum, the spot where Hindu tradition places the nervous system that concentrates the influences of the earth (the muladhara chakra).

If The Fool were a blind man, his animal would be guiding him, but here it is he who is marching in front like the Visionary Id guiding the Ego. The infantile ego has been tamed, and there is no longer any need to seduce it in order to dominate its aggressive nature; it has attained a sufficient degree of maturity to realize that it must follow the essential Being and not impose its whims on it. This is the reason why the animal, which has become receptive, is light blue in color. Because he is now The Fool’s friend, the animal collaborates with him and pushes him forward. Half of its body is outside the frame of the card; the fact that it is walking behind The Fool allows us to think that this animal also represents the past. It is a past that does not hinder the advance of the energy to the future.”

Rachel Pollack gives us more food for thought, she writes:

“…We speak of the Fool as ‘he’ and the World Dancer as ‘she’ because of their appearance in the pictures, but both can be a woman or a man with really no change. Just as the Fool does not experience a separateness from the physical world so he or she does not experience any isolation from the ‘opposite sex’ The Fool and the Dancer are psychic hermaphrodites, expressing their complete humanity at all times, by their very natures.”

Later in the text, Pollack explains the symbolism we see in the Waite-Smith version of The Fool:

“Waite’s Fool holds a white rose. Roses symbolize passion, while white, the traditional color of purity, together with the delicate way the flower is held, indicate the passions raised to a higher level. The Greeks saw Eros, the god of love, as a trickster, making the most proper people act ridiculous. But those who already express their folly will not be thrown by love.

The Greeks also spoke of Eros, in other forms, as the animating force of the universe. The bag behind him carries his experiences. He does not abandon them, he is not mindless, they simply do not control him in the way that our memories and traumas so often control our lives. The bag bears the head of an eagle, symbol of the soaring spirit. His high instinct fills and transforms all experience. The eagle is also the symbol of Scorpio raised to a higher level, that is, sexuality raised to spirit. This idea of the connection between sex and spirit will come up again with the card of the Devil.

Over his shoulder the Fool carries a stick, like a tramp. But this stick is actually a wand, symbol of power. The Magician and the Chariot driver also carry wands, but self-consciously, with a powerful grip. The Fool and the World Dancer hold their wands so

casually we hardly notice them. What could be more foolish than to take a magic wand and use it to carry your bags? We can imagine a fairy tale in which the foolish younger brother finds a stick by the side of the road and carries it, not recognizing it as the lost wand of a

wizard, and therefore not being destroyed like his two older brothers who tried to wield it for their own profit.

The Fool’s wand is black; the others are white. For the unconscious Fool the spirit force remains always in potential, always ready, because he is not consciously directing it. We tend to misunderstand the color black, seeing it as evil, or negation of life. Rather, black means all things being possible, infinite energy of life before consciousness has constructed any boundaries. When we fear blackness or darkness we fear the deep unconscious source of life itself.”

Finally, what does The Fool mean in a reading? For example, if you asked a question and drew three cards, one of which was The Fool, how do you go about interpreting it?

First, Jodorowsky states:

“The Fool evokes an enormous burst of energy. Wherever he goes, he brings this vital impulse with him. If he is looking toward a card, he charges that card with his creative energy. If he is moving away from a card preceding him, it means he is leaving one situation to place his forces into a new project, new place, or new relationship. He therefore represents liberation, a flight (material, emotional, intellectual, or sexual). In other words, this card poses the question of knowing how the energy of the subject of the reading is going, and toward what end the subject is applying his or her strength.

The Fool sometimes represents madness or inconsistency when he is identified with a particular person—and, of course, a pilgrimage, a journey, a force that is moving forward. The question is knowing where: The Fool has no personal preference in the matter. This card, an inseminator of energy, will exacerbate, nourish, or despoil the surrounding cards. The Fool is a mirror of The Nameless Arcanum, which could well be his skeleton. The Fool shows us that the capacity to act is also acquired through the initiatory crossing through madness and death.”

It’s interesting to point out this idea of visual cues between the cards that Jodorowsky mentions, when he says: “…If he is looking toward a card, he changes that card with his creative energy. If he is moving away from a card preceding him, it means he is leaving one situation to place his forces into a new project, new place, or new relationship.”

This is a very effective way of engaging with the cards—by recognizing any narratives that seem to be playing out between the several cards you’ve chosen. I love this approach. And this is one of the great benefits of drawing more than a single card in your readings. It really draws more on your intuition rather than only a literal by-the-book interpretation of each card’s meaning.

Finally, regarding The Fool in readings, Pollack writes:

“The Fool can often symbolize beginnings, courageously leaping off into some new phase of life, particularly when that leap is taken from some deep feeling rather than careful planning.”

So already we see, that despite there being aesthetic differences between The Fool of the 1709 Marseilles deck and the 1909 Waite-Smith deck, at their heart, the cards carry the same message—I call this the allegorical signature of the card.

CARD I: THE MAGICIAN

The Magician card, as depicted in the 1909 Waite-Smith deck has become one of the timeless symbols of the Tarot. It’s a beautiful representation of a ceremonial magician, dressed in a white robe with a red mantle draped over his shoulders. His right hand points to the heavens holding a white rod, and his left hand points downwards with his index finger extending toward the ground, giving the impression that he is acting like a lightning rod—a conduit for the passing of energies between worlds.

There is tremendous esoteric significance of this gesture: it symbolizes the Hermetic dictum ‘As Above, So Below’. Which first appears in the writings of Hermes Trismegistus, as stated in the famed Emerald Tablet, which all alchemists study. It begins with the statement:

“Tis true without lying, certain and most true. That which is below is like that which is above and that which is above is like that which is below to do the miracle of one only thing.”

The full significance of this phrase is outside the scope of this episode, but for now, what we can reflect on is the galactic perspective with which alchemist’s view their work. Every procedure that an alchemist performs in their laboratory should coincide with complimentary positions of the stars and planets above. For example: every metal that an alchemist works with has a planetary correspondence. Before embarking on any important work with a certain metal, you make sure it aligns with a complimentary alignment of the celestial bodies.

What is the intention of this? It’s not only to channel the universe’s energies into your work but perhaps even more importantly to synchronize oneself with the movement of the planets. We have to consider the question: how does it change your day-to-day life when your movements on Earth are synchronized to the movements of the planets? How must that feel when your actions are in harmony with your galaxy?

In front of The Magician is a table on which lies a sword, a chalice, a staff, and a pentacle, representing the four suits of the Minor Arcana: swords, cups, wands, and pentacles. Each also representing one of the four elements: air, water, fire, and earth. Surrounding him is a bright and energetic yellow, above his head is the symbol for infinity, and the perimeter overflows with flowers: roses and white lilies. This shows the immediate benefits of The Magician’s work, as he is surrounded by abundance and beauty.

Here are some keywords which Tarot practitioners associate with The Magician:

Creativity, channeling energy, the beginning of new work, action on the material plane, potentiality.

In the book, 78 Degrees of Wisdom, Rachel Pollack states:

“Most modern images of the card / trump follow Waite’s wizard, raising a magic wand to bring into reality the spirit force – the energy of life in its most creative form. He holds the wand carefully, aware of that psychic power the Fool carried so lightly on his shoulder. Thus, the Magician, as the beginning of the Major Arcana proper, represents consciousness, action and creation. He symbolizes the idea of manifestation, that is, making something real out of the possibilities in life.

Therefore, we see the four emblems of the Minor Arcana lying on a table in front of him. He not only uses the physical world for his magical operations (the four emblems are all objects used by wizards in their rituals), but he also creates the world, in the sense of giving life a meaning and direction.

The Magician stands surrounded by flowers to remind us that the emotional and creative power we feel in our lives needs to be grounded in physical reality for us to get any value from it. Unless we make something of our potentials they do not really exist.

…Look at Waite’s picture of the Magician. He is not casting spells, or conjuring up demons. He simply stands with one hand raised to heaven and the other pointed to the green earth. He is a lightning rod. By opening himself up to the spirit he draws it down into himself, and then that downward hand, like a lightning rod buried in the ground, runs the energy into the earth. Into reality.

We see many accounts of the ‘descent of the spirit’ in the Bible, in other religious texts and in contemporary religious experience. People ‘speak in tongues’ in Pentecostal churches, they scream and shout and roll on the floor at Gospel meetings. The priest giving communion sees himself as a ‘vessel’ or channel for the Holy Ghost. But we can see this experience in much simpler, non-religious, terms as well. People tremble with excitement at sporting events. ‘I’m so excited I could burst!’

In a new love affair or at the start of a new career, we feel a power filling us. You can sometimes see people at the opening of some important phase of their lives, tapping their legs up and down, half bouncing in their seats, filled with some energy they cannot seem to discharge. And writers and artists, when their work is going well, will experience themselves as almost passive channels for a spirit-like force. The word ‘inspiration’ originally meant ‘filled with a holy breath’, and derives from the same root as ‘spirit’.

Notice that of all these examples all but the priest and the artist are seized with a frenzy.”

Jodorowsky interprets The Magician card using the 1709 Marseilles deck as reference, stating:

“The Magician bears the number one. This figure contains the whole in potential; it is like the

original point from which a universe emerges (see p. 59). For The Magician all is possible. He has a series of elements on the table in front of him that he can use as he pleases, and a

pouch that is easily imagined to be inexhaustible, like a horn of plenty. From his table this figure acts toward the cosmos and toward spiritual life.

Although represented by a male figure, The Magician is an androgynous individual working

with light and shadow, juggling from the unconscious to the superconscious. He is holding an active wand in his left hand, while in his right he holds a receptive pentacle. This yellow coin, a miniature sun, symbolizes perfection and truth, but it also tells us that The Magician does not overlook the daily necessities. The blue wand in his other hand is seeking to capture the cosmic force.”

“…We can see three dice on the table, each of which shows three sides: 1, 2, and 4. Each die

therefore gives us a value of 7, and if we add all three dice together we get 21, which is the

numerical value of the highest of the Major Arcana (XXI The World). We can therefore say that The Magician has the entire Tarot at his disposal up to the total realization of The World. Similarly, he has in his hands and on his table the four Suits of the Minor Arcana (a pentacle, a wand, a knife symbolizing Swords, and a cup) concealed among the objects of conjuring. This indicates to us that we attain the truth by crossing through illusion.”

Jodorowsky adds another layer to his analysis, using a good degree of imagination, he writes a passage as if spoken by the Magician, it says:

“I, The Magician, take a position in the crossroads of eternity and infinity that we call the

present. I am loyal to everything that I am: my body, my intelligence, my heart, my creative

force. My table of flesh has its three feet rooted in the ground; I anchor myself somewhere in

the diversity, and it is from this point that I take action. Out of the infinite number of possibilities, I have chosen one, my golden pentacle, the traction point that will lead me to Totality.”

When seen in a reading, Jodorowsky says this about The Magician:

“…This is a spirit that seeks to situate itself within the human world and find solutions for

material life. This card is therefore one that will evoke all the questions concerning

employment, work, and profession.”

While Pollack gives us further insight stating:

“The divinatory meanings of the Magician derive from both hands, the one which receives the power and the one which directs. The card means first of all an awareness of power in your life, of spirit or simple excitement possessing you. It can also mean, depending on its position and your reaction to it, someone else’s power affecting you.

Like the Fool, the card refers to beginnings, but here the first actual steps. It can mean both the inspiration to begin some new project or phase of life, and the excitement that sustains you through the hard work to reach your goal. For many people the Magician can become a strong personal symbol for the creative force throughout their lives.

Secondly, the Magician means will-power; the will unified and directed towards goals. It means having great strength because all your energy is channelled in a specific direction. People who seem always to get what they want in life are often people who simply know what they want and can direct their energy. The Magician teaches us that both will-power and success derive from being conscious of the power available to everyone. Most people rarely act; instead they react, being knocked from one experience to the next.

To act is to direct your strength, through the will, to the places where you want it to go.”

CARD II: THE HIGH PRIESTESS

As we’ve established, the artwork of the Tarot is richly symbolic. People often spend years studying all the nuances of the cards, and even more-so once one engages with the esoteric side of the Tarot. There are few cards in the entire Tarot deck which I find are more overtly esoteric than The High Priestess.

In this case, by esoteric, I mean the use of symbolic imagery that specifically aligns with Western Esoteric traditions.

Take a look at the Waite-Smith version of The High Priestess. We see a robed woman seated on a stone in between two pillars. Her robe is a bright sky blue, which matches the blue of the river and sky in the distant background. She is seated between two pillars, a white one on the right and a black one on the left. These are labeled with the letters J and B. Which stands of Jachin and Boaz, the names of two famous pillars found in King Solomon’s Temple—a place that holds tremendous significance in esoteric traditions like Freemasonry and practices like Hermetic magick.

The other symbols in the card will be explained in the following quotes, but what I wanted to draw your attention to which most people miss is the tapestry behind the High Priestess which acts as a kind of veil. Notice it is adorned with pomegranates. The arrangement of the pomegranates is distinct—for example: the top three form a triangle. This tapestry symbolizes the Tree of Life in the tradition of Kabbalah. It is a diagram of the sacred emanations of the divine which constitute our reality. What makes this associations even more striking is that in traditional texts on the subject, the Tree of Life is referred to as the garden of pomegranates.

Here are keywords often associated with The High Priestess card:

Knowledge, patience, the dark feminine, a great mystery, engagement with the unconscious,  silence, solitude, self reflection.

78 Degrees of Wisdom, Rachel Pollack:

“Bill Butler, in The Definitive Tarot has commented on the historical legendary sources for this female archetype. Throughout the Middle Ages the story persisted that a woman was once elected Pope. Disguised for years as a man, this supposed ‘Pope Joan’ made her

way through the Church hierarchy to the top position, only to die in childbirth during an Easter celebration.

Pope Joan was most likely a legend; the Visconti Papess was real. In the late thirteenth century an Italian group called the Guglielmites believed that their founder, Guglielma of Bohemia, who died in 1281, would rise again in 1300 and begin a new age in which women would be popes. Jumping ahead they elected a woman named Manfreda Visconti as the first papess.

The Church graphically ended this heresy by burning Sister Manfreda in 1300, the year of the expected new age. Some hundred years later the same Visconti family commissioned the first set of Tarot cards as we know them. Among these unnumbered and unnamed trumps appeared a picture of a woman later decks titled ‘The Papess’.

The name persisted until the eighteenth century when Court de Gebelin, believing the Tarot to originate in the Isis religion of ancient Egypt, changed the name to the High Priestess. Today both names exist (as well as “Veiled Isis’), and the Waite image of the card derives directly from the Isis priestess’s symbolic clothing, particularly the crown representing the three phases of the moon.”

…People often link passive with ‘negative’ or that is, inferior and weak. But passivity contains its own power. It gives the mind a chance to work. People who only know action never get a chance to reflect on what that action has taught them. In a deeper sense, passivity allows the subconscious to emerge.

Only through withdrawal from outer involvement can we allow the inner voice of vision and psychic forces to speak to us. It is precisely to avoid this inner voice that many people never rest from action and movement. Our society, based completely on outer achievement, fosters a terror of the subconscious; yet without its wisdom we can never fully know ourselves or the world.

The High Priestess represents all these qualities: darkness, mystery, psychic forces, the power of the moon to stir the subconscious, passivity, and the wisdom gained from it. This

wisdom cannot be expressed in rational terms; to try to do so would be to immediately limit, narrow, and falsify it. Most people at some time have felt they understood something in such a deep way that they could never manage to explain it.

Myths serve as metaphors for deep psychic feelings; yet the myths themselves, like the

explanations given by theologians and anthropologists, are only symbols. The High Priestess signifies inner wisdom at its deepest level.

She sits before two pillars, representing both the temple of Isis and the ancient Hebrew temple in Jerusalem, the dwelling place of God on earth, in other words, the home of the Shekinah. A veil hangs between the two pillars, indicating that we are barred from entering the place of wisdom. The image of the veiled temple or sanctuary appears in many religions. The Shekinah was indeed said to dwell within the veiled ark of the temple.

Now, most people assume we are somehow forbidden to pass the pillars of the High Priestess. In reality, we simply do not know how to. To enter behind the veil would be to know consciously the irrational wisdom of the unconscious. That is the goal of the entire Major Arcana.”

For the card’s meaning in readings, Jodorowsky states this in his book The Way of Tarot:

“The High Priestess will often refer to a female individual, the mother or grandmother who has handed down either an ideal of purity or an authoritarian coldness. She will also incarnate the cold mother, the sexless woman, who finds justification in a religious ideal or morality, and who does not know how to be tender. But her demand for purity can put us on the trail of a woman of high spiritual stature, a priestess, a therapist, a female guide, who could be of any age. In love, The High Priestess is ready to form a couple based on the union of souls.”

While Rachel Pollack writes this for interpreting the card in readings:

“The divinatory meanings of the High Priestess deal first with a sense of mystery in life, both things we do not know, and things we cannot know. It indicates a sense of darkness, sometimes as an area of fear in our lives, but also one of beauty. A period of passive withdrawal can enrich our lives by allowing things inside to awaken.

As an emblem of secret knowledge the trump indicates that feeling of intuitively understanding the answer to some great problem, if only we could express that answer consciously. More specifically, the card can refer to visions and to occult and psychic powers, such as clairvoyance. In its most positive aspect the High Priestess signifies the potential in our lives – very strong possibilities we have not realized though we can sense them as possible.

Action must follow or the potential will never be realized. Despite its deep wisdom the card can sometimes carry a negative meaning. Like most of the trumps, the High Priestess’s value depends on the context of the other cards.

Negatively the trump indicates passiveness at the wrong time or for too long, leading to weakness, fear of life and other people. It shows a person with strong intuition who cannot translate feelings into action, or a person afraid to open up to other people. Whether the good or bad aspect of the card comes up in a particular reading depends on the surrounding cards and of course the reader’s intuition (we partake of the High Priestess every time we read the cards). Very often both meanings will apply. Human beings have more than one side.”

Now that we’ve become more familiar with these first three Major Arcana cards on an individual basis, let’s take a closer look at the relationship between them. There is so much that we can still learn from them when seeing them in relation to one another.

I recommend you take out The Fool, The Magician, and The High Priestess from your Tarot deck and place them together in this arrangement: place The Fool in the middle, with The Magician on the lower left and The High Priestess on the lower right, so they form a triangle.

What follows are all my personal insights from studying these cards, and not the opinions of any other authors.

The artist, Pamela Coleman Smith, has done a tremendous job here in giving us visual cues as to the relationship of these three cards. Notice first the unifying aspects that tell us these three cards should be viewed in this arrangement: we see all three share the colors yellow, green, and red. The same tone of the colors is also used in all three cards.

The vibrant yellow in the sky behind The Fool is also behind The Magician, and in the pomegranates behind The High Priestess. The green floral pattern on The Fool’s tunic is seen in the abundant flowers in front of The Magician and on the tapestry behind The High Priestess. And finally, the lively red is on the feather of The Fool’s cap, the mantle and roses of The Magician, and the pomegranate seeds of The High Priestess. Even this distinct light blue that pervades The High Priestess’ card appears in the lower half of The Fool’s card, in the distant land and mountains.

Visually, we are being told that The Fool is traveling into the realms of The Magician and The High Priestess. But why?

Recall the esoteric significance of The Fool: it is a symbol for our soul. In this arrangement of The Fool between The Magician and The High Priestess we are witnessing the descent of our soul into matter. We often hear Tarot experts say that The Fool is neither male or female, but a hermaphroditic self. Before incarnating, the soul exists in a realm of non-duality.

In this triangular arrangement of the first three cards of the Major Arcana we see the soul or consciousness entering the realm of duality. The Magician is masculine, The High Priestess is feminine. The Magician is represents an active principle, while The High Priestess represents a passive principle. Note that when we say passive it is not a negative, it is important to have a balance of both aspects. After all, to be passive is to be receptive—this is the origin point of intuition and ultimately creativity. Creativity requires receptiveness, both to the exterior world of causes and effects and the interior world of emotions and intellect.

There is also the association that The Magician is the conscious mind, whereas The High Priestess represents the unconscious. This association is undeniable when one notices the yellow vibrancy of the sun from The Fool continuing in The Magician and the cool blue of The High Priestess with the crescent moon resting at her foot. The sun and moon are symbols of the conscious and unconscious, or the seen and unseen domains of being, symbols which go back thousands of years. Pamela Coleman Smith makes this particular insight undeniable by giving The High Priestess an association with water—notice the light blue color of her robes and the large body of water in the distance behind her.

The tapestry that hangs in front of this body of water, and between the two columns of Jachin and Boaz, reminds us of the veil between the physical and spiritual worlds.

This veiled truth, that we have descended into duality is represented by the ‘garden of pomegranates’ on the tapestry, which symbolize the Kabbalistic Tree of Life. It is an association further driven home by the priestess resting the Torah on her lap. In Jewish  philosophy, it is said that God created the Hebrew characters and then used them to build our physical reality. I suspect this is the implication of the Torah on the priestesses lap and the deliberate nod to Kabbalah in this context—these are the spiritual and intellectual matters which The High Priestess is concerned with. Her focus is on the underlying spiritual reality behind the curtain and / or in our unconscious.

The Magician on the other hand is concerned with working within the structure of material reality. This is represented beautifully by the presence of the four suits on the table. Each suit representing a different domain of an individual’s life on the physical plane: pentacles—material matters, cups—emotional, swords—intellectual, wands—energetic; which includes passions and desires. The suits also traditionally representing the four elements: earth, water, air, fire.

All of these elements form the rules of this material plane. But it is the push and pull between the outer poles of duality that creates energy, gives us desires, and compels our movement.

This is why the Tarot remains after 600 years—it reflects the essential forces of human life.

Continue to Tarot Exegesis • Part 2 here: Tarot Exegesis Part 2 Transcript

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