Category: The High Priestess

  • The High Priestess is a lesson on waiting audaciously

    It’s interesting to me that the High Priestess follows immediately behind the Magician. The Magician is very high energy. You’re incredibly focused and hyped about your goals that you make magic happen from seemingly thin air.

    Only for you to grow up and become the High Priestess immediately after…

    The High Priestess in the traditional RWS is a card of waiting, introspection, and meditation. The energy that the Magician created is now turning into something hidden from view.

    This is important because it relies on the RWS image of the Magician to make sense. The Magician is calling energy from the Heavens and directing it to a point on the ground. What goes up must come down (at my command).

    The Magic that hits the ground then takes root to blossom into the desire the Magician had in mind. Which implies that something is growing, underground—out of sight. The High Priestess understands this and is seen waiting on the dream to manifest. Confidently. Alone.

    There’s power that builds when you choose to be invisible for a season. You can let your confidence build. Pull together a vision. Figure out what your next move is. All without interference—because you know you’re right about this.

    You’re just waiting on the vision to manifest and prove you’re right.

    “The people who are bold enough to believe more in their ideas and to put them out there without being asked to, are the ones who tend to succeed.” — Erifili Gounari

    I can’t count the number of times I’ve gone into a project really excited to pull it together. Only for the work to not produce immediate results which causes me to get nervous and bail. I start to question myself and I’ll search on Reddit to see if anyone made the same decision I did and what happened when they did.

    But the reality is, more often than not you get what you called forth. You may just have to wait on it. You may just have to watch as the desire you have transforms little by little until it becomes something worth giving birth to (HT: the Empress). You may just have to close yourself off from the world in order to prevent others from introducing doubt.

    How long are you willing to wait for your desires to manifest. Or, are you going to let your lack of confidence sabotage things too soon?

    “In a year when almost anything can be generated on demand — an image, a track, a thousand words in any style you can name — the one input that cannot be synthesised is judgment: the taste that decides what is worth making, and what to cut.” — Oana Leonte

    Knowing when to quit and when to hold is such a skill.

    The High Priestess is the exemplar of that skill. If you sit still and listen long enough you’ll know if this time is thee time. But, you have to be sure of yourself, a radically honest with yourself, in order to master the skill.

    And sometimes in order to make sure you’re radically honest with yourself, you gotta close yourself off from the world to hear yourself think. Because sometimes entertaining everyone else’s opinions of what you’re doing ain’t worth derailing the vision.

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