While the moon was in Cancer last week, I continued on my Soul Meditations journey by completing the High Priestess meditation.  The moon is the planet associated with The High Priestess and the moon rules Cancer, so it seemed like an apt day for the meditation.  What resulted was actually quite puzzling and mysterious.  The High Priestess is the card I always associate with the archetype of the tarot reader.  She listens to her intuition, connects to the subconscious mind and the higher self, embodies the feminine mystery, and does all this while being calm, cool, collected, and extremely helpful.  What I experienced with this meditation was heavy on the mystery and subconscious, and rather light on the intuitive connection and access to the higher self.

When I stepped from the space of radiant white light of the mediation introduction into the card, I found myself in a confusingly blank plaza.  Far in front of me The High Priestess sat on a tall dais between two columns.  The plaza was made of strange, amorphous grey, blank, and black space.  I went toward The High Priestess, who vacillated, dreamlike, between holding me a firm stare and a preoccupied handling of what she held in her lap.  When I reached for her hands I felt a jolt of energy but simultaneously a disconnect.  I met her gaze and then her gaze faltered.  Each of her actions seemed to happen at the same time.  My knees buckled and I put down my hand to steady myself, sitting upon her bench.  I sat right into her very being and opened my eyes to find myself as The High Priestess.

The High Priestess and I have the same dark brown bottomless eyes and I used them to look out over the strangely blank plaza before me.  The day was grey but lush green hills of grass surrounded the plaza.  I opened the book in my lap to find a beautiful rendering of a willow tree, as well as botanical drawings of other trees.  Most of the book was simply lined blank pages though.  I leaved through the pages with my thumb, enjoying the luxurious uneven feel of the vellum sheets, dreaming about all that I could write upon them.  I stood to inspect the veil behind me, its satiny opaque pomegranates rippling in the breeze.  When I pushed it aside I got the disorienting feeling the the horizon was rushing in on me over an endless sea.  My head simply peeked through the veil into thin nothing and all around me was endless jarring ocean and horizon without relief.

I moved back to my bench and sat in confusion.  Obviously something was blocking my connection to my subconscious inner voice.  When I stood and separated from The High Priestess I was garbed exactly as she was, my form a reflection of hers moving away to face itself.  We met eyes and I felt lost in her's again.  She told me to "trust," and "that life is a mystery, we're all party of the mystery, without end".  She gave me the book she held on her lap and I clutched it dearly to my breast.  I love books, and this one was precious, old, and beautiful, smelling faintly of leather, dust, and age.   I walked back across the blank grey plaza and returned to the white light of the flower a bit confused and dismayed, but determined to continue.

I thought this meditation was fascinating.  Perhaps my deep desire to connect with the energy of The High Priestess has created a disconnect or a barrier in my subconscious that is blocking me from listening to my intuition or hearing my inner voice.  Some days it seems easy and others there is a just blank space and never-ending expanses of sea between my conscious and subconscious.  I have yet to do the exercise from the guidebook that comes with the meditations, of trying to connect with my Higher Self through journaling, but I definitely will in the future, and I will also do this meditation again on a different day under different circumstances to see if I succeed in filling in all that mysterious space and sea.  I think it's really interesting how easily I connected with The Fool and The Magician but not The High Priestess, and look forward to coming to understand my current connections with the other Major Arcana as I continue on the Soul Meditations journey.