Mystery
A neighborhood and the High Priestess
Decades ago, when I was a really young man, I had a girlfriend who lived in a really beautiful neighborhood in Seattle. It was an odd relationship. I never felt that she liked me all that much, and she tended to drive me a little nuts, but we were together for quite some time. It worked, for that time, because the sex was out of this world. Pervy boy met pervy girl and it was explosive. I’ve not forgotten her, and I’ve also not forgotten that spectacular neighborhood in which she lived.
I haven’t been back to that neighborhood in decades, but earlier this week I had the opportunity. I was carpooling to a meeting with a friend, and he drove us through it as a shortcut. It is just as wonderful now as it was then.
It’s a very old neighborhood, composed entirely of historic homes. And trees. The trees are the thing. They are old, huge, and fill every yard. The trees are so thick and luxurious that only snippets of the houses behind them can be seen. It is a high density urban area, but these trees everywhere, blocking everything, give it a truly unique feeling. It feels small, intimate, closed off, hidden. It feels mysterious.
What’s behind the veil created by the leaves of all those trees?
I’ve written before that the High Priestess is my card. She has declared herself such to me over and over again throughout the years that I’ve worked with Tarot. I’ve always been good with that, although it does seem a bit of a mismatch, in a way.
I’ve lived a very public life. I don’t hide anything, what you see is what you get, and I’ve spent my life putting myself out in front of people.
The High Priestess isn’t like that. She’s quiet. She’s in the background. She holds her secrets tightly.
Many people wouldn’t like the neighborhood that I love. What I find wonderful they would find dark, damp, and confining. The mystery I find so attractive they would experience as stifling.
It’s like that I think with the High Priestess. I want to know her secrets. I really want to know what she’s got hidden behind that pomegranate veil. It’s almost sensual.
But I imagine that some may find her almost inscrutable. Difficult to read. She certainly doesn’t have the directness of her counterpart the Hierophant, or the Emperor, not even the Empress, although that lady has a fair share of mystery as well.
It’s the mystery that draws me. The call to imagine that which I can’t actually see. The wonder about that which is hidden.
A difficult to understand young woman. A neighborhood largely hidden by severely overgrown trees. A Tarot card that hides much more than it reveals. To my mind these things are all alike. They contain vast mysteries that call to me. Mysteries that I feel compelled to understand.
I love old neighborhoods like the one you described; I live in one myself in our smallish town.
Comparing the tarot major arcana to Egyptian deities, I might to compare the High Priestess so Isis, especially her role in magic and initiation through the mysteries. There's the temptation to place her as the Empress being the great mother, but I tend to put Hathor in that position. The fit isn't going to be perfect, to be fair.
Mystery demands patience and respect. It invites to "something" but makes no specific promises. What we find when we plumb these depths, if we ever do, more about ourselves.