Carla Izumi Bamford - Art & Design

II. The High Priestess

The High Priestess (II) is the second trump or Major Arcana card in most traditional Tarot decks. This card is used in game playing as well as in divination.
In the first tarot pack with inscriptions, the 18th-century woodcut Marseilles Tarot, this figure is crowned with the Papal tiara and labelled “La Papesse”, the Popess. For historians or heresiologists, such a figure suggests the supposed female equality practiced among the Cathar perfecti, who had been extirpated from Northern Italy and Southern France shortly before the Tarot first appeared at these locales. Some say that it referred to the legend of Pope Joan.