#2 The High Priestess Archetype
The only way to cure the women from the spider's bite was to play music that caused her to dance, helping separate the spider’s venom from her blood.
Please read about the Tarot Tracklist for my approach working with the tarot cards.
The High Priestess follows the Magician as the third card of the tarot. My initial interaction with this archetype came in the form of the Florence Welch. I was 13, walking along a lake’s shore, a small hike down from the RV park my friend, Delaney, her parents and I were staying. Delaney and I had spent most of the day walking, whispering about crushes, complaining about school, and trying to stay out of her parnets way. Lungs by Florence + The Machine soundtracked our trip, playing while we roasted marshmellows while her parents quipped passive agressive insults around the fire.
Thirteen was the year I snuck out to wander around my suburban town, one headphone in while the album played over and over. I’d time my clumsy steps up the stairs in time with the echoes of my father’s snoring (pre sleep apnea diagnosis), returning home just before 5 a.m. Some nights I met up with friends, other times I met boys, mostly I just went to a park to look at the stars (how very melancholic of me).
There were two major events happening in my life then:
I was being confirmed into the Catholic church.
My home life was miserable.
And, well, if there’s one thing Welch can write, it’s Catholic symbolism mixed and with the feeling of drifting through a miserable life. Her songs echoed something within myself, a reverberation of something more.
Even then, there was something about Welch’s lyricism that resonated within my bones. And her music has stayed orbiting in my life for over a decade.
Dance Fever, tarantism and the High Priestess
In 2022, Florence + The Machine released “Dance Fever,” appearing at just the right time and place in my life. Inspired by the dancing mania that swept through Europe after the Black Death, Welch told G1 this album was inspired after her friend, Juliano Zaffino, wrote a poem called ‘Strasbourg,’ based on the best known example of choreomania from Strasbourg, France.
In July 1518, a woman sporadically started dancing on the street. Somewhere between 50-400 people joined her, entering a trance-like state and remained dancing for hours and days until they passed out from exhaustion or died. (Marks, Robert W., The Story of Hypnotism)
The choreomania in Strasbourg is not the only example of dancing out of control. In Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés’ “Women Who Run With the Wolves,” Dr. Estés shares a short tale called ‘The Red Shoes.’ Dr. Estes dissects the story into symbols of the many different traps women must avoid to preserve their instinct and intuition. One of the traps includes a pair of red shoes and a trick played by a man. It concludes with the girl having her legs cut off to free her before she danced herself to death.
Finally there’s the taranta, a dance that originates in southern Italy. While there are many different beginnings to taranta, the basic understanding is women were bitten by a spider, then fell into a deep stillness that could only be healed by, you guessed it, dance.
Women, commonly those who were impoverished and working in fields, would sometimes become infected after being bitten by a spider. These women would appear tired and melancholic, even entering a catatonic state interrupted by sporadic twitching and trembling. The only way to cure her was to play music that would cause her to dance, which helped separate the spider’s venom from the blood.
Ernesto de Martino, an Italian multicultural anthropologist, documented a tarantism ritual in the 1950’s.
Remember how I said the women who worked in the fields would get bit by a spider? Unsurprisingly, there’s no “proof” that these catatonic states were brought on by a real spider bite. ‘Fimmene, Fimmene,’ a taranta song, tells about the conditions of women’s work in the tobacco fields, using a spider bite to symbolize the assaults by the supervisors and exploitation by their bosses and fathers.
During the ritual, the women inflicted are in a trance-like state. Lee Blackstone, professor of Sociology at State University of New York Old Westbury, and de Martino describe the women as unconscious while dancing. Blackstone said it was even believed that during the dance, the woman talked to her spider, trying to come to an agreement to end the affliction. (Kaylee Hammonds,“The spiderwomen of Puglia”)
And while there are instances of tarantism in men, most cases were found in women, sometimes spanning across multiple generations of the same family.
Many women traveled to the steps of St. Paul in Galatina (patron saint of those bitten by things like snakes, scorpions, and spiders), they’d scream on the steps, the whole community surrounding them, as they fell into a hypnotic trance. There, in that trance, they met the High Priestess.
In 2022, I went to the Florence + The Machine ‘Dance Fever Tour.’ The album had washed over me, pushing me onto the shores of my mortal life from a listless floating. And while I lost myself to the movement on the pit floor, Florence Welch danced barefoot on stage, the lace fabric of her gown cresting, rippling and falling from her movements. For nearly two hours, time suspended around me. And when it’s was over, and the lights came back on, and my feet were sore from dancing, jumping, swaying, the poison I’d been carrying for most of my life finally separated from my blood.
Who is The High Priestess?
“The High Priestess’s greatest strength is her public weakness,” Sally Nichols.
The High Priestess is the vessel that creates the space for transformation to take place. But before you can be transformed, you must surrender at her seaside altar. And when you meet the High Priestess, you have to slightly suspend your disbelief.
The High Priestess is related to the intuitive water sign Pisces, ruled by Uranus and Jupiter. She has an abundance of resources as a keeper, committed to the Divine Word. She is the protector of ancient wisdom. When wanderers come asking for her secrets, only those who meet her where the conscious and subconscious share ground, can hear what she has to say.
As explored through the taranta and choreomania, dance can create a flow-state, one where you can exist between the subconscious and conscious. A movement that connects where divinity turns into matter. Dance is as a way to connect to the fluid instinct of The High Priestess.
Other characteristics of The High Priestess:
vessel that connects the unconscious and conscious
suspend analysis
rule by slow persistence, love and patience
intuitive, psychic
curious
wears head coverings, bandanas, head scarfs, veils, etc.
People/characters that embody The High Priestess:
Dancers
Florence Welch
Alua Arthur
Frida Kahlo
Moon goddesses
The Song of The High Priestess
Something I’ve yet to mention is how important the number two is to understanding The High Priestess.
“[One is no good for] carrying a baby, or cooking a pot of soup, or brewing up a plot. No… [God] personally made both the sun and the moon at the same time, one with each of his hands… Two alone is the number for all life; one alone can do nothing. Even the Lord, you know, needed the two before he could begin the task of creation.” - Tarot and the Archetypal Journey by Sally Nichols
Because The High Priestess is #2 and seeing how important the number two is to describing the card, I knew this song needed to be a duet between haunting women. And where there’s one, there’s two.
In “Morning Elvis,” the last song off of ‘Dance Fever’ Welch sings about a hangover so bad, her bloodstream so poisoned, she misses a visit to Graceland. She spends her day wondering if she’ll make it onto the stage for the show. The duet with Ethel Cain in Denver, combines Cain’s soft, eery voice, with Welch’s haunting pain. We hear their crisis of presence.
May the music wash over you.
The High Priestess Playlist
Visual spells for The High Priestess
My final thoughts on The High Priestess:
I want to desperately know more cultural representations that match The High Priestess. This is one of my favorite cards, so please feel free to share with me :)
The High Priestess spends her free time haunting her local library, in a dance class or on stage, maybe lap swimming at the local YMCA.
If you haven’t listened to Alua Arthur’s TedTalk, now’s your time.
La Notte della Taranta is an annual music festival, focused on taranta and pizzica folk music. 2023 has some of my favorite performances. I recommend turning it on with some Italian red wine (if you can find Belposto’s Montepulciano d’Abruzzo, get that)