AUTHOR’S NOTE: I continue to gain fresh insights from my reading of Benebell Wen’s Holistic Tarot. This time I’m comparing the lunar qualities of the High Priestess and the Moon.
While it’s been a while since I read the chapter, I recall that she made reference to the symbolic relationship between the two cards by observing that the High Priestess is associated with the astrological Moon and the Moon card relates to the sign of Pisces, which in any sane metaphysical universe would occupy the path of the Priestess on the Tree of Life and the Moon card would be synonymous with its namesake, just like the Sun (but that’s my opinion, not hers). I made a case for this argument in a 2017 essay (linked below), so here I will focus on another aspect of Wen’s commentary.
She noted that the High Priestess is the more exalted of the two vehicles for archetypal lunar energy and therefore embodies its spiritual message, while the lowly Moon traffics in more mundane affairs and is the ideal messenger for bringing her profound utterances down to the prosaic level. The fact that the “filter” the Moon runs the signal through might distort the message and confound the mission is one of the fundamental problems with encountering this card in a reading: it may be trying to tell us something we need to know but in hopelessly vague or garbled language.
It would do no good to appeal to the source because the High Priestess has her own issues with inscrutability. It comes down to whether you want your wisdom delivered via the cryptic allusions of the Priestess or the loopy elliptical enigmas of the Moon. If the Priestess knew what the Moon was doing to her transmissions she would probably disown it, but they sit at opposite ends of the one-way pipeline. I’ve always felt that both of these cards can produce unannounced plot-twists, but those of the High Priestess are more likely to be of the pleasant variety, while the Moon has perfected the “nasty surprise.”
Another way to look at it would be to identify the other Major Arcana that have an affiliation with the Moon and Pisces. By doing so we can identify a community of complementary “loony toons” for storytelling purposes.
The astrological Moon is exalted in Taurus, the sign of the Hierophant, and rules Cancer, the sign of the Chariot, while in classical astrology Pisces is ruled by Jupiter, the planet of the Wheel of Fortune, and Venus, planet of the Empress, is exalted in that sign, bringing together both of the “benefics” of Old World astrology under the sign of the mystic and thereby receiving the “stamp of approval” from the High Priestess. The Empress and the Wheel of Fortune are the “mail-carriers” of the High Priestess – Pisces rules the feet, so here along with the Moon we have the ideal “postmen” – while the Hierophant and the Chariot signify the “routing center” or hub of the network, implying “the more things change (Chariot), the more they stay the same (Hierophant).”
We might also think of them as “signal boosters” in the communication chain between the High Priestess and the Moon: The Empress “vitalizes” the message; the Hierophant “codifies” it; the Chariot “expedites” it; and the Wheel of Fortune gives it an encouraging “spin” when dialing into the Moon’s frequency. But the overwhelmed Moon may not know what to do with all the positive reinforcement and it could just dissipate in the fog, leaving only the spiritual residue of the message to deliver. Reading the Moon card thus becomes an exercise in decryption.
Parsifal's Wheel Tarot & Astrology 