The High Priestess (or Popess) - Two

Early 16th-century popess on the Rosenwald Sheet of uncut Tarot woodcuts.

Today we refer to this card as the High Priestess, but in older versions of the Tarot, this card was called the Popess. According to legend, there was a woman who masqueraded as a man in order to become Pope, which of course was a deeply heretical subversive thing to do. People were absolutely disgusted by the idea of a woman acting as God's representative on Earth. As soon as she was found out, she met a most gruesome death at the hands of an angry religiously zealous mob. Should people have been so utterly disgusted by a female pope? Were they right to think of the sexes as polar opposites? This card is given the number two, representing duality, polarity, binary. To me it represents the illusion of separateness, of categorising things into "opposites". The female pope represents the break down of this illusion, she steps into a male role to bridge the gap between the sexes and prove that it is nonsense to have seperate gender roles. She is masquerading, just as all of us play roles based on societal expectations. We are brought up to believe in a world of opposites, girls and boys, good and bad, light and dark, right and wrong. But all of this is falsehood.

In the 13th century there was a heretical Christian sect who believed that the male dominated Papacy would  pass away, yielding to a line of female Popes. In preparation for this event they elected Sister Manfreda as the first Popesses. This sect was exterminated by the Inquisition, who burned their Popess at the stake in the autumn of 1300 CE. The heretical beliefs of the sect were preserved in the Visconti-Sforza Tarot deck. This card has also been called Juno, the Roman Queen of the Gods. She has also been depicted as the Virgin Mary, Queen of Heaven. Modern decks associate her with the goddess Isis. These are all representations of the Cosmic Mother, or Mother Nature. She is a representation of the true reality of the Universe as an infinite womb. Living within this womb, we are not separate, we are one with the Mother. The sperm and ovary, representing duality, are united as one within the womb of creation. Mother and baby are not separate entities. We are not separate from the Cosmos. We think that when we are born "into this world" that we have descended from some other place. There is no "other". We have emerged in this world, from this world, part of this world. The true reality is that there is no "this and that" or "you and me" or "night and day". The duality of two is an illusion.

Here is a quote from the Encyclopedia Britannica: "The number 2 symbolizes many of the basic dualities: me/you, male/female, yes/no, alive/dead, left/right, yin/yang, and so on. Dualities are common in human approaches to the world, probably because of our preference for two-valued logic—yet another duality, true/false. Although 2 was female to the Pythagoreans, other numerological schemes viewed it as male. In Agrippa von Nettesheim’s De occulta philosophia (1533; “On the Philosophy of the Occult”), 2 is the symbol for man, sex, and evil. One reason that some have associated 2 with evil is that the biblical book of Genesis does not use the formula “and it was good” when referring to the second day of Creation.
Some religions are dualistic, with two gods in place of the one God of monotheism. Examples include Zoroastrianism, where Ahura Mazdā (the god of light and goodness) battles with Ahriman (the god of darkness and evil). The number 2 is often associated with negatives, as in the words duplicity and two-faced. Northwest Coast Indians required the parents of twins to observe various taboos because they believed that supernatural powers would bring the wishes of twins to fruition."

From what I understand, the Pythagoreans believed the number two represented the division of the material world from the oneness of the supreme being. The number two is associated with the moon, representing a reflection or mirror by which ultimate reality is made visible. The reflection is mistaken for reality, but when we turn away from the mirror of duality, we see the true splendour of oneness. Duality is a dangerous thing because it persuades us to think in terms of black and white, limiting our perception. This card says to me, "wake up! What you see is not as straight forward as you think!"