What Do the B and J on the High Priestess Mean?

What do the B and J on the High Priestess mean? I’ve even had people ask if they stand for ‘blow job’. Fair question, but no, it’s not that kind of card. They’re Boaz and Jachin, the two pillars that stood at the entrance to the Temple of Solomon, and the veil hanging behind the figure draws on the same temple’s symbolism.

The High Priestess gets talked about as divine feminine energy a lot, which is a phrase I hate, so I’d rather start with what’s actually in the picture: a figure sat between a black pillar and a white one, a curtain covered in pomegranates, and a scroll half hidden under their robe. Once you know where those came from, the whole card makes a lot more sense.

What Does the B and J Stand for on the High Priestess Card?

On the Rider-Waite-Smith version of the High Priestess, you’ll notice two pillars either side of the figure in the middle. One is black with a B, Boaz. One is white with a J, Jachin. These are drawn straight from the description of the Temple of Solomon in the Hebrew Bible, in 1 Kings 7, where the temple was built with two huge bronze pillars at its entrance, named Boaz and Jachin.

Boaz and Jachin in Sacred Texts

Boaz means “in him is strength”. Jachin means roughly “he will establish”. They stood either side of the way in, so anyone walking into the temple walked between them, and together they mark a threshold, the point where you leave one space and enter another.

Boaz and Jachin in Tarot Symbolism

In the tarot, the two pillars stand for opposites: light and dark, conscious and unconscious, the known and the unknown. The High Priestess sits right between them, and to me that’s the point of the card. It doesn’t pick a side. It sits with both, and it holds the paradox rather than reaching for certainty.

What Is the Veil Behind the High Priestess?

Behind the High Priestess in the card is a veil patterned with pomegranates, which draws on temple symbolism: in 1 Kings 7, the tops of Boaz and Jachin are decorated with rows of pomegranates. The temple’s own curtain is described in 2 Chronicles 3:14, woven from blue, purple and crimson yarn and fine linen, with cherubim worked into it. It separated the outer area from the inner sanctum, the Holy of Holies. This was the most sacred space in the ancient Jewish religion, and it was believed to be the place where the presence of God lived.

The Veil in the Temple

Only one person, the High Priest, was allowed to pass through that veil, and only once a year, on Yom Kippur. They had to go through purification rituals first.

The Veil in Tarot Imagery

So the pillars mark the way in, and the veil is the boundary itself, between what’s on the surface and what’s underneath. On the card the veil hides most of what’s behind it, and the scroll in the figure’s lap, marked TORA, is half covered by their robe too. Nothing’s handed over all at once. It’s a card about the stuff you only find out by sitting with it for a while.

What Happened When the Veil of the Temple Was Torn?

In the Gospels, there’s a moment when the curtain in the temple is torn. That’s the later temple in Jerusalem, not Solomon’s, which the Babylonians had destroyed centuries before. According to Matthew 27:51, at the moment of Jesus’ death, “the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom”. The traditional Christian reading sees this as the end of the separation between people and God. Whatever was behind the curtain isn’t locked away any more.

But not everyone reads it that way.

Peter Rollins and the Torn Veil of the Temple

Peter Rollins, in his book The Divine Magician, reads that moment theologically, as the big reveal in a magic trick. In his reading, the curtain is torn and there’s nothing behind it. No Ark of the Covenant, no glowing presence, just an empty room.

For Rollins, the empty room is the whole point of the trick. Whatever people thought was shut away behind the fabric and the ritual and whoever was guarding the door had been out here with everyone else the whole time.

Which makes me look at the High Priestess a bit differently, because if there’s nothing behind the curtain, what exactly is the figure sat in front of it guarding? Maybe the card is asking you whether the curtain needs to be there at all.

Boaz and Jachin Tarot Symbolism: Thresholds and Duality

The question “what is the B and J on the High Priestess?” gets you a lot more than two letters, because those letters are the way into the rest of the card.

Living Symbols of Polarity

Sitting between the pillars, like the High Priestess does, means letting both of them be there at once: good and bad, light and dark, side by side, with neither one winning.

That’s what the card tends to ask of you when it turns up in a reading. Can you trust yourself in the tension? Can you be still without forcing an answer before it’s ready?

Divine Wisdom and the Contrast with the Hierophant

The Hierophant and the High Priestess

The High Priestess often gets read against the Hierophant, and the two cards have a lot in common, the pillars included. But they come at wisdom from opposite ends. With the High Priestess, wisdom is hidden. It’s a mystery you sit with and don’t quite understand, and it gets through to you by intuition and inference rather than spelling anything out. With the Hierophant, wisdom is handed down, and it comes with rules and logic and instructions, through teachers and tradition and institutions.

Both Ends of the Spectrum

What It Means for You

Put the two cards side by side and you get wisdom coming from both ends of the spectrum. With the Hierophant it comes from outside you, from tradition and the people who pass it down. With the High Priestess it’s hidden, and it only starts to make sense once you’ve sat with it for a while. The way I see it, the divine, or whatever you want to call it, is outside of us and within us at the same time.

If you want to go further with this card, there’s a lot more on my High Priestess card meaning page. And if you’d like to learn to read the cards for yourself, with other people doing the same, that’s what Simply Tarot Membership is for. Or you can book a reading with me.