Exegesis THE HIGH PRIESTESS (II) Sentences 7–9
7 You will show your watercolors, many will look, but few will see
8 Let your right hand be guided by the spirit of your left hand
9 Then the smoke from your paintings will sow images in the clouds
*
7 You will show your watercolors; many will look, but few will see : this is the law of all esoteric knowledge. The crowd (“many”) perceives only the surface, the immediate narrative. The initiated (“few”) discern the symbol, the vibration hidden behind the form. The High Priestess reveals herself only to those who can read between the lines, who can hear the invisible whisper animating the image.
8 Let your right hand be guided by the spirit of your left hand : this fundamental precept binds action to intuition. The right hand represents conscious action, technical mastery, and the manifested world. The left hand embodies the unconscious, intuition, mystery, and the hidden world. The artist-seer does not paint with ego alone, but allows the intuitive vision, received through the left hand, to inspire the conscious gesture. It is the perfect union of technique and inspiration, of water and fire, of the visible and the invisible.
9 Then the smoke from your paintings will sow images in the clouds : this is the magical consequence of that union. The water of the watercolors, crossed by the artist’s inner fire, transforms into a subtle smoke. This vapor rises and deposits in the clouds shapes that everyone believes they recognize. It is the realm of pareidolia: the artist shows nothing, and yet everyone sees something. The eye does not discover the painted image, but the inner image it already carries. Thus the artist becomes a sower of visions, and each spectator harvests only what their gaze is prepared to receive.
