From the book:
The High Priestess.
"This card has its kabbalistic origin in the letter B or Beth. Beth means house; a house with a door. It is the house of reason and it can be compared with the human face. The leaves of the door are the lips, the open or closed mouth which might tell truth, keep silent or lie. In the original kabbala, B was exclusively the symbol of reason. When, then, did this turn into the High Priestess? At the end of the Middle Ages, as the Renaissance was beginning, reason became a kind of secretively dressed high priestess or female Pope. According to a legend, the female Pope Joan came to power under the assumed name of Pope John VI after managing to hide her true sex for many years and pretended to be a young novice and the a priest. Unfortunately for her, she was not careful enough. She took a secret lover and became pregnant. Everything was prepared so that at the appropriate time she could go incognito to a remote village and give birth to the child, give it a wet nurse to look after and then return, dressed as a man and resume her office. She decided that before leaving for the country, she would still have time to take part in a public Easter procession. However, faced with the procession, she suddenly felt unwell; she fell to the ground, had a still birth and died on the spot. This heroine of legendary lack of sense was chosen as the archetypal symbol of good sense. The female Pope may have gained access to fame and to canal pleasures through her pretence and her breach of faith, but she had to suffer melancholy and her own ruin as a consequence of her own actions. Naturally, and luckily, reason is not Pope Joan, who more closely resembles foolhardiness. Reason is allied to diplomacy, which serves noble causes. Reason puts a finger in the book of secrets, which only it can guess at. But all those to whom it gives the gold and the silver keys it keeps are then also able to discover them. The Sun key is the word, the deed; the Moon key is fantasy intuition.

The oldest book of the kabbala, the Sefer Yezira teaches us that God let the letter Beth reign supreme in wisdom, that he fused them together and then created the Moon, the first day of time and the right eye of man and of woman with them.

Since Beth symbolises what our mouth speaks, though its meaning is the house, the name Elizabeth means the House of God. Likewise, from Beth Elohim, which also means House of God, the name Bethlehem is derived. The mouth, together with its lips, is the entrance door to the house of our intellect and our spirit. It can be open or remain closed. Words are silver, but silence is golden."

GY observations of the card:
The card is called ‘the Popess’; she is seated on gold and blue ‘throne’; headdress covers right eye; robe red, green lined, gold edged. Throne is on a black and white checked carpet, as in a masonic lodge. Winged lion adorns seat of throne. Wears a winged helmet. She hold a book in right hand [Ying/Yang on cover] and a gold and a silver key in her left hand. Various symbols and letters adorn the throne and the card surrounds. I’m looking for the meanings of these.

Gary