The High Priestess: Intuition in the Age of Data
The High Priestess sits between two pillars, holding secrets and wisdom, half-hidden behind a veil. She’s not flashy like The Magician or nurturing like The Empress. She’s the one who reminds us: some truths can’t be quantified, some wisdom can’t be rushed.
In tarot, The High Priestess is about intuition, subconscious knowing, and the power of stillness. Which makes her the perfect archetype to drag into the UX + AI conversation — because if 2025 design culture has a toxic trait, it’s worshipping data while ignoring intuition.
The High Priestess as Designer
Let’s be real: we’re drowning in metrics. “Time on task,” “bounce rates,” “engagement funnels” — the gospel of numbers. AI is only cranking up the obsession, spitting out analytics dashboards that make us feel like the answers are all there, if we can just read them fast enough.
But The High Priestess whispers: look deeper. She reminds us that not every insight can be scraped, tagged, or A/B tested. Some truths come from listening to people, not just tracking them. Some brilliance comes from sitting still long enough to notice what no data point can tell you.
Design without intuition becomes hollow. It optimizes for clicks while missing the soul.
The High Priestess as Me
After being laid off, I felt the urge to immediately measure my worth: interviews scheduled, jobs applied to, responses received. But honestly? The High Priestess has been in my ear saying: slow down. Sit with the unknown.
And it’s been liberating. The portfolio I’m building isn’t just a spreadsheet of “impact metrics.” It’s a reflection of my values, my creative intuition, my weird experiments with tarot and AI. It’s me leaning into mystery instead of running from it.
In my work with AI, I’ve noticed the same tension. Sure, I can use it to crunch content or spin out a hundred iterations. But its real magic comes when I follow my instincts about what feels alive — when I let my intuition guide what to keep and what to discard.
The High Priestess as All of Us
The High Priestess calls us to bring intuition back into design. To value pauses, to listen deeply, to respect what can’t be measured. AI will make it tempting to optimize everything, but maybe our real edge as designers is knowing when notto.
In 2025, intuition is radical. In a world obsessed with prediction, The High Priestess reminds us that mystery still has value. And that sometimes, the wisest thing we can do as designers, technologists, or humans is to close the dashboard, trust our gut, and listen for the truth behind the veil.