Ch.2 Ignoring Your Intuition Can Be Dangerous

The Reversed Fool, the Devil, and the High Priestess: Tarot Reflections on the Bluebeard Archetype

Chapter 2 of Women Who Run With the Wolves, offers a stark warning through one of the oldest cautionary tales in the feminine psyche. The chapter opens with a tale of a failed magician named Bluebeard, who turns out to be a terrible choice for a husband! At first he is charming, charismatic, a little ‘odd’ because his beard is blue but the young woman overlooks these quirks and decides to amrry him anyways. As she soon discovers, he is not what he pretends to be.

For this chapter I pulled the following cards: the Reversed Fool, the Devil, and the High Priestess. Together, they illustrate the cycle of deception, awakening, and reclamation that Bluebeard’s tale demands we confront.

🃏 The Reversed Fool: The Naïve Woman

In many tarot systems, the Fool is a symbol of trust, innocence, and a fresh journey. Upright, the Fool steps into the unknown with open-hearted curiosity and divine protection. But reversed, the Fool becomes heedless—blind to danger, disconnected from instinct, and vulnerable to manipulation: Naïve.

This is the naïve woman at the beginning of Bluebeard’s tale. She has not yet learned to distinguish between charm and threat, between the glittering surface and the rot beneath.

The Reversed Fool

“When the predator is invited into the home under the guise of something else, we begin to see the true danger of the naïve psyche.”

Where in your own life have you ignored your instincts in favor of giving someone the benefit of the doubt?

When has politeness cost you clarity?

The Devil: The Predator Archetype

The Devil in tarot is the trap, the illusion, the seduction that fools the Fool.

The natural predator of the psyche is not necessarily a person, but a force. It’s the voice that says, “Don’t ask questions,” “Don’t make trouble,” or “You’re imagining things.” In the Bluebeard tale, the Devil shows up as the husband who forbids his wife from entering a certain room, a symbolic attempt to silence her inner knowing.

But the Devil doesn’t win through force. He wins through consent. The woman agrees to follow the rule. She agrees to silence her curiosity. That is how the trap is set. In many ways, when we encounter the Devil in our own lives, we invite them in. In our ignorance or naievity, we allow ourselves to be vulnerable prey. We arent honest with ourselves because we dont want to acknowledge these unpleasant truths.

The Devil archetype reminds us that the predator’s power lies not only in deception, but in our own willingness to pretend we don’t see the signs.

The Devil

“The predator’s main intention, whether internal or external, is to keep the woman from gaining any kind of consciousness.”

Where have you been told not to look too closely?

What parts of your inner world have you locked away to avoid disrupting the peace?

The High Priestess: The Inner Voice That Knows

If Bluebeard’s tale is a tragedy, it is also an initiation. The moment the woman opens the forbidden door, she begins the journey from innocence to awareness. She becomes the one who sees. This is the High Priestess—the keeper of intuition, mystery, and inner truth.

In tarot, the High Priestess sits between the pillars of darkness and light. Its the part of your gut feeling that tells you, “Something’s off.” Its that little, nagging voice you hear when you meet someone and can’t explain why, but you just don’t feel safe.

The High Priestess (in ourselves) cannot be awakened until the Reversed Fool experiences loss or revelation (usually triggered by pain, the need for growth and internal evolution). Intuition grows sharper when we honor it… and duller when we ignore it.

Bluebeard is not just a myth about danger. It is a mirror held up to the parts of us that want to stay asleep, that want the world to be as kind as we imagine it. But the world is not always kind.

And predators—whether people, addictions, ideologies, or self-betraying habits—do exist.

The High Priestess

Have you been listening to your inner knowing, or silencing it in order to be liked?

What would it look like to live in deep loyalty to your own perception?