After the inner world of the high priestess, the fool finds himself back in the outer world with card number 3 the empress. Whereas the high priestess can appear cool and distant, maybe a little detached, the empress is all about presence. There is no avoiding the richness of this card.
The empress is the second woman the fool has met. The high priestess was all about shadow and mystery but the empress is a hot sunny day with ripe corn, flowing water and forests, all showing her connection to the earth.
In early tarot packs, the empress was counterpart to the next card, the emperor and her crown the original imperial crown of leadership. She held a sceptre of authority and her shield bore the eagle of the holy roman empire.
In the 19th century, Eliphas Levi gave her a crown with 12 stars linking her to the signs of zodiac, while A. E. Waite replaced the eagle with the symbol of Venus or Aphrodite, the greek goddess of love and beauty, procreation and pleasure. In the Waite pack the empress has become the archetypal earth mother like Gaia or Demeter
The fool is drawn to the life and colour of this card. He’s alone on his journey and she may remind him of his mother or grandmother, the primary female influences over his life so far. She makes him feel safe and he wants to rest with her for a while.
However, the empress card represents more than an individual person. She is nature in all its glory and colour, alongside the fulfilment of plans or ideas coming to fruition.
It’s worth mentioning the central tree shaped like a pine cone. It may resemble the pineal gland, traditionally associated with the third eye or second sight. Contemporary research into natural psychedelics suggest historical depictions of the pineal gland, which are found everywhere once you begin to look, could resemble hallucinatory mushrooms.
This is an example of the power of images and how they mean different things at different times. It can make the tarot appear complicated at first. The fool must learn to look beyond the surface to uncover universal meanings behind its symbols.
The empress sits on a sumptuous throne covered with drapes and cushions. Thrones are traditionally seats of power and this one reinforces her control over both the material world of nature and the forces which lie underneath it.
Her dress is covered in pomegranates, like the temple veil we saw on the high priestess. Pomegranites were ancient symbols of fertility and femininity, often associated with goddesses such as Demeter, Persephone, and Aphrodite.
While not obviously pregnant, the looseness of her dress suggests the possibility. It also indicates she is no size zero. A corseted or gym-toned waistline has no place here!
I see her more as permanently birthing the natural world with all its cycles of death and rebirth. Representing the beauty of the nature, she is a reminder of the energy that fuels life, and because she is energy her force is indestructible. It might take different forms but ultimately she is the eternal feminine principle of life itself.
What else does the empress have to teach the fool?
Because she birthed the universe, her lifeforce runs through every living thing. We are all connected and interdependent. As buddhists believe, we exist only in relationship to others. Regardless of nationality or religion, taxonomy or size, everything is related by the thread of life.
Small things matter as well as the bigger ones.
Have you ever felt emotional when watching a sunrise on a perfect summer morning? Been amazed at the intricate complexity of snowflakes, where everyone has a unique shape? Sifted through shingle for agate and seen how every grain of sand is different?
This is the touch of the empress.
Maybe you’ve travelled and seen wonderful things; flown over the Grand Canyon, taken a cable car ride to the top of Table Mountain in Capetown or Po Lin monastery on Lantau Island. Perhaps you’ve been lucky enough to witness a pod of whales and listened to their strange octaves.
Once in a lifetime experiences often involve nature and the empress is telling the fool to take opportunities to see the world differently. That there’s more to life than the endless cycle of stuff and status associated with ownership or having a ‘good’ postcode.
If travel is not possible, she reminds the fool to see beauty in small things; a dew studded web, taste of real honey, birdsong. Make it a rule to find one natural thing each day that amazes you.
As an empress, she represented a constrained version of life. As empress-cum-goddess she is so much more. The green shoot pushing through frozen earth, gunning for light, is as much her doing as the birth of a child.
She is asking the fool to look below cultural construction to witness the planet that sustains us.
Nature is a force which can both bless and destroy and like all the tarot cards in the major arcana, the empress contains binaries. The empress represents endings as well as beginnings. She is nurture and neglect, health and sickness, joy and grief.
There’s no avoiding her opposites. Regal yet maternal, she has hard lines as well as soft edges, but nature will always survive. This can be seen 30 years after the nuclear explosion at Chernobyl, where grass, plants and trees have regrown while wild animals thrive.
Finally, the myth of Demeter and Persephone offers additional depth to this card. Stolen away by Hades, Demeter grieved for the loss of her daughter. The earth failed to flourish and living plants died. A compromise was reached whereby Persephone spent half the year in the underworld and half with her mother.
The story is an explanation for the seasons but it also associates the empress with motherhood, and how parentiing is not always easy.
The empress knows the grief of death and loss, and how children sometimes choose darkness, but regardless of how tough it gets, she reminds the fool how life always goes on.
It might sound a bit cliche, but the sun rises and sets regardless of how much we mourn what has changed.
When the empress appears at a time of despair, she is there to remind us of hope, no matter how distant it might seem.
The next archetype the fool will meet is the emperor. Here he’ll encounter power and authority again, but through a very different lens.
Join me as we take the next step on a walk through the tarot.
images my own, copyright free from wikipedia commons or from https://pixabay.com/
