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’s no avoiding the richness of this card.
In early tarot, the empress wore the imperial crown of leadership, with a sceptre of authority and shield bearing the eagle of the Holy Roman Empire. Representing material wealth and power, the empress, alongside her emperor husband, was at the top of the social hierarchy.
For centuries the empress card remained a symbol of female achievement and authority, so long as she fulfilled her primary role which was the production of male heirs to the throne.
The card changed during the 18th century, as so many other cards did, when occultists began to reinterpret tarot as an esoteric tool.
Eliphas Levi introduced the sun, moon and stars, an image linked to the Book of Revelation in the bible. This describes a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars. This influenced other tarot designers of this time, such as Oswald Wirth.
The tarot empress of this period retains her shield but the eagle now represented the holy spirit, while the empress herself became connected to the ancient Egyptian goddess Isis whose images, often holding baby Horus, are seen as forerunners to the construction of Mary, mother of Jesus.
From now on, the empress was associated with fertility and motherhood, eventually becoming a representation of the earth goddess, mother nature, known to the ancient Greeks as Gaia.
The Waite/Coleman Smith tarot made more significant changes. The moon was removed and imperial eagle replaced with the astrological symbol for Venus, Roman name for Aphrodite, goddess of love and beauty, procreation and pleasure.
Links with nature were enhanced. This empress is seen on a summer day with ripe corn, flowing water and forests. She is now the archetypal earth mother, a symbol of nature in all its glory with connections to the cycles of life, death and rebirth.
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.
The Waite/Coleman Smith empress sits on a throne covered with drapes and cushions. Thrones are traditionally seats of power and this 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. Pomegranates were ancient symbols of fertility and femininity, associated with goddesses such as Demeter and Persephone, as well asAphrodite.
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!
This empress is permanently birthing the natural world with all its cycles of death and rebirth. Representing the beauty of the nature, she’s 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’s the eternal feminine principle of life itself.
It’s worth mentioning the central tree shaped like a pine cone in the Waite/Coleman Smith card. 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 such as those under the genus named Psilocybe.
The possibility is an example of the power of images and how they mean different things at different times. These multiplicities can make tarot appear complicated at first. The fool must learn to look beyond the surface to uncover universal meanings behind its symbols.
What else does the empress have to teach the fool?
Fertility is more than reproduction. To harvest is associated with agriculture but it also applies to the hard work needed for success. The empress can be the fulfilment of plans or ideas coming to fruition.
The magician told the fool nothing comes from nothing.
We need to utilise the creative energy of the universe to make it work in our favour. This requires effort but as the empress shows us, the rewards can be well worth it. The magician manipulated energy of life and the empress is that energy made manifest.
Because she birthed the universe, her lifeforce runs through every living thing. We’re all connected and interdependent. As the 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. Once in a lifetime experiences often involve the natural world. When we see the planet from above or below we see it from a different perspective and there are times when looking at something familiar in a different way can give a new perspective.
The empress is telling the fool to take opportunities to see the world differently. There’s more to life than the endless cycle of stuff and the status associated with ownership or having a desirable postcode.
She reminds the fool to see beauty in small things; a dew studded web, the taste of real honey or the music of birdsong. Make it a rule to find one natural thing each day that amazes you.
As an empress, she represents a socially and politically constrained version of life. As empress-cum-goddess she is so much more. The green shoot pushing through earth, gunning for light, is as much her doing as the birth of a child.
The empress is asking the fool to look below the cultural construction of life and bear witness to the planet that sustains us.
In the 1970’s scientist James Lovelock developed the Gaia hypothesis. This suggested the earth is a self-regulating planet. Dismissed at the time, we’ve come to accept what we do in terms of destruction of the natural world can have a detrimental impact on its health. We need to work with the planet rather than taking it for granted because unless we take care of the natural world, from oceans and forests, to parks and gardens, the life they sustain will suffer.
Nature is a force which can bless and destroy. Like all the cards in the tarot’s major arcana, the empress contains binaries. She 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.
So far, nature has survived. 30 years after the nuclear explosion at Chernobyl, grass, plants and trees have regrown while wild animals thrive. The empress personifies the natural world and reminds us that while all things come to an end, we can take steps to ensure that endings come from natural cycles rather than deliberate acts of human destruction.
Finally, the myth of Demeter and Persephone offers additional depth to this card. Stolen 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 explained the seasons but 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 life 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’s there to remind us of hope, no matter how distant it might seem.
After the vitality of the magician and the strangeness of the high priestess, the eporess helps the fool to feel more optimistic.
The next archetype he will meet on a walk through the tarot is the emperor. Here the fool will encounter power and authority again, but through a very different, more patriarchal lens.
Join us as we take the next step on the journey…
images my own, copyright free from wikipedia commons or from https://pixabay.com/
