Card 3
The Empress
© 2006 Honora Finkelstein
Unlike the High
Priestess, who is sequestered inside a temple, the Empress sits on
her throne outdoors, representing her fecundity in the natural
world. There are green growing things and flowers in her world, for
the Empress is the epitome of the natural woman, for whom love and
reproduction are life. Indeed, some Tarot interpreters suggest that
she is pregnant with new life, as she leans comfortably on the red
pillows of her chair. The color red is appropriate, for it suggests
the power of creativity, which the pregnant queen would certainly
represent.
The Empress is
an embodiment of all of the goddesses of love of the ancient world.
She is Inanna, Queen of Heaven and Earth among the ancient
Sumerians, for whom the planet we know as Venus was an alter ego.
She is Isis, the holy mother of the god Horus in Egyptian myth. The
ankh, key of life of the Egyptians, which was sacred to Isis, has
become in the Empress’s garden the emblem of her femininity on the
shield that leans against her throne. A similar emblem is formed
from the shape of the flowers imprinted on the dress this queen
wears. And it is this emblem that modern biology has adopted to
represent the female. She is the Greek Aphrodite and the Roman
Venus, each seen by their respective cultures as the goddess of
love.
The Empress
wears a crown of twelve stars, similar to the crown often given to
the Virgin Mary in Roman Catholic iconography. The stars appear to
be six-pointed—in the Mogen David of the Hebrews, the six-pointed
star is created from the balancing of an upward pointing triangle,
which is a masculine symbol, and a downward pointing triangle, which
is considered to be feminine. Thus, a six-pointed star is a balance
of the masculine and feminine energies.
The Empress is
not a virgin like the High Priestess—rather she is the sexual woman
as mother in all her fecundity. And she is literally the Queen of
Heaven and of Earth in her ability to bring forth new life. If the
twelve stars represent the Zodiac that rules the lives of humans,
then it is the Empress, the very embodiment of Mother Nature, that
rules the Zodiac, for it is love that guides the balance and
reproductive nature of the universe. In her hand, the Empress holds
a scepter with a perfect globe on its top, representing the
perfection of the universe she rules.
As an archetype
to which each of us can relate, the Empress is romantic love,
motherly love, love of life, and love of the physical universe. She
is also the embodiment of the creative imagination of the human
being. The water that we saw flowing out from the subconscious
intuition of the High Priestess into the ocean of possibilities has
flowed forward from one card to the next and now comes from behind
the Empress to create a waterfall and rippling pool in the
background of her fertile garden. Subconscious intuition moves
forward to become self-conscious creativity and imagination, the
power of the mind to make new combinations out of remembered
experiences and dreamed-of images. For the person who is open to
subconscious stimulation, the mind is always in the process of
imagining and creating new possibilities.
Symbolically,
the Empress says to everyone, “Go forth and make love. Live life. Be
fruitful and multiply. Let your mind and imagination bring about new
creations everywhere in time and space. And let love be your shield,
for perfect love is the source of everything that is.” |
