Tarot Tuesday:: The Empress

All Sides of the Empress

I will not lie to you; this article is perhaps the hardest one for me to write.  The research into it, the meditation, even reading the books that come with the decks was very tedious and slippery.

I have a confession. Of all the cards in a tarot deck the card I least identify with, the one that always gives me trouble is the Empress. I find it nearly impossible to scratch beneath her smile and find the beating heart of the card.

Wizard's Tarot: Healing Herbs all around

Something pinged for me Monday morning though when I was doing my own divination. I had the three Empress cards spread before me and pulled my own card for the day. 8 of Wands from the Thoth deck. Swiftness of thought and communication. I guess I do have what I need.

In every deck I have owned or seen, the Empress is always pregnant and usually seen in some kind of pastoral scene or surrounded by plants.  The obvious connection is life, nature, and motherhood.

The motherhood connection, there is the rub. We have, as a whole, a skewed view of the Mother. We have pulled Her teeth and Her fangs and made Her kind of weak and something to be relegated to one role only.

Scratch the surface of that gentle smile, the gentle flowers and pastures, and find the beating fiery heart of all Nature in its glory. Living, vital, joyous, dangerous, mesmerizing, and scary Nature that can heal or kill you probably using the same instrument.

The beautiful scenes of forests and plants and wide open fields the Empress is sometimes surrounded with did not happen easily or quickly. One need only look at the fossil record and computer renderings of what ancient Earth looked like to know that Nature is not always gentle or forgiving.  Volcanoes, earthquakes, wild weather and oceans, venomous animals and poisonous plants show the darker side of the Mother in Her glorious wrath.

The Mother is more than just giving birth.  It is fierce protector and also the end that we all great.  Life and Death.  Remember the Spartan mothers that told their sons, “With it or on it,”.  It is the cauldron of the Mother that the souls return to on death and leave at birth; only to return once again at death.  Ceridwen is a Mother figure, and yet She ate Gwion, later to give birth to him as Taliesin. Just because it has the face of the Mother does not mean it is always looking to coddle you. Sometimes for us to truly grow we need a harsh lesson in life to forge a stronger spirit.

Steampunk Tarot: Fires of passion and creation

The Empress is also associated with creativity and art. It can feel for an artist as if each piece, each stanza, is a child. It takes shape inside of the artist and sometimes the process of getting the project out is a lesson in pain and heartache till it is just perfect.  Creation can be a messy process that makes us look inside our core and painfully dredge up the emotion and imagination needed to get it done.

When you see the Empress you see a woman in her prime.  All the sensual power that is Female and the power of Venus, the planet this card is associated with.  She is soft curves and obviously has the attention of her suitor for the swell of her belly speaks of his ardor. She knows who she is and she has grasped her full potential and taken it.

Take some time to study this card and really see the imagery on it. What does it say to you? Does it spark something inside, a touch of the creative soul begging to be free? What is your relationship with Your mother like?

Personal Gnosis

As I mentioned earlier I have a hard time working with the concept of Mother. It does not come easily and the face of my Goddess I see more often is the one of battle and sorcery. I am comfortable with these, but She called me to task for it. Even if I will never be a mother there is still a vital lesson to be learned. I took it to work for a month trying to connect with that aspect of Her.

I had one vision in the month that I worked and it was one that made me re-evaluate the Mother.

Queen of the Heavens

I had and still do, slip into the pitfall most of us have of ignoring the power that is inherent in the Mother. I generally saw it as weak and with no power beyond birth. But, the power of birth is very strong, I mean brand new life generated inside of something else!

The vision She showed me was a verdant valley with a small hill overlooking it. On the hill was a woman who was very pregnant. Below her, a battle raged and was tearing up the ground and growth. It was death and chaos. Yet as the soldiers fell their bodies dissolved into the ground while the souls rose and spiraled into a double helix and entered the woman’s womb. When the dust settled from battle the valley was green and fertile from the bodies and blood entombed in the soil.

It was a powerful reminder of the cycles of life and death and struggle.  When we gaze out and see these soul lifting landscapes we tend to forget the struggle that went into creating these places. It took millions of years to form and countless lives were swallowed up to create space for new lives.  

Before you leave...

This blog is a recent addition to what I have been doing. Monday through Friday I have a daily tarot pull over on Facebook and Twitter and finally also on Instagram as tenkoag.  Feel free to browse and connect with the Insight's on social media.

Card One-Wizard's Tarot by Corrine Kenner

Card Two-Steampunk Tarot by Barbara Moore

Card Three- Thoth Tarot by Aleister Crowley