Empress: Nourishment, Beauty, Comfort
A Journey through the Tarot Major Arcana: The Empress ~ Card 3
Thanks for joining me on my quest to renew my tarot practice by taking a journey through the cards of the Major Arcana. This is the fourth post in the series, which is an offering for paid subscribers. We focus mainly on the Gaian Tarot and the Herbcrafter’s Tarot in this series, which includes a look at the card’s themes, card comparisons, creative sparks and crafts, journal prompts, and even a playlist inspired by the card. Thanks for reading. I’d love to hear your responses in the comments.
“Healing the Heart Heals the World”
“This is really why I made my daughters learn to garden—so they would always have a mother to love them, long after I am gone.”
― Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass
The Empress, in any deck, is one of my favorite cards along with the High Priestess. Whenever I open up a new deck, I always turn to these two cards so I can see the deck creator’s interpretation.
For me, the Empress brings together my devotion to the Great Mother and my love for Mother Earth. I’ve been practicing a Goddess-centered spirituality since the 1980s and have found the natural world to be my comforter, guide, and teacher since early childhood.
Plus, the Empress represents abundance, nourishment, sensuality, self-love, and love for others. Who wouldn’t want to spend time with her?
In Tarot Wisdom, Rachel Pollack — brilliant as always — writes: “For myself, I would say that in readings the Empress represents, above all, passion. Whether as Demeter or Aphrodite, she shows us an embrace of life in all its messiness and horror as well as its beauty. She does not deny life’s pain, but she reminds us we can love the world fully, without reservation. …
The Empress can indicate love and desire, not necessarily for a specific person but simply the power of love itself…. Apart from signifying a person, the Empress can indicate the lushness and beauty of nature, or rich surroundings, or the pleasures of the sensual life. Imagine a three-dimensional Empress card sculpted in chocolate, accented in gold leaf, and surrounded by flowers.”
In contrast to the cool tones of the High Priestess card, we see a return to the warm earth tones we last saw in the Magician card — reds, yellows, golds, and greens. The RWS Empress’ red throne becomes the Gaian Gardener’s red dress, while her crown of stars becomes a crown of flowers. The central figure of the Herbcrafter’s card is a heart-shaped honeycomb along with a wild rose in bloom. Her “crown” is made up of rose leaves, turning from green to red with the changing of the seasons. The shield with a Venus symbol in RWS becomes the Gardener’s mirror and the Herbcrafter’s flaming heart in the rosary necklace.
One of my favorite things about the Herbcrafter’s card is how we show the beauty of three major seasons in a person’s life: rosebuds for youth, a full blown rose for midlife, and potent rose hips for elderhood.