THE EMPRESS
Symbolism
A regal beauty sits on a comfortable chair in the countryside. She is clothed in a white dress covered in red roses and wears a crown of a laurel wreath and 12 stars on her head. She reflects the relaxed and grounded feminine, connected to Nature and pure in her desires to support all life. The stars represent the Zodiac, as the Empress is guided by the heavens. She raises one hand up with a golden orb wand, showing her connection to spirit.
Beneath her chair is a heart with the symbol of Venus inside showing her feminine connection to beauty, Love, art, and creativity. There is an abundance of life around her, with a wheat harvest in the foreground, and a flowing river between some trees. She represents our fertility and the abundance of life in Mother Nature.
Keywords
Upright: Receptivity, abundance, fertility, guidance, pleasure, creativity, love, nature, diversity, love goddess, divine mother, harvest, nurturing, sensuality, pregnancy.
Reversed: Over receptive, no boundaries, smothering, resistance to growth, entitlement, dependence, creative lack, holding to stress, over active, laziness.
Upright meaning
The Empress is another deep feminine card. While the High Priestess represents the subconscious watery connection to the divine, the Empress channels that inner truth into life, representing our fertile, abundant connection to the material world. She is mother nature, asking us to nurture ourselves, and to be open to all the abundance that life has to offer.
This card and figure represent the realization that we can accomplish a lot, even by doing very little. We often run around thinking our actions are the sole way of creating in life. We can be over pensive and stress ourselves out with ideas about what we should do and who we should be. The Empress tells us to sit back and appreciate the perfection of life, allowing the world to simply be.
The Empress is like the Earth Mother, incredibly caring and loving. She calls for us to find that motherly part of ourselves, and to nurture and love ourselves more. She asks us to appreciate the bodies we have, and to recognize our beauty and abundance. The Empress doesn’t judge the world, but instead recognizes it to be exactly as it needs to be. This is why she doesn’t resist life, but is flexible and adaptable.
The Empress is so connected to the material world that she represents our intimate connection to our physical bodies. She bathes in the pleasure of her senses and appreciates any pampering that comes her way. This body connection brings awareness of physical needs, which is vitally important to our health and wealth. She is not afraid of her desires, knowing that feeling fulfilled is how she can best serve the world. A pregnant woman always has to put herself first, in order to care for her child.
Reversed meaning
The Shadow of the Empress can be seen in different ways. She comes reversed when we reject her wisdom, which tells us simply to sit and appreciate the beauty of the world. Instead, we may have a strong judgement towards feminine passivity and not ‘being productive’. These programs make us overactive and goal oriented, unable to see how life is already perfect.
When we are very mental, analytical, and heady about everything, we naturally fall into judgements, worry and fear. We can make ourselves stressed over outcomes, and we fall prey to the idea that ‘we’ have to do everything. Life will look after us, if we are open for it to do so, and only if we can drop these programs. Life isn’t all about hard work.
The Empress’s good qualities can also be exaggerated. She can be over-passive and apathetic, even lazy and entitled. She can expect everything to happen for her, avoiding making any actions at all. Seeing life’s perfection doesn’t mean, that we have nothing to do. Our needs and desires will always guide us to know when to sit back and when not.
Loving ourselves, and allowing ourselves to have pleasure, does not mean that we need to overindulge. The Shadow Empress can be a little self-centred as self-care becomes more of a habit than an inner communication with the body. Self-care can look like eating ice-cream, but also it can be going for a run. Neither need to be done through habit.
The greater message of the Empress is to love life and ourselves, as a mother does, unapologetically. We are all beautiful in our own way, and we need to be able to see this truth. Critical judgements of ourselves draw us away from this perspective, and we can easily reject our bodies and wallow in low self-esteem. Only when we truly accept who we are first, can we connect more intimately with ourselves, and make any changes we may need.