The Fool travels from their meeting with the High Priestess, emerging from the depths of the liminal space of the initiatory, up and outward into the glowing realm of the Empress. The Empress’s world is one of beauty, abundance, and nurturing. While the High Priestess is the magical aspect of the sacred feminine, the Empress is the more earthly and external manifestations of power and love. She is the queen who must make decisions that benefit not only herself but also her family, the land, and those in her care. The Empress rests in divine counterpart to her partner, the Emperor. Together they rule the lands of the Fool’s youth, the ever-present and deeply imprinted qualities of our parental and ancestral lines.
After journeying into our shadow self of the High Priestess, facing the rich, darker aspects and learning to navigate between dark and light, the Fool is ready to bring the seed of potential that has sprouted out into day. The Empress fertilizes this seed with her beauty, confidence, grace, and wisdom. She is the manifestation of light in daylight, the bright and brilliant aspects of the divine feminine as progressed from the darker High Priestess before her. While the High Priestess navigates between dark and light, the Empress holds the seed of growing light within the darkness of her womb readying it for birth into the fullness of day.
We shift from the number two of balance and duality into the three, a trine of interdependence between three aspects. When two join together they form a third—such as in the obvious way, of creating a child—but also in other ways such as growing a business or project, planting a garden, or nurturing an idea into form. The Empress takes the Magician’s conception that was nourished by the High Priestess’s powerful dreaming and begins to grow and birth it into physical reality encouraged by deep attention and care.
The Empress indicates a woman as a leader in contemporary times. This card encourages both men and women to lead with the wisdom of the Empress, one that takes the earth into consideration when making choices. She is a voice that reminds us of not only our connection to earth but to our parents, and also to methods more sustainable. Not all women are mothers and neither are men; however, we all have the potential to create and carry life in other forms. Tapping into womb consciousness and the primordial creatrix is a powerful way to connect to our inner wisdom and strength.
The Empress is the feminine as a ruler or leader. In the Waite-Smith deck she is figured with a scepter, a solid staff with an orb that signifies the power of the feminine. This power can be a grounded presence that indicates wisdom, truth, and divine knowing. Spheres symbolize reflective seeing, the power of circles, and having a pulse on the future. Moons and stars in broad daylight on the card indicate lights as a form of divine radiance.
In the Crowley deck, the Empress holds a blue lotus at her heart center, a symbols of compassionate wisdom and the effortless quality of natural growth and opening. At her feet are a swan and a shield, indicating grace, beauty, protection, endurance, and longevity. The fluid and watery qualities around her remind us of the gentle, clear, nourishing qualities of water.
In both the Waite and Crowley decks, the Empress is seated, draped in flowing cloths over her body. Perhaps she is pregnant, awaiting the birth of her growing child, gardens, projects, and dreams. “Mother,” connected to the Latin word mater or “matter,” indicates the power of the Empress residing in the earthly realms of manifestation. She is concerned with our physical lives and our direct kinship relations with our own mothers, with ourselves as mothers and with the earth as matter.
When this card appears in a reading, it may signify pregnancy; becoming a parent; or the inception of an idea, project, garden, dream, or plan in its growth stages. The guidance is to be patient with the growth to allow it to fully come to fruition. The Empress encourages us to surrender to the process of growing while nurturing the gestation through good nutrition or nourishing the project or idea with positive thoughts and people who support its unfolding.
This card can also indicate a need to examine our relationship with our mother or mother lineage to look more deeply at the patterns stored there. Inevitably, our mother is our first connection to the world. Even if we were adopted, went into foster care, or never had the opportunity to meet our birth mother, she carried us from seed and conception to birth. At that moment of birth, a great rush of spiritual energies and support are available for both mother and child.
Many of us may have had a traumatic or painful birth—doing healing work around this time is a powerful way to reconnect with our inherent birthrights of joy, love, and beauty. This type of healing work can release the feelings of anger, shame, and sorrow that may lie in our birth. These negative feelings can be the result of trauma, abuse, our mother’s wishing they weren’t pregnant, feeling overwhelmed by a coming child, or simply the intense process of birth itself.
The Empress reminds us of our own inner grace and strength as well as our interconnectedness with all of the matter of this wide and diverse planet. She is that which is so abundant in our lives, overflowing with plenty, pregnant with possibility of more to come. The Empress is infinitely creative and growing in new ways, pushing up and outward into the skies. Her appearance in a reading may indicate a time of flowering and gratitude, of connection and delight.
Essential Qualities: patience, abundance, pregnancy, mother, mother lineage, harvest, fertile, nurturing, embrace, love, warmth, golden
Suggestions: Track items in your life and notice the complexity of materials that surround you. Start a gratitude journal and write down something you are grateful for every day. Count your blessings … literally, count them! They are endless like seeds and they have the potential to grow. Get a plant and put it in the earth or a houseplant for your home. Fertilize a creative dream, project, or plan. Did you set an intention with the Magician card? Time to add some juice, some love, and a little beauty to coax along your manifestations into abundant, potent things that may be shared with the world.
Exercise: Journey into Dreamtime Garden Sanctuary
The dreamtime is the place of extraordinary reality, the place beyond our ordinary senses where we have access to our soul language, unseen helpers, and guides. In this exercise, we will visit the dreamtime to establish our own personal garden sanctuary which can be visited as much as we want to do safe, energetic, healing and magical work. This is a nourishing place that provides rest and healing for our inner psyche. You may want to connect to the earth in real time first, using the exercise from the pentacles or disks introduction to touch into the element of earth.
For this practice, it is helpful to either record the visualization and/or use a rhythmic drum beat or binaural beats to establish a relaxed brain pattern. To do this practice, you may want to lay down or sit in a relaxed upright position while using headphones for the sound. Set your intention to visit your personal garden sanctuary. Imagine you are walking down a set of ten steps, counting down from ten to one. At the bottom of the steps is a doorway. Pass through the door into your healing garden sanctuary. Notice what is there and simply explore. Be open to experiencing your garden through all your senses: sight, sound, touch, smell, feelings in your body. Notice the plants, trees, flowers, and other things growing in the garden. Is there a body of water? Animals? Stones or crystals? Take note and make an intention to remember this place and feel the connection embodied in your heart-mind.
Perhaps you meet a creature or guide. Perhaps you are taken to a specific place. Perhaps you just feel a sense of knowing something. There is no wrong way to explore your garden in dreamtime. When you are finished, thank the garden sanctuary and make a commitment to keep connected if you wish. You can return to this healing garden sanctuary any time to rest, heal, connect, or ask for guidance. Leave the garden and go back through the door. Return to present state awareness by counting up one to ten, slowly moving back up the steps into where you are laying or sitting. Write down any experiences as a way to anchor in the creating of the healing garden sanctuary.