Passion | Creativity | Fruition | Abundance | Nature | Motherhood | Nurturing
The Empress sits on a lush throne, in a field, beside a stream, near the woods. The symbol of Venus is on two of her pillows. Her robe is decorated with pomegranates. Her crown has twelve stars, and is wrapped in a laurel.
She represents a big, bold, juicy, lust for life. Sasha Graham has this one as “bursting creativity”and “deep beauty.”
The Empress can be an encouragement to get outside more, and get in closer touch with the energy and rhythms of the natural world. She can also prompt us to get in touch with the part of ourselves that offers nurture and comfort to others.
There are obvious overtones to this card having to do with fertility and sexual expressiveness, but these can also be representative of creative urges and the creative process apart from the realm of reproduction.
I think that the Empress stands for natural organic order and relationships (the sorts of things we see in highly evolved ecosystems), while her counterpart the Emperor represents an imposed structural and uniform approach to order. The Emperor is a landscaped estate. The Empress is the forest primeval.
This card always makes me feel warm and happy when it turns up. I want to snuggle into the sumptuousness and comfort.