26/12/2021
This week's card is the Empress.
“Nevertheless it should not be omitted that some evil woman, converted back to Satan's allegiance and seduced by the deceptions and illusions of demons, believe and profess that they ride out by night on beasts with Diana or Heroditas the pagan Goddess and an innumerable number of women, an cover great distances in the silence of the night, an on certain nights are called to this service”
So reads the Canon Episcopi, a collection of injunctions against sorcery written sometime around 900A.D by a certain Regino, Abbott of Prum. It is one of the significant documents which bridge the gap between classical paganism and the practices of Leland’s witches in the nineteenth century.
The mysterious figure known as the Empress in modern tarot packs represents this pagan Goddess. Both comparative religion and Jungian psychology refer to her broadly as the Earth Mother, Mother Nature. She is the mother of Dionysus.
“She wore upon her head a circlet of towers, because the circumference of the Earth is, like a circlet, full of cities, castles, and villages. The robe is woven of green plants and hemmed with leafy boughs thus signifying the trees, plants and herbs which cover the earth. She bears a scepter in her hand.. Lions draw her chariot”
The High Priestess represented the meal side of the female archetype; her deep intuitive understanding. The Empress is pure emotion Essentially, the Earth Mother was seen as patroness of all growth and fertility and the mistress of all motherhood. All young defenseless things were under her protection. Many legends were told of her. Most of them revolve around her search for a loved one of some sort- the eternal shamanic theme.
Until we learn to experience the outer world completely we cannot hope to transcend it. Therefore the first step to enlightenment is sensuality. On;y through passion, can we sense, from deep inside, rather than through intellectual argument, the spirit that fills all existence
The Empress represents a time of passion, a period when we approach life through feelings and pleasure rather than thought. The passion is sexual or motherly; either way it is deeply experienced in the right context, can give great satisfaction. In the wrong context, when analysis is needed, the Empress can mean a stubborn emotional approach, a refusal to consider the facts.
She can indicate another problem as well: self - indulgent pleasure when restraint is needed. Usually, however, she indicates satisfaction and even understanding gained through the emotions.
In their right side up and reversed the Empress and Emperor are mirrors of each other. It sometimes happens that the person expresses both emotional and intuitive mental aspects, but in a negative way. Rationality comes as a reaction to excessive emotional involvement, while a feeling of isolation or coldness leads to passion. If the two aspects of the Goddess can be experienced right side up the person will achieve a more stable and rewarding balance.
