The Empress - Sensuality and Comfort in the Tarot
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The Empress is a rich archetype to turn to whenever you’re looking for warmth and empowerment.
To give you a bit of context whilst you reflect on your own relationship to the card, here are a few key things to know about the Empress:
The Empress is the Mother figure of the tarot - she exudes fertility, sensuality and femininity -notice the Venus glyph inscribed on the stone heart at the Empress’s feet. In some decks, the Empress is illustrated to be pregnant. But one important thing to remember is that archetypes in the tarot don’t have to be taken fully at face value. Rather than representing what a mother, woman, or feminine expression should look like, this card can invite you to explore your own personal relationship with what femininity, motherhood, fertility, and sensuality mean to you.
It’s not just literal motherhood the card gets into conversation with, either. The Empress as Mother Earth is a very popular interpretation of the card, given the Empress’s natural settings and the harmonious tone of the card. Situated in a lush meadow, surrounded by trees, a waterfall, and golden light, there’s an ethereal yet earthly beauty to the card that suggests a kind of natural paradise, an Eden before the fall.
While The Empress seems deeply connected to the natural world, she is also elevated from it. In the Rider Waite Smith version of the card, The Empress reclined on a heavily cushioned chaise, and for that reason, combined with the card’s peaceful energy, the card might invite you to consider your relationship to luxury, comfort, and relaxation. The Empress is a figure who knows how to be comfortable, who invests in their own comfort, who knows they deserve to have moments of peace, harmony, and comfort.
In your tarot journal, you’re asked to reflect on what this card means to you, now, in this moment, and what actions and thoughts it inspires in you. As you journal, pay attention to what you’re personally picking up in the card, but also consider what the key symbols and themes in the card might be telling you. How does the card stack up against your own experience of motherhood - as a child or a parent or both, and what does that tell you about your identity and experience? How does the card make you want to change the way you interact with the natural world? And how does the card prompt you to think more deeply about your right to comfort, and about what brings you comfort, luxury, and relaxation?
This mini-tarot lesson was brought to you by me, Chelsey Pippin Mizzi, founder of Pip Cards Tarot. I hope you gained a little context to help you continue reflecting on the card in your own way, and I’ll see you tomorrow for another mini-lesson.