Tarot Journey with Leisa ReFalo

03. The Empress

Number: 3
Card Title: The Empress
Esoteric Title: Daughter of the Mighty Ones
Astrological Atttribution: Venus
Elemental Attribution: Earth (cold, dry)
Dates & Timing: 244 Days
Hebrew Letter: Daleth Door 4
Color: Green
Intelligence: Luminous Intelligence
Esoteric Function: Wisdom & Folly
Qabalistic Path: Path 14: 2 Chokmah to 3 Binah
Translation of Path: The Wisdom of Understanding

Keywords: Fertility, Pregnancy, Mother Earth, Conception, Nurturing and Caring, the Goddess Venus, Birth. Material, Abundance, Joy, Satisfaction, Mother Nature, Bounty, Nurturing, Feminine, Grace, Prosperity, Love, Motherhood, Beauty, Inner Prompting, Birth

Ill-Dignified: Superficial, Lazy, Overprotective, Smothering, Self-Indulgent, Materialistic, Shop-O-Holic, Status Seeking, Vain, Infidelity, Superficial, Lazy, Hedonistic, Promiscuous, and Extravagant.

Rider-Waite Imagery

The Empress sits on her cushioned covered throne. She is blond which repsents that she is clear minded and in the present moment. Not looking back at the past or towards the future. She is crowned with 12 stars for the Zodiac. Around her neck are 7 pearls for the 7 planets of the ancients. She is repsents the planet of Venus which is shown on her cushions. The roses on her dress are also sacred to Venus and mimic the shape of the symbol. The wheat & cypress trees are another reference to Venus. The empress is the mother of all creation. She loves everything unconditionally. She is mother nature and the mothering feminine principle.

The Pictorial Key to the Tarot by Arthur Edward Waite (1911)

Part I: The Veil and its Symbols

3. The Empress, who is sometimes represented with full face, while her correspondence, the Emperor, is in profile. As there has been some tendency to ascribe a symbolical significance to this distinction, it seems desirable to say that it carries no inner meaning. The Empress has been connected with the ideas of universal fecundity and in a general sense with activity.

Part II: The Doctrine Behind the Veil

A stately figure, seated, having rich vestments and royal aspect, as of a daughter of heaven and earth. Her diadem is of twelve stars, gathered in a cluster. The symbol of Venus is on the shield which rests near her. A field of corn is ripening in front of her, and beyond there is a fall of water. The scepter which she bears is surmounted by the globe of this world. She is the inferior Garden of Eden, the Earthly Paradise, all that is symbolized by the visible house of man. She is not Regina coeli, but she is still refugium peccatorum, the fruitful mother of thousands. There are also certain aspects in which she has been correctly described as desire and the wings thereof, as the woman clothed with the sun, as Gloria Mundi and the veil of the Sanctum Sanctorum; but she is not, I may add, the soul that has attained wings, unless all the symbolism is counted up another and unusual way. She is above all things universal fecundity and the outer sense of the Word. This is obvious, because there is no direct message which has been given to man like that which is borne by woman; but she does not herself carry its interpretation.

In another order of ideas, the card of the Empress signifies the door or gate by which an entrance is obtained into this life, as into the Garden of Venus; and then the way which leads out therefrom, into that which is beyond, is the secret known to the High Priestess: it is communicated by her to the elect. Most old attributions of this card are completely wrong on the symbolism–as, for example, its identification with the Word, Divine Nature, the Triad, and so forth.

The Tarot of the Bohemians by Papus; tr. A. P Morton, [1896]

Chapter X. The Symbolical Tarot 3.

3rd Hebrew letter (Gimel).

ORIGIN OF THE SYMBOLISM OF THE THIRD CARD OF THE TAROT.

The hieroglyphic meaning of the letter Gimel is the throat, the hand of man half closed in the act of prehension. Hence it signifies all that encloses, all that is hollow, a canal, an enclosure. The throat is the spot where the words conceived in the brain are formed, or I might almost say embodied, therefore the Gimel is the symbol of the material envelopment of spiritual forms, of organic generation under all its forms, of all the ideas springing from the corporeal organs or their actions. Generation is the mystery by which the spirit unites itself to matter, by which the Divine becomes Human. The signification of Venus-Urania, to which this card corresponds, is easily understood by the above explanations.

THE THIRD CARD OF THE TAROT. The Empress.

This symbol would therefore signify ideas of generation, of embodiment in all the worlds.

A woman seen full face.
The human being becomes corporeal in the womb of a woman.
This woman is represented with wings, or in the centre of a radiating sun.
The idea of the spirituality of the vivifying Principle of all beings.
She holds an eagle in her right hand.
The eagle is the symbol of the soul and of life (Holy Spirit).
In the left hand she bears a sceptre forming the astrological sign of Venus.

The sceptre is held in the left hand to indicate the passive influence, which Nature, Venus-Urania, or the woman exercises in the generation of beings.

She wears a crown with twelve points, or twelve stars.

The sign of the diffusion of the vivifying Principle through all the worlds and of the sun, through the Zodiac.

The third card of the Tarot shows the result of the reciprocal action of the two first terms neutralizing each other in one principle. It is the Neuter Element of Wronski, the basis of every system of reality. The absolute creative force, or Osiris, and the absolute preservative force, or Isis, neutralize themselves in the equilibrist force, which contains in itself the two very different properties of the two first forms.

In God this would be the equilibrium of the Father and of the Son, or–

God the Holy Ghost

HORUS: The universal vivifying force.

In Man this would be the equilibrium of the Adam-Eve–
Adam-Eve

Or HUMANITY.

In the Universe this would be the equilibrium of Natura naturans and of Natura naturata–

THE WORLD: Conceived like a being.

3.The Empress.

Affinities

Hieroglyphic Primitive: The hand in the act of prehension
Kabbalah: BINAH
Astronomy: Venus
Day: Friday
Hebrew letter: Gimel (double)
Significations
God the Holy Ghost Horus THE UNIVERSAL VIVIFYING FORCE yod of vau vau-vau
Adam Eve HUMANITY he of vau vau-vau

THE WORLD

vau of vau vau-vau 2nd he of vau vau-vau
Major Arcana Signification from the Divining Point of View

3. The Empress signifies ACTION. INITIATIVE.

The Tarot by S.L. MacGregor Mathers [1888]

Meanings of the Cards

3. The Empress.–Action, Plan, Undertaking Movement in a matter, Initiative; R. Inaction, Frittering away of power, Want of Concentration Vacillation.

Symbolism of Each Key

3. The Empress. A winged and crowned woman seated upon a throne, having in one hand a sceptre bearing a globe surmounted by a cross, while she rests the other upon a shield with an eagle blazoned therein on whose breast is the cross. She is the Symbol of Action, the result of the union of Science and Will.

The Symbolism of the Tarot by P. D. Ouspensky [1913]

What is the Tarot? Card III.–”The Empress”.

Nature in its phenomenal aspect. The ever renewing and re-creating force of Nature. The objective reality.

CARD III. THE EMPRESS.

I felt the breath of the spring, and accompanying the fragrance of violets and lilies-of-the-valley I heard the tender singing of elves. Rivulets murmured, the treetops rustled, the grasses whispered, innumerable birds sang in choruses and bees hummed; everywhere I felt the breathing of joyful, living Nature.

The sun shone tenderly and softly and a little white cloud hung over the woods.

In the midst of a green meadow where primroses bloomed, I saw the Empress seated on a throne covered with ivy and lilacs. A green wreath adorned her golden hair and, above her head, shone twelve stars. Behind her rose two snowy wings and in her hands she held a sceptre. All around, beneath the sweet smile of the Empress, flowers and buds opened their dewy, green leaves. Her whole dress was covered with them as though each newly opened flower were reflected in it or had engraved itself thereon and thus become part of her garment.

The sign of Venus, the goddess of love, was chiselled on her marble throne.

“Queen of life,” I said, “why is it so bright and joyful all about you? Do you not know of the grey, weary autumn, of the cold, white winter? Do you not know of death and graveyards with black graves, damp and cold? How can you smile so joyfully on the opening flowers, when everything is destined to death, even that which has not yet been born?”

For answer the Empress looked on me still smiling and, under the influence of that smile, I suddenly felt a flower of some clear understanding open in my heart.

The Tarot Trumps by G. H. Soror, Q.L.

III. THE EMPRESS

She is an aspect of Isis; the creative and positive side of Nature is suggested here. The Egyptian trilogy, Isis, Hathor and Nephthys, symbolized by the crescent, full moon, and gibbous moon are represented in the Tarot by the High Priestess, Hathor. The Empress, Isis, takes either the crescent moon or Venus as her symbol. Justice, Nephthys, takes the gibbous moon.

Isis and Venus gives the aspect of Love, while Hathor is rather the Mystic, the full moon reflecting the Sun of Tiphareth while in Yesod, transmitting the rays of the Sun in her path Gimel. In interpreting a practical Tarot it is often admissible to regard the Empress as standing for Occultism. The High Priestess for religion, the Church as distinguished from the Order.

The Empress, whose letter is Daleth, is the Door of the inner mysteries, as Venus is the door of the Vault. Her colors are emerald, sky-blue, blue-green, and cerise or rose-pink