Unpacking Tarot: The Empress
I must admit, I’ve been putting off writing about The Empress for several months. It’s not that I dislike The Empress - far from it. I’ve simply struggled to connect to this card for the majority of my tarot journey. As a nonbinary person who is AFAB (Assigned Female At Birth,) I’ve often struggled to embrace my femininity. Pulling The Empress for myself in a reading would usually leave me feel confused and disconnected from the advice it was trying to give. It took a lot of shadow work to get to where I am in my relationship with femininity and I still have plenty of work to go, but I’m at least at a place where I can embrace The Empress and her wisdom.
As you may have picked up on by now, The Empress represents our feminine natures, but there’s so much more to her than that. She represents abundance, sensuality, nurturing, creativity, and the beauty of nature. Most of these traits are traditionally seen as feminine, but these traits aren’t found in women alone. Every person of any gender (or lack thereof) needs to have a balance between their masculine and feminine energies. Trying to embody one or the other entirely leads to toxic behaviors that are unhealthy for both ourselves and the people around us. Each person’s balance is unique and a vital part of experiencing life as your true authentic self.
The Empress calls on us to embrace and nurture the feminine side of that balance. What in your life could use your nurturing? Are you currently in or going to be in a maternal role for someone or something? What are you using your creativity for? What can grow out of it? The Empress often calls on us to reflect on these kinds of questions. She also encourages us to practice self-care and be gentler to ourselves. In our current late-stage capitalistic world, it’s easy to forget that you are more than what you put out into the world. The Empress urges us to take a step back and bask in nature’s delights - after all, we are Mother Nature’s children and our Mother wants to take care of us.
The Empress also acts as an equal counterpart to The Emperor. I’ll definitely be dedicating a separate post for The Emperor, but I would be remiss not to talk about him in relation to The Empress now. The Empress and The Emperor represent the duality of feminine and masculine energy - yin and yang, internal and external, mother and father. Neither can truly exist without the other. When both cards are in balance with one another, harmony is achieved. The Empress needs The Emperor to remind her to be assertive and defend her bounty (Mother Nature makes gentle tide pools in the same breath that she makes a violent hurricane) and The Emperor needs The Empress to remind him to be an empathetic and gentle leader. Only having the energy of one or the other can lead to a pushover or a tyrant. We as humans contain multitudes and the cards are here to remind us of that.
The Empress Reversed
When reversed, The Empress calls on us to address our femininity and specifically any blockages towards it. Despite the leaps and bounds of progress we’ve made, modern day western society tends to have a rigid view of gender roles and goes into them. The Empress reversed could be calling on you to reflect on these roles and whether or not they’re boxing you in.
Reversals can also indicate an internal approach of the card, rather than external. By this logic, The Empress reversed could be encouraging self-love and nourishing our own bodies instead of focusing our love and attention on others. Focusing too much of your energy on others could be a drain on your own power. It might be time to water your own garden for a change.
The Empress reversed could also indicate that you could be a bit overbearing in your relationships with those close to you. You might be taking the “mothering” role a bit too intensely. As hard as it can be, it might be time to take a step back and let those you love make their own mistakes. Remember that trust is paramount in every relationship. The only way to nurture that trust is to let the ones you love act independently and prove that they’re trustworthy.
The Empress - Tamra Howell
The Empress - The Marigold Tarot
