EMPRESS
Your passion is the blueprint to your magic -- Mother figure. Creation. Artistic ability. Soft, gentle, nurturing touch. Reinvention and expression. Confidence and the abundance of the soul. Fertility and birth. Sensorial pleasure and earthly delights. Stepping in tune with seasonal change, displaying natural abundance in all things. The nurturing of self expression and potential.
SHADOW: Destroying the hopes and dreams of another. Unsupportive attitude. Thoughtless words. Jealousy over another's success. Hating on other's good fortune because you do not believe in your own power. Abusing motherly power.
A baby's cry echoes through the silent wood. This haunting sound tempts the Shadow Witch to peer around a mammoth tree and lock eyes with a reclining figure dressed in a red gown with a hand resting on her belly.
The Empress expresses every creative urge bursting forth inside of you. The Empress guides you in creating and inventing your life. She is the expression of your talents. Her urge to expand and unfold is as primal as sex. This is why she is also the most sensual card of the deck.
The Empress reflects activity and brilliance. She is a pulsating, breathing world of energetic expansion and beatific connection. She is the pure creative expression of the everexpanding universe in human form. The Empress contains the passion and energy to create and destroy life. She is the insanity driving an artist to the brink of madness. As the mother archetype, she bears the burden of societal fantasy, for mothers are expected to be all things to all creatures.
The Empress's pregnancy is metaphorical. It conveys birthing an idea, project, or person into the world. She rests upon a witch's hand, a tree trunk with finger branches. A witch's hand is a powerful gathering point of magic and energy. Hands are the creative portal of the body, fashioning all things-from food to invention, love and gesture, contact and caress. Bats hang upside down as representations of dormant potential soon to awaken within you.
The Empress's red dress aligns with menstruation, the membrane of life. She is a doorway, the threshold through which the birth waters of the High Priestess flow. The Empress takes the High Priestess's blueprint into the reality of the physical world. The Empress siphons the inner sanctum of the High Priestess out into the macrocosm of sensual formation. The sign of Venus is inside the heart of love. She is sex appeal, ambition, and, above all things, unbounded passion.
The Empress appears in a reading to remind you of your powers of invention and imagination. Your passions and intuitions are the clues to the unfolding mystery of you. The universe supports all creative action. Manifest your visions and make the world a more beautiful place while living the life of your dreams.