The Empress is a young, winged, crowned woman, seated on a throne and holding a scepter. Her hermeneutic dimension It is to allow oneself to be invested by celestial forces, the soul (symbolized by the winged young woman) thereby gradually becoming the holder of the power and authority of the spirit (represented by the scepter and the crown). Its anagogical dimension is to harmonize with the divine laws. His injunction: to think and express oneself. His Elements to be developedthe ability to conceptualize, intelligence, and accessibility to knowledge
This arcanum is one of abundance, both on the emotional and material planes. It often represents renewal and growth: a birth, a creative endeavor, a return to health after an illness. It can signify health, a rewarded effort, a warm family life, but reversed it evokes extravagance, laziness, maternal tyranny, destruction, and waste.
The Empress card:
Description of the arcanum
This arcanum depicts a pretty blonde female with a round face, shown seated and facing the observer. Winged and crowned, she sits on a white and gold bench and is surrounded by twelve stars (nine are visible). Furthermore, she firmly holds a red shield bearing a white eagle against her with her right hand, while holding a scepter in her left hand.
Symbolic interpretation of the arcanum:
First, the Empress is seated just like the High Priestess. We have seen that the seated position evokes contemplation and receptivity, two notions further confirmed by the presence of a large blue mantle. The color blue evokes passivity; however, this passivity is merely an appearance, as the young woman is wearing a beautiful red dress (the embodiment of dynamic action).
If the Empress adopts, on an external level, an apparently passive attitude characterized more by a contemplative receptivity toward the values of the heart (symbolism of the green lining of the mantle), she is nevertheless fully active on the internal levels (those of the soul). The presence of a yellow belt, connected by a vertical axis to the neckline, evokes the fact that this inner activity, the activity of the soul (the Empress’s body), is stimulated and nourished by the realities of the spirit (the neckline) and not by external realities (corresponding to the world).
In this regard, we note that the empress is crowned. We now know that, due to its circular shape, the crown evokes a participation in the celestial nature (the circle having always evoked the realm of the One and, consequently, the spheres of the spirit). In this sense, it symbolizes a capacity to be fully receptive to the impulses of the spirit.
The Empress’s blonde hair is wavy, thus highlighting that her personal self (evoked by the hair) is not only focused on spiritual realities (blonde hair / the color of gold embodying the spirit), but also adopts an attitude of flexibility and malleability toward its realities (the waves of the hair).
The Empress is winged; the wings symbolize a liberation from earthly weight, enabling one to free oneself from the grip of the lower world and ascend to the celestial heights. Thus, with the Empress, the crown, the blonde hair, and the wings evoke a capacity to open oneself to divine realities.
It therefore appears that the powerful inner activity to which we previously referred is in fact an intense work of maturation at the level of the soul, which is integrating the spiritual resources to which it now has access. To bring our mind out of confusion, we must invoke The Empress of the tarot.
The twelve stars surrounding the Empress's head are revealing. They eloquently remind us of the zodiacal circle composed of the twelve astrological signs. In this sense, the spiritual energies that nourish the soul correspond in a privileged way to the twelve zodiacal energies.
The fact that only nine stars are visible highlights the process of incarnation of the expression of the divine principle (associated with the number 9). This reminds us that the zodiac is a full manifestation of the World Spirit (see note 1 at the bottom of the page).
As for the three invisible stars hidden behind the Empress's head, they refer to the divine trinity (the three aspects of God) which remains elusive yet actively works in the world.
The white lily of the Empress, present beside the Empress, confirms in a way what we have just specified. This flower has always symbolized, in the mystical tradition, the opening of the soul that allows God to vivify it. The lily therefore symbolizes the soul surrendering itself to God, who then communicates to it all the resources necessary for its development.
Holding a scepter in his left hand and encircling with his right arm a shield bearing an eagle. On the symbolic level, this scepter is ... a pure vertical, which qualifies it to symbolize first man as such, then the superiority of this man established as chief, and finally the power received from above. This scepter of our Western sovereigns is nothing but a reduced model of the pillar of the world, which other civilizations explicitly assimilate to the person of the king or their priest. It therefore embodies, above all, but a fecund power insofar as it is conferred by the divinity.
However, if you have observed carefully, the fact that she holds it in her left hand indicates that this power is not yet effective and operative: it remains in a state of potentiality. This is confirmed by her posture; she holds her scepter with a certain listlessness, as if her arm lacked the strength to support its weight and hold it firmly.
The coat of arms is the emblem of the soul sublimated within spirituality, just as the eagle symbol depicted on the coat of arms was considered in ancient traditions to be the only animal capable of gazing steadily at the sun. Moreover, Louis Charbonneau-Lassay states regarding this bird that the entire antiquity professed the belief that it alone, along with the falcon, could gaze for a long time at the intense light of the sun, and that it tested the legitimacy of its young by making them look at it.
facing their birth, rejecting from its domain the young eagle whose eyes squinted under the dazzling rays. This means that this animal symbolized the mind’s ability to orient itself toward the realities of the spirit (symbolized by the Sun) and to sustain this orientation durably.
The eagle is white on a red background; this teaches us that the capacity of consciousness to orient itself toward the achievements of the spirit (eagle) in order to discover therein strengthening nourishments (red color) implies a total renunciation of the ego’s claims (white color).
The Empress is seated on a white bench bordered by two horizontal yellow bands and adorned with a series of vertical yellow lines. This bench, serving as her seat, indicates that the experience embodied by the Empress is grounded in the external world (symbolized by the horizontal lines of the bench) while also being considered in its sacred dimension (the vertical yellow bands). In a figurative sense, this is where her action rests. She possesses a vision that enables her to grasp the spiritual dimension within reality (the vertical yellow lines).
She is depicted frontally, which indicates that she is fully engaged in the present. She places her left foot on a crescent moon with its horns pointing downward. Wirth stated that this affirms dominion over the sublunary world, where all is mobility, perpetual change, and incessant transformation (p. 98). However, if the crescent moon is oriented downward, it symbolizes a process of concretization of divine forces, which have become fully tangible and, consequently, fully assimilable. By placing her foot on this crescent, the Empress evokes her complete mastery of the process.
In fact, the fact that it is his left foot also indicates that the mastery of this process relies less on his capacity for exteriorization (symbolized on the right side) than on his power of interiorization (left side). Moreover, since this foot is yellow, it reveals that this capacity has reached full maturity (yellow being the color of maturity).
Note: The number 9 is associated with a process of concretizing the divine principle in the lower world (the terrestrial plane). In this regard, it is significant to note, for example, that the Catholic Church recognizes nine angelic choirs: the Seraphim, the Cherubim, the Thrones, the Dominations, the Virtues, the Powers, the Principalities, the Archangels, and the Angels. These nine angelic choirs, which we also find among the Gnostics of the early centuries of the Christian era, are intercessors that enable God to fully express and manifest His will in the incarnate world. In other words, they fulfill the function of intermediaries, allowing the divine light emanating from the highest celestial spheres to descend to the terrestrial plane and express itself fully there (p. 95).