The Empress shows a royal woman, sitting on a throne in a wheat field. She holds a sceptre in her hand, and wears a crown – both potent symbols of her power and influence over life and the affairs of the world. She implies fertility and gestation – be it of love, ideas, or a new career. She is the space where a new idea or a new relationship waits until it is ready to blossom.
Appearance and Symbolism
The Empress card depicts a beautiful woman wearing regal robes, sitting on a throne while wearing a crown and holding a sceptre in one hand. The sceptre is a symbol for her power over the lives of her subjects, and life itself.
Her crown has twelve stars, which symbolises her dominion over the year, and her throne is set on a field of wheat, which implies her dominance over growing things. In many decks besides the Rider-Waite she is drawn as pregnant.
Next to her throne is a tablet embossed with the emblem for Venus, which suggests her maternal power of creation and sexuality. In her other hand she normally holds an orb or shield bearing the image of a lion – the emblem of the Holy Roman Empire. She is most likely based on the Empress Adelaide, who was beatified by the Roman Catholic Church.
Mythopoetic Approach
The Empress is the Great Goddess, as symbolised by her crown of twelve stars, and her dress which often features pomegranates. She is associated with Isis and with Demeter, who withheld Spring when her daughter Persephone was abducted by Hades.
She is associated through cross-sums with The Hanged Man – her executed consort – and to The World, as the bringer of the cycle of rebirth and regeneration.
Interpretation
A.E Waite said of The Empress, in The Universal Tarot, that “she is above all things universal fecundity and the outer sense of the Word, the repository of all things nurturing and sustaining, and of feeding others.” She is not the Blessed Virgin Mary, but rather a fecund ‘mother of thousands’ – she represents the creation of life, love, art and business.
The Empress often represents the germination of an idea, or the sculpting of one, before it has truly begun to take shape. This can apply to a new relationship, a business venture or even a spiritual insight.
She is also sometimes viewed as a ‘positive’ answer for a woman who has been trying to get pregnant. Whether this means success or the promise of success is unclear. If defined as some external figure or another person in the querant’s life, it often relates to a very nurturing (perhaps overly so) mother.
Inverted Meaning
When this Rider Waite tarot card appears inverted during a free tarot card reading online it can serve as a warning to the querant that an idea’s time has come, or that the time for dithering and mulling things over has passed. It can also be an instruction to mothers to cut those apron strings, or an instruction to a child that they need to create some distance between their mother and their own personal affairs.