Major Arcana
The Empress
Upright
- ·nurturing
- ·abundance
- ·fertility
- ·sensuality
Reversed
- ·smothering
- ·stagnation
- ·creative block
- ·neglect
Upright
She reclines among cushions in the warm back room, jars of grain and dried herb close at hand, a crown of twelve small lights above her. The Empress is the part of the world that grows because something is loving it, yourself included. This is plenty, not the kind you earn but the kind that arrives when the conditions are right, when the room is warm and the pot is full. Sit in your body a moment. Notice the warmth where it lives. The work is to let yourself be enough of a garden that something can root in you.
Reversed
Plenty turned to clinging, or to forgetting, both at once. Reversed, she is the one who cannot stop tending, or who has let the watering can go dry. The seedling on the sill drowned by too much care, or wilted from none. Loosen one hand, and use the other to feed yourself first.
In the imagery
A crowned figure rests on deep cushions in the herb-room at dusk, surrounded by open jars of ripe grain and bundles of dried bloom. A heart-shaped sign of Venus leans against the dark wood beside her. Twelve small candle-flames ring her head, the months, the turning. A copper kettle steams, evergreen boughs hang to dry, her shawl is printed with split pomegranates. Everything in the room is in fruit, everything in season.
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