Notes on: The Empress

The Empress (Card III in the Major Arcana) is an opportunity to meditate on femininity.  What does femininity mean to you? 

The Tarot creators of the Victorian age had very specific ideas of what it meant, and to some extent we've outgrown the ideas that no longer work for our reality, but many still lurk unacknowledged in our subconscious.  For example, in modern Western European and Euro-American cultures, gender is usually viewed as binary.  There are males and there are females, and symbolically, they are opposite one another--war vs. peace, hard vs. soft, light vs. dark, yadda yadda yadda.  This fits nicely within a dualistic worldview which holds that the whole universe is made up of opposites.

That's a lot of gametes.

Before we go any further let's get our terms straight.  I don't want to seem lecture-y, (though I do love holding forth), but it's important to prevent confusion later on.  Scientifically speaking--and this is the way I'll be using these terms--male and female refer to biological sex, whereas man and woman, boy and girl, masculine and feminine refer to gender, which is a category of social meaning and determined by the culture you live in.  Biologically, the male sex is defined as the one that produces many small gametes (sex cells), called sperm.  Because they are small, they are relatively "cheap" to produce, in that they do not require much of the male's built-up stores of nutrition.  This is why the male can make so many, and having so many, they can be dispersed freely--most won't make contact with anything and so will be wasted, but there's plenty more where they came from.  Pollen is a plant's sperm.  And yes, when you suck in a big, itchy breath of pollen, some plant is having sex with your nose.

The female is defined as the one that makes large, nutritionally-costly sex cells (eggs or ova).  These cells are large because they contain a packet of nutrients that will be used by the developing embryo (like the yolk of an egg).  Being so large and requiring so much of the female's nutrition to produce, she can't make many at one time, and she must protect them so as not to waste them.  Seeds and nuts are a plant's eggs.  In sexually-reproducing organisms, there are only two sexes, but there are intersexed individuals, and many plants of course have both male and female parts. 

The Empress, Legacy of the Divine Tarot

But gender is an entirely different thing, and believe it or not, anthropology shows us that its relation to biological sex is totally arbitrary.  Are you just a producer of large or small sex cells?  Of course not.  Gender is a packet of personality traits and associated actions.  It's a role-playing game that has been invested with huge significance so that opting out of the game can be punished severely, but it's still a role.  Consequently there can be more than two genders, although in Western cultures today only two are recognized and these two are believed to be physiological/biological, even spiritual/divine, in origin and thus inextricably tied to biological sex and the physical body.  Only recently have trans- or other-gendered individuals begun to be recognized, and they still endure a great deal of prejudice.  But it's important to remember that in many cultures, they would be not only accepted but honored for their unique qualities.  Such is the case with "two-spirit" people in some Native American cultures.

The point is that with all this in mind, you can see that you are far more than your gender.  You are a glorious, multidimensional being who could never be encapsulated by one of two dinky little categories.  The Empress represents the feminine end of a polarity with the masculine Emperor at the other end; Victorian Englishmen were great believers in this polarity, but you need not be, and whatever your opinion on this, the Empress has plenty to say to men as well as women. 

The Empress, Llewellyn Tarot

The Empress is representative of abundance, nurturing, and creativity--luscious, bountiful, sexy, voluptuous, hedonistic, celebratory, vulnerable, juicy creativity.  (I love the lush greenness in the Llewellyn Tarot Empress.)  To this we can add care, the care that is necessary to nourish your embryonic creation and bring it screaming into the world.  This protectiveness, like the hard nutshell around a seed, is usually symbolized by a shield.  Historically it has been women's privilege to enjoy and to represent these beautiful qualities, but when you receive the Empress, whatever your gender, she is calling your attention to what you nurture, what you love, what you create, your sense of having plenty--or not.  Remember that you can also bring to life all sorts of nasty little "babies" through a belief in lack, of being less-than or not-enough.  If you see yourself nurturing a horrible little parasite--and bear in mind that what you believe manifests in very, very real forms--nip it in the bud and direct your passionate creativity consciously toward what you love.  At the same time, take the opportunity she offers to spot the ways in which your ideas of gender empower or limit you.  These too are beliefs that manifest in reality, so make sure you are manifesting what you love and admire most.