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TAROT
card meanings & free reading
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The Empress According to A. E. Waite
The Meaning of the Empress Tarot Card in DivinationHere is what the occultist Arthur Edward Waite, co-creator of the Rider-Waite Tarot deck, had to say about the Empress Major Arcana card in divination.
The Empress Tarot Card3. The Empress, who is sometimes represented with full face, while her correspondence, the Emperor, is in profile. As there has been some tendency to ascribe a symbolical significance to this distinction, it seems desirable to say that it carries no inner meaning.The Empress has been connected with the ideas of universal fecundity and in a general sense with activity.
Inner Symbolism of the Tarot Empress CardA stately figure, seated, having rich vestments and royal aspect, as of a daughter of heaven and earth. Her diadem is of twelve stars, gathered in a cluster. The symbol of Venus is on the shield which rests near her. A field of corn is ripening in front of her, and beyond there is a fall of water. The sceptre which she bears is surmounted by the globe of this world.She is the inferior Garden of Eden, the Earthly Paradise, all that is symbolized by the visible house of man. She is not Regina coeli, but she is still refugium peccatorum, the fruitful mother of thousands. There are also certain aspects in which she has been correctly described as desire and the wings thereof, as the woman clothed with the sun, as Gloria Mundi and the veil of the Sanctum Sanctorum; but she is not, I may add, the soul that has attained wings, unless all the symbolism is counted up another and unusual way. She is above all things universal fecundity and the outer sense of the Word. This is obvious, because there is no direct message which has been given to man like that which is borne by woman; but she does not herself carry its interpretation. In another order of ideas, the card of the Empress signifies the door or gate by which an entrance is obtained into this life, as into the Garden of Venus; and then the way which leads out therefrom, into that which is beyond, is the secret known to the High Priestess: it is communicated by her to the elect. Most old attributions of this card are completely wrong on the symbolism — as, for example, its identification with the Word, Divine Nature, the Triad, and so forth.
Divinatory Meaning of the Tarot Empress CardFruitfulness, action, initiative, length of days; the unknown, clandestine; also difficulty, doubt, ignorance.
More about the Empress Tarot card
The Major Arcana Tarot Cards According to A. E. Waite
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Tarot Unfolded
Stefan Stenudd