Daily Tarot Girl — Learning Her Voice

The Empress

Hi, I'm Kate from Daily Tarot Girl, and welcome to my deep dive into the Empress. So I'm going to tell you all about the Empress, her personality, her talents, her dark side, what she's like at a party and in love and at work, and what she means when she shows up in your readings, even when she shows up reversed. And before we dive in, if you want the written version of all this, I'll pop a link to the blog post down below for you. So sit back, relax, and don't worry too much about remembering every little thing I say, I really just want to give you a feel for her vibe and her energy. So the Empress is card number three in the major arcana, and she's kind of the big mother energy of the whole deck, so where some of the other cards are very heady or very spiritual, the Empress is more like, okay, now let's actually make something, let's grow something real. She's the great mother of the tarot, like the ultimate mom energy, and honestly I like to think of her as the earth mama of the whole deck. She corresponds to Venus, which is all about love and beauty and pleasure, so think Venus energy, very lush, very pleasure-loving, and she corresponds to the element of earth, so I want you to think of a warm summer garden, everything kind of ripe and blooming and a little bit overgrown, and that's her, she takes a tiny little seed of an idea or a feeling and grows it into something real you can actually hold in your hands.

So some keywords and personality traits to keep in mind for the Empress, she's nurturing, she's sensual, she's, ooh, I always want to say fertile and it sounds so clinical, but you know what I mean, she's fertile, she's creative, she's abundant, she's generous, and she's just really at home in her own body and in the natural world. Okay, let me just switch to my next sheet here. So let's look at the symbols on her card, because there's a lot going on. She's reclining back on these big soft cushions out in a field of golden wheat, and to me that kind of tells you a lot about her, like she's already done all the work and now she gets to just lie back and enjoy the abundance of it, you know. And then behind her there's like a forest and a little river flowing along, and I think that just kind of represents this constant feeling of life moving and flowing and being fed. And she's got this robe on that's covered in pomegranates, which, pomegranates are an old fertility symbol, and then there's her crown, and if you count them there's twelve little stars, one for each month, so she's really tied into the cycles and the seasons. And then right beside her there's this heart-shaped shield with the symbol of Venus on it, just in case you somehow forgot that this whole card is about love and beauty and pleasure.

So I want you to imagine the Empress as a real person you might actually know. She's that friend whose house you walk into and there's already something baking in the oven, fresh flowers on the table, a cat asleep in a patch of sun, and she's kind of pressing a warm drink into your hands before you've even got your coat off. I actually have a friend who is so Empress, like you go over and the bread's in the oven and the soup's on and the whole house smells amazing and she's just feeding everybody, and you leave feeling so taken care of. So at a party she's not in the middle of the room telling the loud story, she's the one back in the kitchen making sure everyone's fed, and she'll absolutely send you home with leftovers. When she's in love she's so sensual and affectionate and devoted, and she kind of shows her love by taking care of you, by feeding you, by making your whole life softer and prettier, and what she really wants is a partner who'll actually let themselves be looked after. And at work she's a creator, she's the one starting the garden or the business or the project or the family, anything that lets her take something little and help it grow. And if you're an Empress type yourself, you probably already know this about you, you're the one everybody comes to to be fed and fussed over.

So let's talk about her dark side, and like a lot of these really warm loving cards, her dark side isn't that she turns mean, it's more that she kind of gives and gives and gives until there's nothing left over for herself. So the shadow side of the Empress is the woman who mothers everybody else and totally forgets to mother herself, you know, she pours into her kids and her partner and her friends and her work and she just runs herself into the ground, and sometimes all that over-giving can kind of tip over into smothering, or into keeping people a little too dependent on her. And that kind of leads us right into what she means reversed. So reversed, a lot of the time the Empress is kind of a sign that you've given so much of yourself away that, you know, your own well has kind of run dry. You're depleted, maybe you're a little creatively blocked, the ideas just aren't really flowing, or you've gotten so busy taking care of everyone else that you've kind of stopped taking care of your own body and your own needs. So reversed she's just gently nudging you to turn some of that beautiful nurturing energy back around toward yourself for a change.

So what does it actually mean when the Empress shows up for you in a reading. A lot of the time she's kind of an invitation to slow way down and let yourself receive for once, to let yourself be taken care of, to enjoy good food and your own body and the world around you instead of always pushing so hard. She can be like a big yes to creativity, you know, a yes to some new project that's kind of about to be born, and yeah, in some readings she really can point to a literal pregnancy or a new baby, but way more often she's about giving birth to something else in your life, a creative project, a home, a relationship, even just like a softer version of yourself, you know, getting to come to life, yeah. So here's a journaling question for you, where in your life are you being asked to nurture something and let it grow slowly, and is there a part of all that nurturing that you maybe need to point back at yourself. So that is my deep dive into the Empress in a nutshell, I really hope I gave you a feel for her energy, and don't forget to check out my website, dailytarotgirl.com, where I've got all kinds of fun tarot learning resources for you. Thank you so much for watching.