This beautiful bouquet of flowers was a spontaneous gift yesterday from the mother of ds's best buddy. They're from her garden and she sent them back with my dh as a little Mother's Day offering. I was so touched by her thoughtfulness, her intention and, of course, her attunement to beauty. My own mother is gone from this good earth and my friend's generous gift got me thinking about The Empress, about how that role is now shaped by my close women friends and mentors. How we do this for each other, as women. Most of my close women friends live far away but that doesn't seem to matter to the strength of the bond. It's umbilical. That matrix is within, the ground we move from.
I went through my decks and looked at some of my favorite representations of The Empress. In all of them she is associated with abundance, fruition, fertility, the earth, children, the moon, beauty, creativity. One depiction that speaks strongly to me is Pamela Eakins' version from Tarot of the Spirit.
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| The Empress ~ Tarot of the Spirit by Pamela Eakins |
Will you come next, Sun?
Come through my leafy Door?
Come to cast your precious
silky silver rays across
the grove of new and sacred cypress
and leafy wreathlets strung with strands
of glistening
pearls; webs of dew;
furry creatures, cold and wet
cooing in the fields where the gold
and cobalt lapis ether: Night Sky--
so recently laid upon me
with all his jewels--ruby/diamond/aqua--
glistening down
like so many wonders
caressing, holding, every drape and fold
of my smoky emerald gown
while I gave birth to all
that was, is, and ever shall be
things of beauty, tenderness
pelican and eagle--first to come--
guarded the entrance
of cave/womb/home
come to heart
and illuminate this Birth.
This poem to The Empress by Pamela Eakins evokes so many of the strands that are woven into The Empress. She writes, 'the key at this time is to remember that imagination is everything.' There is such expansive energy in this phrase, power and receptivity both, which is, of course, the essence of The Empress herself. Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it, writes Goethe. This quote is one that my mother put up on our fridge when I was a girl so that we'd see it regularly. It moved her greatly and now all these decades later her impulse to frame that quote with importance still holds. And that, too, is The Empress, inspiration combined with manifestation. She is Sovereignty in its feminine form, sovereignty as abundance, as fecundity, as the strength of the creative impulse, the ripe pulsing earth of each moment.
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| The Empress ~ RiderWaiteSmith Tarot |
Eakin's version is a much more watery Empress than traditionally seen in the RWS deck. And yet the Earth is solidly there in the greening fields beside her, in the roses and doves, the lilies around her head, the Venus glyph, her subtly pregnant belly and her barefeet. The swirl of energy comes to rest in and as her.
These days whenever she appears in a reading for me the words 'self-care' are some of the first to arise. On this day to honor The Empress energy in our lives, I'm taking some time to reflect, breathe and cultivate little areas of beauty throughout the day, for myself and for my family. I'm pausing to feel my feet on the ground, the pulse in my belly, to love up the children in my life, both human and animal, and to give thanks to all the women in my life who have mid-wifed various parts of the woman I am today.
Mother's Day blessings to all you wonderful women out there!
