Our next stop on the Fool’s path is stopping by the Empress in her garden. The Empress oversees the creative imagination. Writing this article reminded me of an eight-year group study I did eons ago on the Major Wisdom Keys. Synchronistic events would occur that were directly associated with the key we studied.
Case in point, I began to prepare for this article last week and looked over my notes on the Empress Key. Yesterday I decided to visit Bird Dog Arts – an art gallery in the Outlets at Tejon. I had visited here once before. It is a beautiful and well-put-together gallery full of California artists. I needed a visually creative boost. I know several of the many artists displayed there – but to my surprise – using the idea of Jungian synchronicity – on turning the corner, I immediately noticed a display of one of my ex-husband’s artworks (the artist one). My ex had just been there on the weekend for his show. I haven’t spoken to him in years. I have always admired his work, and I reminisced about all the art museums he and I visited together. I had an excellent discussion with David, the gallery director as well. After I left Bird Dog Arts, I was high with joy, excitement, and creative fervor. I even got semi-lost, finding my way back to parking. This visit again awakened my creative imagination– which is the job of Key III.
One of the symbols equated with the Empress is a door. The Fool’s journey brings us through this door and returns us home again. Once again, we are at the self-conscious level of activity. The symbolism of the Empress is primarily feminine. She is, like the Magician, in a garden.
The Empress also has things in common with the High Priestess as both are seated women. Some things are distinctly different. Virginity illuminates The High Priestess in the Tarot. By Tarot tradition, the Empress is pregnant and the wife of the Emperor, Key IV.
The High Priestess is a Moon goddess; in mythology, she is related to such goddesses as the chaste, virginal Diana of the Romans. Venus is the ruler of the Empress, the traditional patroness of childbirth, beauty, and the arts. She is symbolic of fertility. Fertility, in the Empress, through the subconscious, is operating in the realm of self-consciousness. The Empress is imagination, using the mind’s power to reinvent ideas with new combinations from the High Priestess’ recordings of life memories. As symbolized by the door, creative imagination is truly the entrance to new life and new worlds.
So far, all the powers imbued in the Keys are symbols of the limitless Life-Power pictured by the Fool. A power that can assume all kinds of shapes and forms
Whatever your focus in life is what you become. If you focus on images of misery and poverty, you will give birth to the actual physical surroundings of those ideas. Even your body is part of your environment. If your Magician works with the black, malignant transformations resulting from fear and doubt, you create your body from these negative emotions. But if you change and transform these negative patterns into positive ones, creative imagination, ruled by the Empress, will build you a fresh new life with new ideas.
You can make this process can become automatic. If you pay attention to the positive, the rest follows. If you have a problem, pay attention and study it. You will discover the answers to the problem itself. Your memory or history becomes enriched by clear realizations of events instead of how they appear.
The combining and associative power of the subconscious will continuously make you conscious of new ideas. Your mind will become as fertile as the Empress’ Garden. You will reap a breathtaking harvest of fresh ideas. The Tarot can lead you forward on your path until it takes you out of the haze of false appearances into the clear Light of True Realization.
The imagination has been called by many mystics the eye of the soul. Creative imagination is constantly creating forms and shapes. It is also the place where structures are delineated and preserved. Here is the mirror of visions and magic. Here we can cure disease, temper the seasons, and resurrect the dead. And all because the imagination intensifies the will and gives it power over the universal agent.
If properly harnessed, the power of the imagination is limitless. Vision determines the form of the child in its mother’s womb. Are you exposed in battle? Believe yourself as invulnerable as Achilles, and you will be so, as said by the philosopher Paracelsus. Fear attracts bullets, and courage turns them back.
The only way a man of genius is different from a dreamer or a madman is that his creations are truthful. The seer knows what he imagines is accurate, and that experience will confirm his visions.
Key 3 has the idea of multiplication planted in it. Creative imagination is how the principle of multiplication expresses itself in your mental life. The process by which this occurs is part of the definition of the number 3. The subconscious responds to the self-conscious by generating
Ideas. The Empress is a symbolic combination of the concepts created by the Magician and the High Priestess, or 1 plus 2 equals 3.
The number 3 of the Empress joins the individuality of the Magician (1) with the repetition of the High Priestess (2). The union of 1 and 2 represent reproduction. Therefore 3 is the number of production, formation, organization, proliferation, and expansion. All these meanings of Key 3 symbolize the role of your subconscious in these activities.
Our creative imagination contains real power, a definite physical strength, and metaphysical reality. The chaotic conditions of political and economic systems are direct results of chaotic, disorderly images held in the minds of millions of human beings. Changing mental images we conceive will transform the external environment. Transformation requires everyone to cultivate their mental garden. Outer circumstances are the physical embodiments of pre-existing mental patterns.
The word “Empress” comes from a Latin root meaning “to set in order, to arrange.” The Empress represents the internal process of establishing order, and the following key, the Emperor, represents the outer process.
The Empress is the positive side of the Great Mother/Mother Nature personified as Venus. She dresses in the web of manifestation.
Green predominates in Key 3, as in nature. Mixing yellow and blue produces green. Yellow and blue are the colors associated with the Magician and the High Priestess.
The Empress is a matronly figure who is pregnant. Creative imagination results from the impregnation of subconsciousness by impulses originating in self-consciousness.
Her hair is yellow, like the Fool’s, symbolizing radiant energy. The wreath binding is of myrtle. Myrtle is an evergreen shrub sacred to Venus and a symbol of immortality.
The Empress wears a crown of twelve golden six-pointed stars. The woman in “The Book of Revelation” is clothed with the sun and crowned with twelve stars. Like that woman, the Empress has the moon under her feet, symbolizing her abilities coming from the subconscious power of the High Priestess.
The six-pointed stars represent the twelve modes of cosmic activity associated with the twelve signs of the zodiac. The self-conscious mind influences the subconscious by suggestions; the subconscious is also open to the power of the superconscious or God.
The robe of the Empress is white with a floral design. The design elements are astrological symbols of Venus.
The Empress carries a scepter topped with a globe symbolizing self-dominion or control over the physical world.
Her shield is decorated with the astrological symbol of Venus and is Venusian green. This heart-shaped shield is of copper, the metal of Venus. “Heart” in occultism means the subconscious.
The stone seat of the Empress, contrasting with the severe simplicity of the High Priestess’ cube, is decorated with an intricate design.
The ripened wheat in the foreground of this key represents the completion of a growth cycle. It is the same idea of multiplication indicated by the number 3. The seed is multiplying. Every act of creative imagination creates conditions giving rise to future growth.
Ripening wheat is sacred to Isis-Hathor and Ceres, another mother-goddess. The Empress, representing Venus or Hathor, also corresponds to her representations of Mother Nature.
There is a stream and pool in the background of this key. The water is the stream of consciousness sourced in the robe of the High Priestess.
The stream, representing the libido, flows from the self-conscious activities of the Magician. The pool symbolizes the subconscious collection of these influences. The stream irrigates the garden making it fertile.
In the background are ten cypress trees. Ten corresponds to the number of circles on the Fool’s clothing. The cypress is a tree sacred to Venus. The red roses on her robe represent the senses and mean the same as the roses in the Magician’s Garden.
Another Venusian symbol is the Empress’ necklace of pearls. Seven pearls are visible, representing the seven heavenly bodies known to the ancients. They also correspond to the seven-interior stars, called chakras by Hindu yogis.
The necklace touches the Empress’s throat, the Venus center’s location. The Venus center is where the seven interior stars control the energies working through them. The Venus center is the secret entrance to adeptship and the door to mastery.
In Qabalah, creative imagination is part of the Universal Expression of the Mother Principle. The concept of God as the mother is unfamiliar in western thought. Western spiritual development ignored the idea that God is Mother and Father at a significant loss. In the ancient esoteric teachings and the ancient religious theologies, the mother aspect of God has always been given equal prominence with the father aspect. Humanity has been unable to understand that God is a mother and father, impeding the evolution of consciousness. The mother principle of God is the formative element involved in the creative imaginings of life.
The Tarot Keys represent either the male or female principle, separately or as a unit containing the proper balancing of the male-female relationship. The emotional reaction to the mother image is always a strong one. Our inner subconscious connection to the mother holds the secret to our emotional security. It is essential to realize this and do something about it.
The pair of opposites assigned to this Tarot Key are wisdom and folly. Someone wise automatically holds the proper image in their imagination and knows how to create the positive; the reverse is true of someone filled with foolishness and folly. We must understand how these principles work as our destiny is to be conscious co-creators with God.
In creating a vehicle for a new soul, the arriving soul gathers its physical substance from the mother. Then the soul shapes this substance into the physical body in which it will manifest. An ancient god of Egypt, Khnum, conceptualizes this idea. His name is from the Egyptian words meaning ‘unite,’ ‘join,’ or ‘build.’ Khnum was an ancient fertility god and the great potter who created children and their ka at conception.
The physical body has a good deal to do with what kind of emotions we have. But it’s not the body that causes the feelings. The self-image carries the emotional response. Once the body is born, it does not stop collecting.
The body never ceases to collect from its environment. Eating, breathing, and drinking are ways we continue to gather from the environment, selecting elements we need to shape our physical being to our self-image. When we become adults, we have completed one part of soul creation. But we continually draw substance from the environment.
After our physical mother gives birth to us, the Cosmic Mother steps in even though we think we grow and nourish ourselves. It is life, the Cosmic Mother, who nourishes us; the world is the womb of God, and the womb of God has many different levels. When God desires to give birth to an evolving human individuality, God uses that aspect known as the female principle. Every female being on Earth reflects this. The physical mother supplies the unique environment possessing karmic connections. But it is the Cosmic Mother, God, who gives birth. As God is All, isn’t it reasonable to think every living female creature is the feminine aspect of God? And conversely, every living male creature is the masculine aspect of God. Everyone on this planet is an aspect of God, for there is nothing apart from God.
As personified by the Empress, authentic creative imagery depends upon our ability to tune into the higher parts of consciousness. Some can do this without being aware of it—the artist does so in terms of his art. You can become an artist of life, the most incredible artistry of all, and to perfect it, you must see yourself in your true guise as a divine spark of God.
About The Author
I am originally from the Chicago area. I believe I still retain much of my midwestern sensibilities. Midwesterners are direct and honest.
My Intuitive abilities have always been there for me. I remember being in my bed when I was about three. The room was dark and still. Laying there, I just knew that I could make toys appear. I tried and tried but alas that didn’t happen. And I couldn’t understand why. I understood a certain principle that didn’t seem to work in this physical world. I always knew I was different, even then – out of place, out of time.