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Bohemian Gothic Tarot

III THE EMPRESS

Lighter or more conventional meanings

Motherhood and maternity * All things natural, the cycle of birth, growth, death and rebirth * Organic growth and development * Being at one with nature in all its variety.

Darker, shadow or more hidden meanings

Accepting that death, as well as birth, is part of the entire natural cycle * Trying to control nature, or make it conform to your own desires * Poor, uncaring parenting * Arrogance; believing yourself to be important, expecting others to serve and obey you * Taking from the natural world without giving back.

This is a most unusual Empress card. It shows a rather conservative scene - a well­dressed woman sitting in her boudoir with her young daughter - which is subverted, in a startling way, by the skeleton reflected in the mirror. The expressions of the woman, who seems pleased, and the child, who is slightly alarmed, make the image an unsettling one. All in all, it's a complex and troubling image.

The Empress is traditionally the card of nature and all things organic, natural and alive. It's strongly associated with children and is sometimes taken to indicate pregnancy. In the familiar RWS image the Empress is a lofty goddess, reclining and gazing out at the viewer. In this card, she is also rather grand and sits at ease on her chair. However, she looks not out at us but across the room at the grimacing skeleton. One simple interpretation of the scene is that it reminds us that death is an inescapable fate for every living thing. If we are going to embrace the whole of life, then we must also accept death as part of that. Perhaps that's why this Empress looks so contentedly towards the grim figure.

But when considering The Empress and The Emperor cards it's always best to take them as a pair. When you set these two images beside one another different impressions emerge. The first is that in both cases the central figure looks with some mad glee, and even pride, at human bones. However, in The Empress card the skeleton is very much alive, it seems to be gesticulating or shouting at the humans. In The Emperor card the bones are mere trophies, dead things to be displayed decoratively and gloated over. This indicates the difference in the domains that these cards deal with; The Empress is about the living, growing, organic world, The Emperor deals with artifice, mechanisms and inanimate objects, constructions and concepts. Together, the two make a whole, neither quite balanced or complete without at least an element of the other.

The theme of skulls and skeletons runs right through this deck and it can be intriguing, in a reading, to consider where and how the various depictions of these turn up in a spread. In some the bones are just that; dead, inert remains. But in others we see skeletons that are, like this one in The Empress, re-animated and, in some cases, threatening. When this card comes up in a reading it suggests that we consider carefully our relationship with nature. Do we accept the cycle of birth, growth and death or do we try to deny mortality? On a more down to earth level the card also asks us to consider issues about children, parenting and, in particular, maternalism - the Empress in this image does not seem a good and caring mother to her child and the card challenges us to confront some of our assumptions about motherhood.

Some further ways to consider this card

Is the skeleton real or is it possible that it's just in the imagination of the child? Take some of the cards that show skulls or skeletons and lay them out together. This might include The Empress and Emperor, Death, Danse Macabre (if you have the Silver edition), the Ace of Cups, the Seven of Pentacles and the Queen of Pentacles. How might they interact with one another in a reading; would a high proportion of these cards in a spread make you inclined to read it in a particular way?
At midnight four times in each year does her Spright
When Mortals in slumber are bound,
Arrayed in her bridal apparel of white,
Appear in the Hall with the Skeleton-Knight,
And shriek, as He whirls her around.

While They drink out of skulls newly torn from the grave,
Dancing round them the Spectres are seen:
Their liquor is blood, and this horrible Stave
They howl. - 'To the health of Alonzo the Brave,
And his Consort, the False Imogine!'
- Matthew Lewis, The Monk.