Major Arcana

Court Cards

Pips

Description
Nature (Empress) shows a woman standing between two children. The one on her left is facing us, the one on her right has his back to us. All of the figures are nude. The woman rests an arm around each child. She is looking down at the child on her left side. Near this child are three lilies drooping on a vine. Near the other child are three roses blooming. In front of the figure is a small stream flowing past. The image is framed with fruitful grapevines. Small angels sit among them, playing musical instruments.

From the Book
The woman is Bathsheba flanked by the two sons she bore King David. The son on her left, near the lilies, is the son who died for King David sins. The son on the right is the future King Solomon. This figure also represents Vala. According to Blake, Vala is the female portion of the Zoa of Love. She is the embodiment of nature and represent on one hand the irresistibility of natural beauty and on the other hand the danger and delusion implicit in nature. Vala, similar to Eve, is seen as the cause of man's (Albion's) fall, seducing him away from a spiritual path with her beauty.

Her nakedness is a symbol of both her beauty and her power to lure humans into the physical world and away from the spiritual. Keywords: Mother Earth, motherhood, fertility, sexuality, emotions, abundance, attractiveness, deception, illusion.

Bee's Buzz
I have to admit that my initial response to this card was somewhat gloomy and negative. But that was based on Blake's iconography and mythos, rather than on the image itself. The image itself speaks to me of both the joys and pains of motherhood, of creating and producing. There is the pain of loss and knowing that sometimes no matter how hard we try, we lose things we love.

 Sometimes marriages end, children die or are lost to us, or our creative endeavors do not bloom as we hoped. On the other hand we can see the joys and pleasures of seeing what we have created blooming and excelling beyond our expectations. This is certainly something many mothers have experienced, but it is also common to the human experience.

Whether you are female or not, whether you have children or not; we have all given birth to something and had to watch as it blossomed or failed in front of our eyes. It is a necessary learning experience. And sometimes the failure stops us from trying again.  But in order to be true to this card and to our own nature, we need to learn and grow from it, not let it stop us in our tracks.

This Empress symbolizes the two sides to the coin, joy and pain, happiness and suffering, growth and death. We have all been there and I'm sure we will all be there again at some point. Nature shows us that we can keep moving forward no matter what happens, because if we cannot continue to create and grow, then why live at all.



Bees Blessings,
Debbie

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