I'm combining these two cards in the interests of time, and also because I think they form an interesting pair in this deck.

The Priestess steps elegantly forward on bare feet, dressed in delicate draperies unabashedly frilled and ruffled. I thought of Boticelli's Primavera even before reading the artist's confession of his source of inspiration for the figure. (I must be smart, huh?) She carries a scroll in one hand, and a lotus with eyes in the other. She has an almost nymph-like allure. Her corresponding pagan goddess is Ceres/Demeter.

The Empress is more conservative, with her heavy dress, carefully arranged hair, orb and fan. She's the lady of the manor, well bred, well dressed, and accustomed to the perquisites of authority and the privileges of noble birth. She corresponds to Juno/Hera. I bonded with the card early on, when it appeared in the central position of an unexpectedly moving reading I did regarding my mother.

One interesting feature of the Renaissance Tarot deck is that it is extraordinarily youthful. Some decks give us a youthful High Priestess just for the sake of prettiness, and that bugs me a bit. In this deck, though, it's not thoughtless babe-mania that brings us this vision of youthful feminine beauty. In this deck, not even the Hermit is gray yet! Williams is drawing on the Renaissance fascination with the esthetic ideal, the classic youth or maiden as symbol of bodily and spiritual perfection. By doing so, he set himself a formidable challenge: to convey qualities such as authority, experience, or wisdom without resort to the cliches of old age. And it's an extraordinary success. The Empress and Priestess might be sisters, so close is their age. Yet one says "maiden" and the other says "mother", with no room for doubt, at least for me.

Carl Jung's paper on the anima, the archetype of the feminine self, which men often encounter and confront within themselves, offers a host of insights. One is that the anima usually first appears as a nymph, youthful, sexually alluring, intoxicating, deceptively innocent. As the man becomes acquainted with her, she transforms into the a more powerful figure, old, dark, and deep. To me, these "maiden" and "crone" aspects of the anima both find expression in the High Priestess. In the oldest decks, she is so concealed by her vestments, that she can transform before our eyes from the young virgin sheltered in the nunnery to the old abess, stern but wise beyond years. In modern decks, artists tend to opt for the maiden priestess. Alexandra Genetti's Wheel of Change gives us a welcome and potent dose of crone priestess. I've only seen one modern card design that reunites the two aspects: Michele Jackson's card for the Maninni II. That's the real thing.

And here we come to a point where I disagree with Williams's choice of deity correspondences for the cards. For the Priestess, he selects Demeter/Ceres, an agricultural goddess, known to literature mostly through her struggle to see her daughter Persephone returned from the Underworld. I find this goddess too maternal to fit comfortably with the anima archetype that is so closely connected with the Priestess in my mind. Vesta/Hestia, shrouded virgin protectress of the sacred fire of Olympus (unhappily neglected in literature but central to Roman pagan ritual and daily life), would have suited me better. Happily, though, Williams *wrote* about Demeter, but he *drew* the anima of my subconscious, so it all works itself out when the cards hit the spreadcloth.

The Empress, of course, is distilled mother energy, here extraordinarily contained in a youthful vessel, a woman who knows by instinct all that she will be and must be; she is centered, motionless, looking ahead to the family she will create with just the same bountiful grace with which she will one day look back on it. She is there when you depart; she will be there when you return. Her identification with Juno/Hera is apropos, although I think the image on the card conveys Hera's regal bearing more than her vindictive cruelty. (Hera's story reads like a case study in the destructive pathologies that grow out of patriarchal patterns of power: unable to express her rage against her adulterous husband, she tormented his mistresses and their innocent children.)

Whereas many decks convey meaning through the symbolic elements in the design, I find the Renaissance Tarot works for me mostly through the personalities of the figures on the cards, as conveyed by facial expression, body language, and style of dress. These two cards are strong examples of that; when I look at either, I feel that I'm looking at someone I know and recognize. The Priestess excites my sense of mystery, my thirst to proble the enigma of feminine; she is a muse, but a silent and subtle one with plans of her own. Dangerous curiosity swirls around her. The Empress is a confidant, a well of unconditional love and understanding; wherever she stands, there is home, and all cares dissolve in her welcoming smile.

Tom Tadfor Little
tlittle@telp.com

Tarot at Telperion Productions
http://www.telp.com/excursions/tarot/

The Hermitage: A Tarot History Site
http://www.crosswinds.net/members/~hermit