Starchild Tarot Study Group: 3. The Empress

kp.

the empress in the akashic has pink hair!

the title lettering has a dark background!

i have a hard time connecting with this empress. i don't know if it's because of the reasons stated above, or because i have a problem connecting to my loving divine feminine side. i'm sure there's a little bit of both.

i do love that she is pictured in a garden, alluding to her abundance and fertility. i also love that she isn't trying to look super slender (as the empress in the original starchild deck, for example) and has this voluminous dress on... also alludes to abundant fertility.

her outstretched arms and confident gaze are definitely on point. and the moon phases above her head are perfect.

did you guys notice the typeface issue or am i just way too ocd for my own good??
 

alainaobrien

First of all, yes that typeface issue. So happy it's not just my card! I wonder if it's a deck-wide error, or intentional? I did notice this issue on one more card in my deck, though I can't remember which card it is at this time.

Similar to kp, I have a hard time connecting with the Empress in general. I think because I have a hard time connecting to my "loving divine feminine side" as kp put it. I can definitely identify more with the High Priestess - mysterious, deep wisdom (not that I'm particularly wise, ha ha!), looking within, etc. - than with the Empress. I think I'm just too Aquarian (i.e. Swords-y). I mean, 78 Degrees of Wisdom says the Empress is "more benign" right in the first sentence. That just doesn't sit too well with me - I don't want to be benign!

Anyway, the Starchild book says the Empress is involved with the development of ideas, creative expression, nurturing and celebrating the body, and exploration of new adventures. 78 Degrees says that the Empress (3) is a marriage of the Magician (1, activeness) and the High Priestess (2, instinct) via emotion - I like that, a natural triangle.

In most decks, she is typically curvaceous (as here) or pregnant signifying that there is indeed a deep connection between this archetype and the "WOMANLY" body. The Empress represents the force of life - motherly, sensually, emotionally. She is the Mother, and at the same time the universe's child - pure feeling, propelling life forward, but also experiences the world directly, freshly, innocently.

On this depiction, I like the pink hair. Don't really understand why the hair is pink - maybe the model just had pink hair and Danielle kept it that way? But I think it, it makes her more relatable for me. The garden connects her to nature, as does the moon phases. With her arms wide, and the moon phases above, she seems to control the phases, or at least truly embrace them.

As I was going through the analysis of this card, I thought maybe I also don't connect well with this card because I never felt truly comfortable in my own woman's body. There is always something that I can pick out that is "wrong." And if I'm not doing it, someone else is (my mother, for example).
 

Citrin

I'm not THAT fond of any of the Empress cards in the Starchild Tarot, I admit... :( To me they look a bit too youthful, innocent, energetic.

My personal view and relationship with the Empress gives me an idea of a very grounded, earthy, "motherly" but at the same time sensual, generous, and wise person (but wise in a cunning folk kind of way). She's the witch that gather herbs in her kitchen, makes up a quick spell while making a potion of them, and voila everyday-magic! To me it's the opposite of the High Priestess who is the kind of witch that gathers herbs, bones, crystals etc for months, before memorizing a complicated spell in Romanian, and then spends a whole night working with those tools...

Just my rambling thoughts there lol... But I do like the Empress being depicted as more of a mature woman, not a youthful one, as she is in the Starchild Tarot.

If I must choose a favorite I gotta go with the Akashic Empress. I like that she's curvy and that she looks grounded and serene.
 

Hayleyc26

I'm with citric on this (we have had convos about this before). The empress to me is a mother. Whether physically pregnant, mother of earth, a motherly character or surrounded by abundance of growth. The Akashic edition warms to me a lot more than Starchild card, the age, size and her surroundings. The colours, depth in image and moons all help her seem warming and inviting but they just don't hit the mark for me, not sure what's missing in both, and as you all know I'm a major lover of Danielle's work! She is amazing! I always have to mention the empress card of the Shadowscapes tarot. It has to be mentioned. Now that imagery of an empress is a beautiful example of how I imagine this card to be shown.
 

kp.

My personal view and relationship with the Empress gives me an idea of a very grounded, earthy, "motherly" but at the same time sensual, generous, and wise person (but wise in a cunning folk kind of way). She's the witch that gather herbs in her kitchen, makes up a quick spell while making a potion of them, and voila everyday-magic! To me it's the opposite of the High Priestess who is the kind of witch that gathers herbs, bones, crystals etc for months, before memorizing a complicated spell in Romanian, and then spends a whole night working with those tools...

LOVE this interpretation. i think you hit the mark. since most of my tarot studies have been done with starchild decks, i see how i never quite "got" the empress. and of course none of this is an affront to the artist, because she is obviously great at shaking up the traditional archetypes and giving them a fresh spin...

and as far as the gathering herbs and making a quick potion, i can relate to that idea of how the empress operates (i'm more on the home organization/flow/convenient solutions for cheap kind of tip) but that vibe of nesting, caring for your home as sacred, wanting it to be a place where wonderful things are birthed, where healing happens, things smell earthy and abundant... so this is helping me see how the empress relates to my personal life experience. the nurturing mother archetype tends to be absent from my narrative, so sometimes when that is referenced i feel a pang of incompleteness. i connect with the queen of swords more if you catch my drift.
 

alainaobrien

Hey gals! I picked out some bits of each of your posts, what I liked, and what helped me learn more about the Empress.

My personal view and relationship with the Empress gives me an idea of a very grounded, earthy, "motherly" but at the same time sensual, generous, and wise person (but wise in a cunning folk kind of way). She's the witch that gather herbs in her kitchen, makes up a quick spell while making a potion of them, and voila everyday-magic! To me it's the opposite of the High Priestess who is the kind of witch that gathers herbs, bones, crystals etc for months, before memorizing a complicated spell in Romanian, and then spends a whole night working with those tools...

I really like how to juxtaposed the Empress with the High Priestess here. Obviously, the two are two sides of the same coin, but you really personified both the ladies here. The Empress is warm, friendly, I liked your everyday-magic description! And the High Priestess is the colder, haughtier, careful studied - much more my vibe. I GET the Empress, I just don't feel her presence all that much in my life.

The empress to me is a mother. Whether physically pregnant, mother of earth, a motherly character or surrounded by abundance of growth.

The Empress really does have that creative life-force energy about her, doesn't she? I do like that about her.

and as far as the gathering herbs and making a quick potion, i can relate to that idea of how the empress operates (i'm more on the home organization/flow/convenient solutions for cheap kind of tip) but that vibe of nesting, caring for your home as sacred, wanting it to be a place where wonderful things are birthed, where healing happens, things smell earthy and abundant... so this is helping me see how the empress relates to my personal life experience. the nurturing mother archetype tends to be absent from my narrative, so sometimes when that is referenced i feel a pang of incompleteness. i connect with the queen of swords more if you catch my drift.

I really like this personification of the Empress we got going on here. She's probably the kind of woman who just seems to care for everyone around her seemlessly, eh? Able to host, serve, chat, laugh, charm, all at the same time. (I'm more Queen of Swords myself... :p)
 

JadeVictoria

Relatable Empress

I love The Empress card in general, its one of the cards I always look forwards to seeing in a new deck because she is one of my birth cards. I'm usually a little underwhelmed by them purely because I struggle to connect with the visual of a pregnant women. While its a beautiful thing, I have never been pregnant and so it makes it hard for me to connect to this card usually.

The way this card is displayed you can't tell if she's pregnant or not BUT you do see a clearly feminine and nurturing person. So I can relate a bit more to her and it got me thinking of The Empress in a different way. So what if I've never been pregnant, I don't have to have been because I have a nurturing Mother. So instead of trying to feel what The Empress is all about, I've been mulling her over in a different sense over the past week. If I can't look at her Mother to Mother I CAN look at her child to Mother.
Looking at her from this angle, I feel like I can connect with her in an entirely different way. I could fall into her embrace through the card to cry over a boor embrace in joy over a promotion at work, etc. Basically anything you would do as a child with their mother. Those feelings that well up within you when you look at your Mother that you have no words to express the love and affection, that deep rooted feeling. And I have to assume the same is true for a Mother looking at her children.

Looking at her from this new perspective that I was missing before I feel her emotionally and because of that I feel I can go deeper in a reading with her now in this deck. I'll have to go back to my other decks and see if I can relate a little better to her now in general.

The other things I enjoy about this card are the moon phases above her head, giving a nod to the feminine cycle and also that she's in a garden/forest. She also has the balls of energy/light similar to the Starseed & The Universe. Here she's progressed further than the Starseed who was concentrating to hold her energy ball, The Empress is able to have her eyes open and looking calmly and serenely out at you. She's not as all encompassing as The Universe who seems to hold all energy in a single breathe. The Empress to me is able to hold these two balls of energy so easily because she is tapped into the energy of the forest. So again using that nature/nurture energy.

Also, that weirdness around her title, that color block around it. Ick.
 

kittydorkdork

i do love that she is pictured in a garden, alluding to her abundance and fertility. i also love that she isn't trying to look super slender (as the empress in the original starchild deck, for example) and has this voluminous dress on... also alludes to abundant fertility.

her outstretched arms and confident gaze are definitely on point. and the moon phases above her head are perfect.

did you guys notice the typeface issue or am i just way too ocd for my own good??

Ahhh I hadn't noticed she was in a garden. This is why I love these study groups <3<3<3

The garden is kind of a game changer for me. I wasn't really connecting with this card before (as I keep saying about most of the cards in this deck... the art is pretty, but empty). The garden gives it that "abundance" vibe... but otherwise I get get balance and (hesitantly) intuition from this card.

Does she have wings or am I seeing things?

And yeah that typeface thing is kind of annoying.