rainwolf said:
There are different faces of The Empress which may help you understand the element attribution.
This method that Rainwolf described is I think very useful for the cards where they may be considered to have multiple elements. I think perhaps trying to start the explanation with a planet that may be seen to have multiple elements was a bad idea when trying to illustrate the method. Sorry 'bout that
The elemental/astrological/qabalah attributions given so far are those typically used in Golden Dawn based decks (and hence the Thoth). Many people however will use GD based decks (especially the RWS) with different attributions, or even multiple ones for each card.
You could infact look at any card, and see aspects of all four elements, or even any of the 12 signs, or 7-11 planets. This is a more flexible approach, although not one that currently attracts me.
This thread has a discussion of which sign may be applied to some of the cards. While its a little away from our topic, I think it gives a good idea of the way different people may approach the application of astrology to tarot, and how it affects a reading.
The advantage of thinking this way is you can then see how a card may express itself based on its neighbours (in the way RW illustrated above). This is what elemental dignities are really all about. Its much the same as in astrology thinking of a planet within a sign or house. You can then see how they both affect each other, and how that changes the expression of the meanings of both.
In astrology you have a planet within a sign, and you base your information on that. (There is more of course, but that is leading to a discussion of charts and aspects etc) In tarot we have not got a "chart" in the same way, but we can see the interaction of cards based on their proximity to each other in a spread.
If learning a specific approach to elements/astrology etc. is too much at this time, maybe you could try to focus on how a card affects its neighbours, based on your own understanding of the cards.