World Spirit study group - The Empress (III)

Sulis

I love this Empress, she just looks so lush. Everything an Empress should be.

An exotic looking woman lounges under a tree on a chaise longue (sorry about the spelling :)). The tree's branches are laden with blossom. She's naked apart from an orange sarong; the colour of creativity and courage which is draped carelessly around her hips.
She holds a lotus, a flower which grows from mud, up through water towards the sky - a symbol of spiritual enlightenment.
A snake coils around the tree and scattered around her are fruits, some scales and a flail. In her hand she holds a small shepherds crook. Birds fly in the sky, behind her is a waterfall, on her head she wears a crown of stars.

This is Mother Nature, Gaia. She enjoys life, she's both sexual and nurturing at the same time. She looks as though nothing and nobody could bother her. She looks powerful and supremely feminine.

Love and light

Sulis xx
 

lunalafey

The Mother Goddess

nice sulis-
your words reminded me {and study of the card} of something I have always believed.....no matter what we do to this planet, when we are gone, she will still be here....she will recover and give new life to the planet. She is not threatened by us. I see the scales and think of the balance with in the enviroment and how neccissary it is to keep it.
I see the scales in this card are not even....:(
I like the 'mixing of cultures' in this card, for it express the mother's children from all of earth.
 

13thFaeChylde

Everything is very ripe in this card....the fruit, the flowers and especially the Empress. She is full and confident and offers her bounty to share. At the edge of the scales there is a sliced avocado...(some background info....Supposedly the avocado was first eaten in 291 B.C. in Mexico by a Mayan princess who believed it held mystical and magical powers. Is it an aphrodisiac? The Aztecs believed it was and dubbed it ahuacatl (meaning testicle), probably referring to the fruit's shape and the way it hangs from the tree in pairs).

The hearts on the red fruit bowl symbolize love. The green snake is for creative transition. The waterfall means free-flowing, never stagnant, emotions. This Empress is very welcoming.
 

Sulis

Wow I didn't know that about avacados.

Love and light

Sulis xx
 

Satori

I find the serpent interesting, like Garden of Eden interesting. I think it is kind of funny in a way. Here we have this fertile woman looking straight out at us, in what way-alluring, challenging, inviting? Her face is so lovely, her body ripe, and there she is holding that lotus erect, at her groin! So, while I see it as sexual I also see it as her showing she is balanced with male and female energy.

As for the serpent, we don't see it in its entirety. It is broken up and we see 4 sections of it. For me, that break up of the serpent is very compelling. The tree has 4 sections to it, as well, with the serpent coiled on the branch that arches over and protects the Empress.

The Empress reclines on her chaise and look, only 3 legs visible, reminiscent of the Magician from the TdMarseilles.

Interesting to see 7 birds again, echoing the Fool's 7 birds. Not sure what to make of it....
 

Seed Crystal

3 The Empress

What a lucious, wanton, shameless, sinless, powerful Mother Nature! She reminds me of the dreaming Venus of Malta, except awake and lively and I see the Venus of Willendorf in the stones next to the waterfall.

There's a phonix, fire bird of birth-death-rebirth cycles next to her. I see a cup in the actual waterfall. She has a firm unembarsed grasp on her wand and, well, she IS the Earth Mother.

She is Eve who brought the knowledge of good and evil, and life eternal if cyclical, and sex, to humanity. Have an apple, some grapes, go ahead and eat the banana and avocados. (Thank you, 13thFaeChylde!) We are Her children, we are welcome in this garden.

She is utterly powerful, but live and let live, or maybe live and let die; she has those scales, and that flail-and-crook symbolizing royalty and dominion in Egypt. But the crook is in her hand at the moment, not the flail.