The Empress In the Natural Array

Alchemical Correspondence: Copper (Venus) or Congelation (Taurus) Astrological Correspondence: Venus or Taurus Hebrew Correspondence: Philosophical Correspondence:

In A Reading
The Empress is archetypally the Mother, the Creatrix. She is athropormised nature, Gaia, the Earth Goddess. She is a queen, the domestic head of household, a matriarch of a tribe within all of us. Upright, she can be a person or she can simply represent some aspect of motherhood or expression of vibrant, creative femininity. In readings about money, she represents prosperity earned as a harvest or bounty from labor. As a love interest, she might be an older and more experienced female lover or someone of either gender who is nurturing if perhaps strongly opinionated and stubborn.

Reversed, the Empress often represents a mother, teacher, employer or other female authority figure who has a lot of anger, toxicity, and need to bully or dominate. This is a person or situation where there's a lot of emotion being thrown around that is interrupting collaboration and growth. In order to be turned upright, whoever the Empress represents in the reading is going to need to want to go of their negativity and/or rage. If this is not the querent, they might have to find a different route to achieve whatever they are seeking, bypassing the Empress Reversed and leaving her/it behind rather than stay with a person or in a situation where they are mistreated or neglected.

In the Natural Array
There are several viable places on the Olam Mandala to place the Empress. The Golden Dawn and others attribute Venus to the Empress. If that feels right to you, then the Empress would be placed on the vertical path that draws energy from Netzach (Venus) to Chesed (Jupiter). Venus is the classical ruler of Taurus the sign of Fixed Earth. This is the slanted path between Malkuth (Saturn) and Netzach (Venus). Experiment with both.

My personal sentiments is Taurus a better attribution for the Empress. It which would give The Empress a shared affinity with the Queen of Wands. Moreover, a Taurus attribution to the Empress feels particularly right when I conceptualizing an Empress-Emperor polarity. The Emperor is strongly Aries (Cardinal Fire) to me. Emperor/Aries/Cardinal Fire (Thesis/Yang) with Empress/Taurus/Fixed Earth (Antithesis/Ying) synthesized by Hierophant/Gemini/Mutable Air just fits as neatly as The Magician (Shin/Fire/Yang) vs. The High Priestess (Mem/Water/Yin) balanced by The Fool (Alef/Air/Tao).

In Daily Life
I described statues, especially of concepts like justice and liberty being the embodiment of the archetype of formative High Priestess. The Empress is nature vs. form and nature is about birth-life-death-rebirth. The Empress is all around us whenever this cycle is playing itself out, especially in people and situations are practical or symbolic fertility, birth, and harvest. When we need to tap into the Empress within, we should start by going outside, especially to play with our children or pets if we have either. Its better not to be solitary but to be engaged with someone we love, expressing things we love, doing activities that make us feel good about ourselves and them. This can cause a surge of positive lifeforce that can be very cleansing and healing.