The Empress, the divine feminine inside us all

Mother to us all, sister to us all, wife to us all, the Empress represents the divine feminine of this world. She stands for birth and rebirth, nurturing us through this world, spurring us into action and helping us to develop.

She is nature incarnate, and speaks to us of grounding and connection to the earth, perhaps suggesting a reconnection with the natural world. L'Impératrice reminds us to keep our feet on the ground whilst being creative and bringing our ideas to fruition.

She often represents important women in a reading, mother/daughter/wife, and when read in a negative aspect can signify inaction, indecision, anxiety, or infidelity.

Reflecting on this card I am drawn to think of my wife, Polly. She is the one who keeps me grounded, and who nurtures my creativity. She keeps my feet planted firmly on the ground as I start to take this idea, which started as a sketch in a notebook, and bring it to fruition. I think of my daughters, all three of them, who also keep me firmly grounded and make sure I know my place in the pecking order. These four women, some younger than others, embody the Empress in full. They soften the violent male desires, tempering my steel with their silk.

But the divine feminine is present in us all, for are we not two sides of the same coin? Yin and Yang, in perfect harmony, the divine feminine and divine masculine in an ever spinning dance of harmony, as one in ourselves to be as one with our exterior world. The Empress reminds us that the divine feminine resides inside each and every one of us, and that a man that is not in touch with his feminine side is an incomplete man, all Yang and no Yin. He is out of balance with himself, and therefore out of balance with the wider world. Only by embracing the divine feminine within you can a man hope to achieve completion within himself, and unity with his environment.

As within, so without.