The Empress
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The Marseilles card
The Waite-Smith card
Stage VI - Emergence
The Image
The key to understanding this entire reading of the Tarot is to realize that The Empress is pregnant. Indeed, this card could be called The Pregnant Mother as it depicts the Mother aspect of the Triple Goddess. The Virgin Priestess began the process of Conjunction, the Krone Justice mercifully killed what had to be killed, and now the universal Mother gives back what only she can: the life of the Fool, utterly transformed by his journey. There is a wonderful Renaissance painting by Georges de la Tour called The Penitent Magdalene, that depicts this same figure, this time with an actual skeletal head in her pregnant lap.
The incubation period for the birth and strengthening of the star body has been undergone inside the womb or matrix of the Mother, which is the penultimate mystery of the journey. (Back in Stage IV, the Conjunction, after the sacred marriage, the Fool “penetrates” the “virgin” in the special sense of entry into this sacred conscious space of incubation.) The word “Magdalene” might alert us to the idea that this womb is also portrayed as a cave, specifically the “cave” from which the resurrected Jesus emerged. The Empress symbolically depicts the exact same process.
The cave or womb is the place where initiation is accomplished; it is the place from which the reborn Fool emerges. This symbol is also traditionally equated with the heart, in the sense of the innermost, secret heart of a being or even an entire realm. It is secret in the sense not only of being hidden from the profane, but also by being completely inaccessible and incomprehensible by them. (Which is why this is the Fool’s secret journey.) Only the initiate, who nearly at the end of his or her journey, can come there and exist there without physical support; present only is the Mother in whose womb the initiate nestles and the clear voice of the Hierophant who guides the Fool through this difficult stage. This is why establishing firm contact with one’s inner guides was vitally important back in Stage 2; without it one can become easily and dangerously lost.