Mary-El Tarot

III - THE EMPRESS

The Empress is a very different kind of femininity than we find in the High Priestess. Where the High Priestess is the empty womb of the prime duality, the Empress is the cornucopia of the manifest universe. She is the great mother, and like all of us little mothers, she builds life from the materials of her own body.

Here we see her giving birth, walking out of the forest of the unknown carrying her baby, Life, and the fruits of life, into the sunlit rolling hills. There is something here that you will not see in the finished card, the deer. In the end I painted over it with the trees, but I still feel it there, hidden in the forest. It is the gentle heart of the Empress, the sacrifice of ones body (which really is no sacrifice at all as it is only transformation and sustenance for another part of the Great Mothers body) and the extreme experience of life; every sight, smell, sound, and shift in the breeze.