Haindl Tarot

III - The Empress

HEBREW LETTER: DALETH "DOOR"

RUNE: THORN, THORN

ASTROLOGY: THE PLANET VENUS

ELEMENT: EARTH

The number three is the sum of one and two, the basic poles of existence symbolized in the Magician and High Priestess. Three, therefore, symbolizes nature, which is formed by the two poles acting together. Three also signifies birth and motherhood, for a baby is the "sum" of its parents' genes mixed together. And, of course, three is the number of the Triple Goddess.

The High Priestess showed the inner state of pure existence. The Mother Goddess or Empress emerges from this undifferentiated energy in the way that Aphrodite or Venus, the Goddess of Love, rose out of the sea in the myth of her creation. That myth is one of the central images in Hermann Haindl's version of the card. The Kabbalistic letter for card 3, the Empress, is Daleth, which means "Door." The Rune is "Thorn," Th, which relates to thunder and the Norse God Thor, as well as the thorns protecting a rose bush (see the rose in the Lovers and the Sun). Thorn, also, however, means door. We see this union of the two symbolic systems, the Hebrew letter and the Rune, in the door on the lower left, opening to a room filled with light.

Thorn is a Rune of eternal return, of nature's cycles, as life returns to the world each spring. The "return" of the Goddess into human awareness forms one of the major events of our time. As a thornbush the Rune recalls the story of "Dornroselen" or "Thorn of Roses," known in English as Sleeping Beauty.

There is another Rune present in this card - that of Hagall, in the form of a crystal above the woman's head. In the sequence this Rune belongs to the Chariot, the card of Will. Hagall's appearance here links the two cards, showing that the Empress is a triumph of the human will as well as a symbol of mother love and sexuality. Hagall means "Hailstone." A hailstone is a crystal, water frozen into a fixed shape. The old Rune wisdom taught that Hagall contains the primal pattern of life in the universe. In the cold wintry climate of northern Germany and Scandinavia, life begins again each spring when the ice thaws and the snow and hail change to rain.

The planet for the Empress is Venus, Goddess of Love. Botticelli famously painted her rising out of the sea on a shell. Here the Empress stands on a lunar crescent, which in turn floats on the water. This Moon links the Empress to the High Priestess. Despite the dominance of water in this card, the element is Earth. This highlights the difference from the High Priestess, whose element indeed is Water. Where trump 2 symbolizes the unlimited potential of life and the unconscious, the Empress indicates the "real" world of nature, motherhood, sexual desire, and, finally, individual consciousness.

Above the Empress, a bluish triangle radiates yellow beams of light; inside the triangle we see concentric circles. Together they form an eye staring out at us. Below the eye we see a woman, and behind her a doorway. The open door appears layered or ornamented, giving the appearance of fish scales. Above it rises an arch, suggesting a church, and within the arch, a red spot appears in a triangle of circles.

The woman stands on the crescent. Her weight rests on one leg, a motif from Greek and Roman sculpture. Her left hand holds a golden scepter topped by a pinecone, while her right holds a snake. The snake wraps itself around her arm so that the snake's head reaches over her shoulder to above her breasts. Some students of yoga teach that the kundalini snake energy moves up the spine to the top of the head, then curls down to rest in the heart.

Around her head she wears a band of light, set with three emeralds - three for the trump number and for the Triple Goddess; green for the Earth. A golden bird flies toward the woman's ear as if to bring her the word of Heaven. The image links her with the Virgin Mary, for the Holy Ghost came to Jesus's mother in the form of a dove.

The six-sided crystal above the head of the Empress contains the Rune Hagall. The choice of colors comes from the Lakota nation of North America. Black refers to the lightning that lights up the black night (this color links the crystal to the Rune of thunder). White represents clear thought and purity. Red, the color of blood, symbolizes life; yellow the Sun; blue the sky; and green the Earth. Light shines on either side of the hexagram, though more strongly on the left, the side of intuition and wholeness. The six sides and colors link the card to the Lovers (trump 6), a proper connection for the Goddess of Love. Six is also 2 x 3, joining the Empress to the High Priestess.

Dark spheres float out from the room and into the air, symbolizing potential creation. The light from the room radiates out to illuminate the spheres, the water and the crescent. The woman, however, shines with her own inner light, warm and yellowish like the Sun, like the beams radiating from the triangle above her head. Traditionally the Empress signifies two of the Greek Goddesses. One is Demeter, the Goddess of growing things and the laws of nature. Demeter was a devoted mother who stopped the world from growing when Death kidnapped her daughter Persephone. the Empress, therefore, signifies nature, life, and motherhood. The Haindl Tarot takes its inspiration more from the second Goddess, that of Aphrodite (or Venus to the Romans) - the Goddess of love and passion, who was born out of the waters.

The crystal, too, symbolizes motherhood, for Hagall, when enclosed in a hexagram, is called the "Mother of Runes." This is because we can form any Rune from either the lines or the sides of the hexagram. There are also hints of masculinity - the phallic scepter and the snake, whose phallic yet curved and sinuous form suggests male and female mixed together. the Empress, therefore, is not just for women or even just for humans; she represents all life.

But if the Empress represents Aphrodite, she is also Psyche, the lover of Aphrodite's son Eros, whom we will find in the following trump, the Emperor. In the Greek myth Psyche, a mortal woman, was so lovely that she angered Aphrodite who, like the queen in Snow White, could not tolerate competition for the title of most beautiful. Aphrodite sent her son Eros to kill the maiden. Eros, however, fell in love with Psyche. Afraid to openly defy his mother, he hid Psyche in a secret palace removed from the world. When Aphrodite discovered Psyche still lived, she set her a series of tasks in order to prove herself worthy of loving a God. With the help of a bird (birds are the messengers between the Gods and humans - see the Hanged Man), Psyche survived these tests and became united with Eros. One of the tasks was to visit Persephone, who lives among the dead for part of every year.

Modern culture has adopted the name Psyche to represent the mind and the soul united as the self (the Greek work "psyche" means "soul"). The character Psyche begins as a figure of desire (in modern terms, a "sex object"). Through the tests she discovers herself as a person. At the end, Zeus (king of the Gods) raises Psyche to the level of an immortal so that she can face Eros as an equal. The human will can triumph, but only if it is connected to love. Suffering and love bring Psyche to immortality.

The tale shows us the progression of awareness, the theme of the Major Arcana itself. We begin as simple physical beings, directed by desire. The hardships of the world push us to develop a sense of individual personality. But if we retain our connection to sexual energy, to love, we may come to discover that this same energy - the kundalini - can transform itself into divine revelation. the Empress's snake is the kundalini (see the High Priestess), asleep in the unconscious of every human being. But the kundalini is also the Goddess Shakti herself, who is said to give life to her consort Shiva, God of yoga (see the Mother of Wands in the Minor Arcana). Without Shakti's energy, we are told, Shiva would only lie unmoving, like stone. The kundalini is the Shakti energy in each of us. And so we learn that the Goddess is not a person but divine energy, and that this energy lives in us, women and men. We gain glimpses of this energy in sexual arousal and in moments of religious intensity. But these are only glimpses, and in our state of ignorance we think of sex and religion as opposites. But if we work with that energy, if we uncoil the Goddess's snake then, like Psyche, we will discover our own immortality.

Water dominates this scene, as it did in the High Priestess, though here the rough water symbolizes the emotions. We also see symbols of the mind (the crystal) and creative achievement (the room). Far from pure emotion, the Empress thinks, makes decisions, and acts upon the world.

Our male-dominated culture describes men as thoughtful and women as intuitive. Men are said to create in the arts and sciences, while women create only in the passive sense by having babies grow in their bellies. Other cultures have recognized that the Goddess is creative in all ways, through giving birth and through intellect. Paula Gunn Allen writes of Thought Woman, the Goddess of the Keres Indians, and links her to Spider Woman, the Mother of Stones in the Haindl Tarot. Thought Woman is described as the mother of the universe, which she has created from her mind. Thus the universe is a thought, a dream of the Goddess (see the Wheel of Fortune). In Keres culture, creative humans, whether female or male, receive the title "Mother."

The room and the doorway symbolize the mind. Straight lines do not exist among plants and animals and rivers. Compare the door to the curved body of the Empress herself, symbol of the physical world. The fact that humans turn curved trees into straight boards, or build right angles on the round Earth, shows the human urge for abstraction. The doorway, therefore, represents philosophy.

We see a great light shining within the room. According to Jewish myth, when God ordered Moses to create the Ark of the Covenant, He sent a portion of His light to dwell within the Ark. God took on a physical presence in the world, like the Holy Grail of Celtic and Christian myth. This presence became known as the Shekinah. The Kabbalists took the idea of the Shekinah and changed it to a feminine aspect of God - the Empress.

Straight lines appear in nature in a very special way - the rays of light seen when the sun shines from behind a cloud. This is another reason why people sometimes associate geometry with divine intellect, as if the straight rays come directly from the mind of God. Above the woman the light radiates from the triangle, the same shape as the Rune in the upperright corner. The rays appear in groups of three, the number of the card. Though the eye within the triangle stares out at us, it also seems to draw us inward, through the different layers of existence to the point of light within the dark center.

We have described the crystal as Hagall, the Rune that contains the framework of the world, the primal pattern of creation, and, therefore, cosmic harmony. All these ideas suggest a similar image, the Kabbalistic Tree of Life, which takes the following form: O O O O O O O O O O

This form is similar to the hexagram (see also the Lovers). The bottom circle, or Sephirah, symbolizes the physical world. the Empress stands beneath the crystal. As the Mother of all the Runes, Hagall connects us to the God Odin, who first brought the Runes into the world. We find Odin in the Hermit (3 x 3), and the Hanged Man (4 x 3). The six sides of the hexagram suggest the Lovers, trump 6 (2 x 3). The snake connects to the Devil (5 x 3), and the Universe Dragon (7 x 3), while the woman stands on the Moon (6 x 3). Finally, the crystal contains the colors of the Fool's jacket (0 x 3). Thus, the Empress, we find the entire range of the Major Arcana.

The snake, as we have seen, represents transformation and enlightenment. In many cultures around the world the snake was sacred to the Goddess. Snakes often symbolize rebirth, for the snake periodically sheds its skin. Also, the venom of some snakes, such as the cobra, can act as an entheogenic substance, bringing people divine visions.

In trump 21 (2 + 1 = 3), we see the divine snake, the dragon. Like snakes, dragons are seen as evil in European culture. (In China, however, the dragon symbolizes wisdom.) St. George's victory over the dragon indicates consciousness triumphing over unconscious energy, civilization triumphing over nature. But why oppose these things? The battle with the dragon might also indicate a historical event - patriarchal power defeating the Goddess. In the Babylonian version of St. George, the hero Marduk kills the monster Tiamat. The Babylonian religion described this victory as the beginning of Creation, but Tiamat was Marduk's ancestor.

A culture that sees nature as an enemy may also see women as evil, or as passive "Earth mothers" and dependent on men. Nature and intellect become opposed. Compare this to the Keres, where nature and intellect combine in the figure of Thought Woman. In the Haindl version of the Empress we see symbols of nature, sexuality, and motherhood but we also see decisiveness, intellectual creativity, and power. In many ancient cultures the king derived his power from his service to the Great Mother. Haindl's words in describing this card and the next card form a key to his entire Tarot. "The Empress creates the Emperor."

DIVINATORY MEANINGS

The Empress signifies a time in a person's life to experience the world with great feeling. The two prime ways this feeling expresses itself are through enjoyment of life, especially sexuality, and through mothering. We tend to think of sex and motherhood as somehow opposed. But of course they belong together, for women cannot become mothers without sex. And yet, we tend to think of mothers, especially our own, as "pure," that is, sexless. This attitude may result partly from the child's possessiveness toward its mother, and infantile jealousy at the prospect of Mommy giving her body to someone else. Such patterns may stay with us as we become adults. But the sexless view of motherhood also comes from Christian culture, which presents the ideal of the mother as literally a virgin. Christianity splits women into two Marys - the Virgin and the whore, Mary Magdalene.

The Empress reminds us that motherhood and sex belong together, not just because of biology, but because both represent fulfillment and maturity. Therefore, in readings the Empress signifies someone who is actively sexual but in a responsible way. This contrasts with the Devil, where sexuality can become oppressive and disturbing. It also contrasts with the Lovers, which emphasizes a relationship. the Empress stresses the person's own sexual expression.

The Empress may apply to a man as well as to a woman. If that is the case, it will show the man expressing himself in a "feminine" yet powerful way. the Empress may also signify a passionate woman who is important to the subject of the reading.

The passions she represents are not only sexual. the Empress also may show a love of nature, of growing things, of being outdoors, of all sorts of joyous activity. the Empress cares deeply for her friends as well as her lovers.

The Empress means motherhood. This may be literal, showing the importance of being a mother for the person. For fathers, it might imply acting in a more "motherly" way. The card may also signify the subject's own mother, or the Empress may refer to mothering friends or nurturing an idea.

More than most other versions, the Haindl Empress signifies creativity. She shows an ability to give birth to ideas, to bring things into the world. This aspect becomes stronger when the spread includes other creative cards, such as the Magician.

REVERSED

The reversed Empress shows passions being blocked. The person finds it difficult to express him- or herself. The block may be sexual, or it may be emotional, saying that the person cannot express feelings easily, or it may be creative.

There are other possibilities. The reversed Empress may indicate problems with the person's mother, as being unloving or distant. Or the person might feel distant from her own children at this time in her life. If the person feels guilty, the card may help her acknowledge that she needs this distance for now. The same may also apply with resentment toward the person's own mother. Mothers cannot always exist just for their children, and the Tarot can help us see this.

Rather than showing blocks, the reversed Empress may show that this is not the time for passion and involvement. The person may need to rest, to withdraw from others. This meaning becomes reinforced with the Hermit or, especially, the High Priestess.