The Empress - Winter Solstice Blessing

The one thing I look forward to this time of year is the Winter Solstice. And when I think of this celebration of light, my thoughts go to the Major Arcana card the Empress. She is representative of the Great Earth Mother within, and the image of the great goddess Demeter, mother of Persephone (Proserpina), who freezes over and blankets the earth for six months of the year in desparate search of her abducted daughter for whom she mourns so deeply.

I've heard it said that the Winter Solstice is like the birth canal and the physical experience of mothering, but also the inner experience of the Great Mother: discovering that the body is something valuable and precious and that we ought to celebrate the pleasures in nature and in life.

We experience being part of nature and how we are rooted in natural life. Without Demeter the Empress and Great Mother, we cannot appreciate our physical selves. We are connected to the feeling of safety and trust in life and the wisdom of nature. There is a deep understanding that everything moves in cycles and ripens and comes to fruition at the appropriate time.

The Empress - Beauty and Bounty

Embracing the feminine is embodied in the Empress card. She is the epitome and symbol of motherhood, possesses the wisdom of nature, and she lives life with creative abundance, imagination and luxury. The Great Mother sets the standard for honouring and nurturing ourselves, imparting an understanding of living in our physical bodies and knowing that we are both creatures of the spirit, but also of the earth. She asks us to nourish life.

Embracing our light and dark instinctual nature is encountered in meeting the Empress. Our bodies are both valuable and precious which are worthy of being cared for as being part of nature, rooted and in natural life.

Without the Empress we cannot appreciate our physical selves, living in a purely intellectual world without being grounded in reality. She provides for us a connection to safety and a trust in life.

The Empress - Bountiful & Beautiful

Seems lately I have a number of female friends, myself included, who are thinking about their mothers. Perhaps being mid Summer when things are in bloom and growing our thoughts are drawn to the Empress the Mother of All who represents abundance and luxury.
The Empress is ruled by Venus the Roman goddess of love.

We learn how to become women from our mothers, who nurture, protect and love us always, unconditionally, even from beyond the grave.  She connects us with the feeling of safety and trust in life. Our mothers live deep within the small of our heart of hearts.

The Empress provides creativity, imagination, and fertile growth.
 I do not see the Empress as perfection, but as a real woman, who is of the earth. She knows the suffering, and the joy, and she is perfect in her imperfection . She encourages us to celebrate who we are, as we are, as real women.

We may not be mothers biologically, but we can still provide those mothering qualities toward others, and toward ourselves. Without the inner experience of the Great Mother within , we can not bring any thing into fruition. We need to understand how to be patient, and gentle with ourselves and others.

Walker Evans - Photograph

The Empress - The Power of Motherhood

I love the Empress card, the third Card in the Major Arcana and ruled by the Roman goddess of love, Venus. She symbolizes the the power of motherhood, the earth, and practical wisdom.
Having a past vocation as a Youth Care Worker for over twenty years I feel I have been mothered many and I understand what my own mother sacrificed and what she so freely imparted to me was invaluable for living a life grounded in love , and practical wisdom. She embodied an inner beauty and generosity that a of a mother freely and unconditionally gives.

The Empress is beautiful and bountiful. The stars in her crown represent all the signs in the Zodiac, indicating she is the mother of all. Here we find fertility, creativity and imagination. There is pregnancy of the body, the mind or the spirit. There is great ability to create a warm and productive environment. The harvest is good and abundant. Luxury and material gain, productivity and protectiveness are present and reflects the experience of mothering. Not only in the physical body but the experience of the Great Mother and her wisdom of nature. She understands that all things move in cycles and come to fruition at the appropriate time. Without her we cannot appreciate our bodies and the is a disconnect. We risk living in our heads intellectually, without being grounded in the real world.

The Empress makes be immediately think of Mother Mary. I was always very drawn to her, and still am. When I was a troubled adolescent my family lived in Guelph, Ontario. There was a beautiful Catholic Church a top the highest hill overlooking the city. I would often find solace there, in front of the icon of Mary in times of trouble.


I still have a picture of her from my teenaged years, like the one below. Notice the twelve stars around her head, and the Moon under her feet. She is clothed in radiant sunlight. The Sun, the Moon and the Stars all surround her in glory.