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 For
the second in our series of ramblings on the major
arcana of the tarot, we move to The
Empress.
This card is
traditionally seen as a symbol of creativity,
fertility, nurturing and nourishing - the
Earth-mother.
Psychologically,
she represents the Mother archetype.
Just as I
regard the Emperor as connecting Younger Self with
Thinking Self, I see the Empress as connecting
Younger Self with Feeling Self. I use "Feeling
Self" to refer to our emotional consciousness, the
state of being we partake in when we have strong
feelings, such as love, desire, fear, or sadness.
Whereas the stereotypical father is concerned with
enforcing norms and imposing rule-based thinking,
the stereotypical mother is concerned with
happiness, harmony, and being the emotional
caregiver of the family. On first take, most of us
probably see that as a positive
archetype.
It does,
however, have its own traps and pitfalls, no less
than the Emperor does. What happens to the Mother
figure who tends to others' feelings at the expense
of her own? What happens when promoting happiness
comes at the expense of realism or long-term
solutions? The Mother figure can be overly
indulgent, encouraging a life that is more about
emotional gratification than about growth. Just as
Thinking Self can smother Younger Self's
spontaneity through censorship, Feeling Self can
smother it with emotional demands.
The Emperor
is a commander, The Empress a manipulator. She uses
the language of emotion to "train" us into approved
behaviors. We're probably all familiar with
real-life mothers who use guilt and
love-with-strings-attached to manipulate their
children. This is the flip side of the Emperor's
"crime and punishment" model of parenting. If we
accord the Empress too much power over us, we can
become so absorbed in how things makes us feel (and
how they make others feel), that we cannot get a
clear view of the larger picture.
At the risk
of sparking a completely off-topic digression, I've
often noted how politicians tend to use these same
two sorts of tactics when campaigning for votes.
The conservative camp usually appeals to a rigid
sense of right and wrong and to law-and-order, and
promises to punish the bad guys who are creating
all our problems. Liberal politicians try to pull
at our heartstrings, appealing to our desire to
nurture everyone and create a happy, harmonious
society. It is clear that these two approaches are
both highly effective at creating support for the
authority figures who use them. Regardless of what
you think of the merits of different political
ideologies, it is clear that posing as Emperor
(lawgiver) or as Empress (nurturer) wins support
and approval.
It's not my
intention to cast a cynical pall on emotional
consciousness, just to put its role into
perspective. Our emotions are powerful agents of
creativity and change; in fact, they are the basic
driving force of the personality. If we didn't
love, hate, desire, and fear, we would never seek
to make things better than they are. The Empress,
in her aspect as mother/creatrix, represents a
positive, healthy collaboration between the
emotions and the imagination. Our feelings help
guide and inspire our imagination, without
suffocating it. The Empress can mediate this
collaboration, by gently casting the approval or
disapproval of Feeling Self onto Younger Self's
musings. We can come into conversation with our
emotions without being overwhelmed by them. I think
some of the most fortunate people are those who
grow up to become friends with their own mothers.
Through working with the Empress card, we are all
granted this opportunity.
The Empress
can help us understand how we stand in relation to
our own feelings - do they overpower us and drown
our other faculties? Do we repress them out of fear
of rejection? Do we martyr ourselves hoping for an
emotional "fix" from an external authority? Do we
take the energy of our feelings and direct that
energy creatively? These are some of the questions
raised by the Empress as Mother
archetype.
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