Major Arcana

The Empress

Young, sovereign, visibly pregnant, The Empress holds the great Book open on her lap — and what is taking shape within it is unfinished. She is creation in gestation: everything that grows, ripens and takes form under a gaze that protects without holding back.

Symbolic reading

Within the open Book, an imperial eagle is still unformed, traced in writing that cannot be read: the word in the process of becoming form, the work before the work. Her golden sceptre bears a small green leaf — here, power makes things grow. Around her throne, the four kingdoms keep watch in a cross: the lion above, the rabbit below, the fish to her left, the magpie to her right — fire, earth, water and air gathered around the matrix. Behind her, the sea on one side, a laden sky on the other, and a solar halo holding the whole in calm balance. Crowned with twelve stars, she reigns over the entire cycle of the year: nothing that is born is foreign to her.

Reversed reading

Gestation becomes blocked or turns against itself: creation that never comes to fruition, overprotection that suffocates what it sought to help grow, abundance wasted. Nature thwarted asks to be given back its own rhythm.

• fertility
• creation
• gestation
• abundance
• nature
• sovereignty