More about The Empress (the tarot card, not me)

According to Carl Jung’s theory of the ‘universal unconscious’, we all share a connection in a subconscious level. ALL of us. Every single person in the planet. This would explain the uncanny similarities in the myths and folklore of civilizations and cultures from all over the world. The same types of characters populate mythology and folk tales from cultures as different and far away from each other as the Greeks and the Navajo. These common characters are universal archetypes. In this way, you have your heroes and their nemeses, goddesses and gods, queens and kings, mentors, wise old men and women, sorcerers and sorceresses, and so on and so on and so on… Following this stream of thought, Tarot cards are so old and of such uncertain origins, it is believed the deck was originally intended to illustrate archetypal characters. Whether or not you believe a card reading can delve beyond the ‘here and now’, the interesting fact is that each card represents a universal archetype.


The Empress is THE female archetype, the ‘eternal feminine’. She represents understanding, love and nurturing, as well as intuition and subtlety – the ‘brain vs. brawn’ approach to any situation. While some traditional interpretations relate her to pregnancy and motherhood, she doesn’t necessarily represent this in a LITERAL way. Instead, she is the archetype of the creative force (i.e. she’s ‘pregnant with ideas’). She represents beauty and wisdom (she is, after all, a ruler), rational thought and artistic sensibility.