Connection with nature, rootedness,
earthly refuge
Material wealth, marriage, increase,
growth
The seed of love and truth. The
fecund, bountiful, loving mother.
Your inner relationship to your own
mother
She Who Sets In Order - the Consort
of the Emperor
The nurturing aspect of the anima.
The Empress is the fertile, life
giving mother reigning over the bounty of nature and the rhythm of the world.
The Empress and the
High Priestess are the two halves of the female archetype:
The Empress is pregnant,
actively generating life, while the High Priestess is the consecrated
virgin, the field ready for planting.
The High Priestess is the
Veiled Isis, while the Empress is Isis Unveiled.
The High Priestess is undifferentiated
cosmic subconscious; the Empress is activity in the subconscious
mind, gestating the idea-seed planted by the personal self.
The Empress is the ideal caring mother, who provides the unconditional positive regard vital for the thriving of the child, especially prior to the age of seven
The Empress is Venus, the
warm mother Goddess; the High Priestess is Diana, the cool virgin Moon-Goddess.
Simple Pleasures. Key
3, the Empress, reminds us that a walk in the woods can bring more comfort
than our more complex, obsessive entertainments.
"Dalet," the Hebrew letter for
Key 3, means door. This has many connotations. This is the same passage manifested
as a bridge in Key 2. Both are
links to the higher realms; they are a "plexus," a "siddhi," or a "revelation."
The Empress's door has also been
compared to the womb, as the gateway of life; the prenatal epoch is for
most people the source of dim memories of an Arcadian, perfect world, an
Avalon, a bower of bliss, a sundappled, sheltered glen.
Madonna and Child - Boltraffio - 1495
Motherhood blankets
existence. Camille Paglia
The door is also self protection,
sequestering, storage, conservation, and development. This is the door of
the house in Key 1. The door leads
both in and out; this shows connection to the travel suggested by
the camel in Key 2.
"If the doors of perception
were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite."
(William Blake)
EAST, the direction assigned
to Key 3 on the Cube of Space, is the direction of sunrise, the Doorway
of the Sun, and the Birth of the Day.
The Empress is Gaia, or Mother
Nature - she is the same woman opening the lion's mouth in the Strength
card, and she is the woman in Key 17.
3, the number of the Empress, is
the number of "conditions," or "states" that the 4 elements take in the Zodiac.
The Empress (3) and the Emperor (4) work together to create 12.
The Empress holds her arms in the
"coagula/solve" position - meaning "coagulate (or join) - and "dissolve." The
"coagulation" is a drawing-in of energy. The "solve" is the use of the energy
to dissolve, or cut like a laser. Keys 0,
1, 3, 4,11, & 15
share this symbolism.
The Venus symbol is on a heart-shaped
shield by her throne. She sits in a fertile and productive garden, the Earthly
Eden. It is the same as the garden in Key 1.
Her scepter is topped with the globe of this world.
The waterfall at her side is the
same water that flows from the robe of the High Priestess, the stream of consciousness.
A waterfall symbolizes penetration and receptivity, the power of falling water
and the calm acceptance of the pool.
Cypress trees, sacred to Venus,
grow in the background. The ripening wheat in the foreground is sacred to Ceres,
the corn-earth Goddess, and to Hathor (ATOR), the Egyptian harvest Goddess.
Her blond hair shows the radiance
of prana, life-breath, and her wreath is of Myrtle, also sacred to Venus. Her
seven pearls are gifts of Neptune.
The waxing, crescent moon under
her foot shows her power over the growing, active, lunar subconscious energy.
It also completes the symbolism at Revelation 12:1 -
"And a great
portent appeared in heaven, a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under
her feet, on on her head a crown of twelve stars; she was with child..."
CHAOTIC SYSTEMS,
FRACTALS, & SYMBOLS
The feminine character of the
Empress is nature, patterned, flowing, billowy, and nurturing. Key 3 intersects
with Key 2, whose High Priestess
symbolizes the the dark side of the feminine, the chaos, and the cthonic grinding
in the deep bowels of the Earth, the lunar feminine flux.
Until recently, it was believed
that all chaotic systems were invariably subject to entropy; that is, ever
increasing disorder. With the ability to crunch huge numbers that came with
computers, it was realized that there is another kind of chaos: Deterministic
Chaos - apparent chaos that reveals patterns over time and space, meaning
that with enough distance, the apparent disorder of water molecules in the
ocean is seen as ripples or waves, or that after time, a repeating scenario
is seen as part of a larger historical pattern.
The Empress is the generatrix
of ideas, the multiplication of images, the subconscious matrix from which
arise new concepts and mind-forms. This multiplication is shown in the wheat
growing in front of her; each seed head represents an exponential increase
from the original seed of that plant.
There is endless multiplication,
repetition, and self-similarity in nature, because space/time is fractal.
The fractal's convolutions are the folds of the Empress Mother's blankets.
She also has control over sequence of development (gestation - Fallopian
billows), another key component of the fractal - a mathematical representation
of the mind of Creator.
Natural patterns are fractal;
fractals are "Chaotic Systems." They reveal patterns in apparent chaos; they
"gestalt" a confusing miasma of numbers and show infinitely complex and beautiful
patterns. The fractal begins with a "seed" formula, then develops through
re-iteration; the same formula is repeated millions of times, the results
of each operation fed into the next one. This is called a feedback loop.
The perimeter of the fractal is a graph of all of the equation results.
Here is the "Mandelbrot Set," meaning the basic equation before any iterations, or "magnifications."
The image above is a graphic depiction of this: "the Mandelbrot set is the set of complex numbers c for which the function does not diverge when iterated, i.e., for which the sequence f(0), f(f(0)), etc., remains bounded in absolute value." Wikipedia can explain it.
Mandelbrot
slow zoom, 1 minute 40 seconds
The fractal exhibits certain features.
It has self similarity over time and space. It has strategic dependence
on initial conditions, where a tiny difference at the Seed Level, at the
very beginning of the process, can make immense differences after development,
repetitions, and re-iterations. It has infinite depth; it can be enlarged
forever without losing detail. A fractal is a finite area with an infinitely
long perimeter.
Mandelbrot
fractal X13 (thirteen magnifications)
Fractals, and nature, are "attracted"
into their patterns by mathematical versions of our Symbols; they are
"power points" or "gravity wells," that influence the final form of the pattern.
Our symbolic belief systems, dreams, archetypes, and personal associations
are the same thing. They inform our lives, affecting us as much as
we affect them, and help to create the fractal of our personalities, souls,
and life stories.
The fractal zoom in the video below goes to 350 million
iterations. Generating the frames (doing the math) for a video like this can take weeks, even with today's
amazing computer power. Be aware too, that anywhere in this video its possible to pause it, to examine it
without it moving. It's much faster than the one above. Use the link at the bottom of the video and go to
youtube to see it full screen. This video is 9 minutes long. [use 'mute' if the music is distracting]
Fractal geometry is related to the Fibonacci Sequence, discussed with the Phi Ratio, in Tipharet.
Six Essential Elements of Symbols:
They
point beyond themselves
participate in that toward
which they point
open up levels of reality
which otherwise are closed to us
unlock dimensions and elements
of our soul which correspond to the dimensions and elements of reality
cannot be produced intentionally
grow and die (when they
can no longer produce a response)
Paul Tillich,The
Dynamics of Faith.
New York: Harper and Row 1956
Symbols express what is beyond
words.
Through
means of the symbol, there is revealed hidden light from the concealed
life of the Infinite that illuminates from within.... One could say that
all of creation is only a language, a symbolic expression of that level
which cannot be apprehended by thought... the entire world is thus a symbolic
body, within whose concrete reality there is reflected the divine secret.
Gershom Scholem : On The Possibility of Jewish Mysticism
in Our Time : 1997
The Empress is a doorway to the
Symbolic realm, the way to transcend the content and merge with the form. She
is "relaxing into" a symbol, a dream, or an event, and using its dissonance
to create new strategies, and harmonize with it. Key 3 balances, or offsets
the shadow, Key 2.
Mandelbrot
fractal X40 (forty magnifications)
She copes with the unpredictability,
the confusion, and the seeming deception and disorder of the High
Priestess, the Kali aspect of the Goddess and the Universe. She is the
feminine that rules by virtue of her stamina, determination, and ability to
deal with chaos (i.e. child rearing).
The wheat stalks are also a reference
to the parable of the Loaves and the Fishes (Matt. 14:16); the multiplication
of five loaves of bread to five thousand, an example of a powerful symbol, a
metaphor about the infinite availability of Spirit. This example demonstrates
the cognitive dissonance, or "oddness" of a symbol that works, because
it teases us into thought. The symbol juxtaposes discordant ingredients and
forces us to extract a new vision of the original elements.
Symbols allow us to contact and work with the unconscious realm, Key
2, and the Shadow, Key 15.
The Symbol associated
with the Empress, the Great Mother, is a Cauldron:
The Cauldron is
a container in which to mix ingredients and bring forth a Sacred, purified
result
"What we call "nature"
is only the maximum structure into which all material elements have entered,
and nature is a work of love because it means the generation or creation of
some things inside others, the birth of one from another in which it was preconceived,
preformed, virtually contained."
Ortega y
Gasset, Jose. Meditations on Quixote.
New York: N.W. Norton and Company, 1961.
Rites of passage and transformation
rituals often follow a pattern of descent into chaos (Key 2) and a subsequent
re-ordering of the world. This is the same as the order emerging from chaos
in the fractal, and the same as the cauldron's boil bringing forth the finished
product. The Empress shows the process of bringing order out of the High Priestess'
testing thicket of confusion.
Venus
Venus' placement at birth sets
the character for the person's receptive capacities, of the ability to bond
with others. It shapes the way our emotions work; it shows our artistic abilities,
our abilities at tact, our way of expressing affection, and who we are attracted
to.
VENUS
Venus infuences the love nature.
Afflictions to Venus create troubled love-life or friendships, or hamper the
ability to enjoy life.
Venus takes 224 days to complete
it's orbit through the zodiac.
Well-aspected Venus can bring
comfort and beauty. Venus with difficult aspects can be miserable. When she
is powerful, she can overcome less fortunate energies in a chart, or lend
softness to a bad situation.
does not diverge when iterated, i.e., for which the sequence f(0), f(f(0)), etc., remains bounded in absolute value." 
