Rider Waite Card Meaning - The Empress

III - The Empress - Fertility

The Empress is consort to the Emperor, wife, and most certainly a mother, as is the customary expectation in dynastic families. Thus, in the Waite-Smith design, the Empress is ensconced in the images and symbols of feminine fertility: the wheat in the foreground is ripe; her shield bears the Ankh of Isis, a symbol of generation, and the waters of life flow at her side. The power the Empress commands is fruitfulness.

When the Empress is in a reading, the focus of the reading is opulence, fertility, and abundance. She can signify pregnancy, but that generative power can be extended to include fruitfulness in all its forms: the arts, business, learning – anything that can be nurtured, and it will grow prolifically when represented in the cards by the presence of the Empress.

Reversed, the Empress reveals a decline in fruitfulness and fertility with a feeling of discontent. Possibly, an over-materialistic point of view affects others negatively and could be a sign that a woman is having health problems with reproductive organs, is having an affair, or is not in a good relationship. It is hard to get things growing under an influence that is much like the hibernation of winter.