Tarot Of The Day June 22 2018 - Day 4: The Raven’s Prophecy Deck - The Empress
I have begun the creation of an 89 day tarot course in a group I am a member of on Facebook ('A Kaleidoscope of Magical Perceptions' is the name of the group, please feel free to request membership - it is full of fun people and really great posts about all manner of topics) and I thought I would cross post the information here to this blog as well. Once the initial 89 days of the course have passed, it will start over using a different tarot deck. The text of the fourth session follows.
At first glance, the Empress card is quite similar to the High Priestess in the Rider-Waite deck; a woman seated is the main focus of the card. However, where the High Priestess card is blue, white, black and grey, the Empress card is full of warm color. She is seated slightly to the left of the card, and although she is facing the viewer, her body is pointed away a bit. Her seat is made up of a pile of cushions resting on a stone block, on a stone platform in a field of wheat, with a forest in the distance behind her the stream that was at the feet of the High Priestess appears coming out of the treeline, cascading toward the Empress. She wears a crown bearing 12 stars, and her robes are white with a print that echoes the pomegranates of the tapestry behind the High Priestess. She carries a golden scepter, and at her side is a stone heart with the symbol of Venus carved in to it.
The Rider-Waite booklet provides the following keywords for The Empress: fruitfulness, initiative, action, long days, clandestine, the unknown, difficulty, doubt, ignorance (upright) and light, truth, the unraveling of involved matters, public rejoice, and vacillation (reversed.)
In some decks, the Empress is portrayed as pregnant, and there some discussion on whether the Rider-Waite empress is pregnant - her robes are loose.
I often read the Empress as a mother nature card, about fertility and the harvest, and all of the wisdom that goes along with motherhood. To me she represents the cycles of life, and in reverse, the disruption of all of that. Sterility, poverty, and destruction.
In Maggie Stiefvater’s Raven’s Prophecy deck, she provides the keywords Mother Nature, fruitfulness, creation, and sensuous, and depicts it as simply a forest. She writes:
“I chose a forest for the art on the Empress card because the Empress is often depicted as the Earth Mother. Indeed, she is the perfect mother archetype. She is loving, caring, and fruitful. It is not that everything she touches becomes fertile; it is that her fertility has created everything. The Empress is firmly fixed in this world, unlike the airy, moonlit High Priestess, and she adores everything good this world has to offer. Beauty, love, plenty, touch, sight - she is in love with all physical things.”
***TOTD will cover the entire 78 card Raven’s Prophecy Deck alongside the Rider-Waite deck for comparison. In order to not completely burn out, this course of lessons will be 89 days long, so that every Saturday I can break the lessons up by doing a practicum lesson. Practicum lessons will take the form of a layout or spread that I will walk you through the steps of interpretation for. After the first 89 day session ends, we will start over with a one day break for a poll to be done to see what deck everyone wants to see next round. ***
TOMORROW: The Emperor
I LOVE audience/student/ peer reader participation! Please feel free to follow along, comment with your perspectives and questions!
I have begun the creation of an 89 day tarot course in a group I am a member of on Facebook ('A Kaleidoscope of Magical Perceptions' is the name of the group, please feel free to request membership - it is full of fun people and really great posts about all manner of topics) and I thought I would cross post the information here to this blog as well. Once the initial 89 days of the course have passed, it will start over using a different tarot deck. The text of the fourth session follows.
At first glance, the Empress card is quite similar to the High Priestess in the Rider-Waite deck; a woman seated is the main focus of the card. However, where the High Priestess card is blue, white, black and grey, the Empress card is full of warm color. She is seated slightly to the left of the card, and although she is facing the viewer, her body is pointed away a bit. Her seat is made up of a pile of cushions resting on a stone block, on a stone platform in a field of wheat, with a forest in the distance behind her the stream that was at the feet of the High Priestess appears coming out of the treeline, cascading toward the Empress. She wears a crown bearing 12 stars, and her robes are white with a print that echoes the pomegranates of the tapestry behind the High Priestess. She carries a golden scepter, and at her side is a stone heart with the symbol of Venus carved in to it.
The Rider-Waite booklet provides the following keywords for The Empress: fruitfulness, initiative, action, long days, clandestine, the unknown, difficulty, doubt, ignorance (upright) and light, truth, the unraveling of involved matters, public rejoice, and vacillation (reversed.)
In some decks, the Empress is portrayed as pregnant, and there some discussion on whether the Rider-Waite empress is pregnant - her robes are loose.
I often read the Empress as a mother nature card, about fertility and the harvest, and all of the wisdom that goes along with motherhood. To me she represents the cycles of life, and in reverse, the disruption of all of that. Sterility, poverty, and destruction.
In Maggie Stiefvater’s Raven’s Prophecy deck, she provides the keywords Mother Nature, fruitfulness, creation, and sensuous, and depicts it as simply a forest. She writes:
“I chose a forest for the art on the Empress card because the Empress is often depicted as the Earth Mother. Indeed, she is the perfect mother archetype. She is loving, caring, and fruitful. It is not that everything she touches becomes fertile; it is that her fertility has created everything. The Empress is firmly fixed in this world, unlike the airy, moonlit High Priestess, and she adores everything good this world has to offer. Beauty, love, plenty, touch, sight - she is in love with all physical things.”
***TOTD will cover the entire 78 card Raven’s Prophecy Deck alongside the Rider-Waite deck for comparison. In order to not completely burn out, this course of lessons will be 89 days long, so that every Saturday I can break the lessons up by doing a practicum lesson. Practicum lessons will take the form of a layout or spread that I will walk you through the steps of interpretation for. After the first 89 day session ends, we will start over with a one day break for a poll to be done to see what deck everyone wants to see next round. ***
TOMORROW: The Emperor
I LOVE audience/student/ peer reader participation! Please feel free to follow along, comment with your perspectives and questions!
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