Member Articles

The Empress

In expressing our gratitude and selfless commitment to the sacred feminine at the High Priestess stage, the Empress emerges on the journey with material bounty. The Empress signifies mother love and points to growth, fulfillment, joy, satisfaction, productivity and love. She is the experience and expression of love as a healing force. She represents the nurturing support and caring aspects of being areader. At this stage rewards abound.

We exhibit some facility in working with the cards to friends and family who don't know what we are doing right and wrong. People ask us to read for them and present us with earthly gifts as an expression of their appreciation. Some offer money, others dine initiates with delicious meals, or gift them generously with art, jewels, sacred objects, decks, books. They refer their friends and family to the initiate for readings. They bulge with pregnant promise as a successful and desirable reader. The initiate glows in the light of all this expressed appreciation.

At this stage students report how moved they are by people sharing their inner-most fears and hopes with them and how wonderful it is to have a tool to help them, The High Priestess and the Empress exemplify and depict an important spiritual growth spurt for wimmin. The High Priestess and Empress represent both aspects of the Great Goddess – spirituality and manifestation.

One student brought in her Daughters of the Moon Tarot during an Intermediate class to use in doing her practice readings and the reading was so powerful almost everyone in the class left the class determined to get their own Daughters of the Moon! What was so powerful in the reading was the depiction of womyn doing womyn things – activities and characters the querrant could immediately and profoundly identify with. This represented an example of magical readership – the Daughters of the Moon is multicultural, non-hierarchal, and womyn-centred. I did a reading for a black womyn recently, and when she saw black wimmin in the cards, she immediately resonated with the reading elevating this reading to one that was magical. There's more to it than this – when we use a tool that is inclusive we draw in larger energies – this is the true magic that is only suggested and hinted at in the Magician stage.

This stage may also be marked with students claiming "reading" names that reflect their identity transformations. One student announced at the 6th class that her reading name is Madame Solanga, another announces she is Kayka and wants this printed on her certificates. This represents a "manifestation" of their stronger connection to the inner sacred feminine.