the empress tarot card

The Empress, Conservative Cavemen, and Getting Back to Our Magical Garden

Recovering a sense of physical safety in the world.

I’ve posted in before about the importance of recovering a sense of spiritual safety and of recovering a sense of safety about our own subconscious minds. Today I’d like to share a little about recovering a sense of physical safety.

What if I were to tell you that 99% of people are perfectly safe 99% of the time?

Does that sound a little weird and uncomfortable to you? It certainly did to me, when I first stumbled over the idea. After all, we KNOW that the world is a terribly dangerous place. Just look at all of the earthquakes and floods and tsunamis and GIGANTIC FUCKING ICEBERGS that are dropping off of the polar caps like fleas! Not to mention the wars and famine and terrorists and horrible car accidents and planes full of terrorists flying into towers full of innocent people.

Yikes!

In fact, double yikes or even yikes to the fourth power, which is a pretty big YIKES!

But . . . stop and think about it for a few minutes. How long has it been since you were smack in the middle of a 7.5 earthquake? Or a massive flood? Or you got swept away by a tsunami? Or had an iceberg collide with the ocean liner you were on?

The astounding truth of the matter is that – by far and away – MOST of us get up in the morning, drive to work or take care of our homes, raise our children, plan for our retirements, take vacations, go about our lives and . . . NOTHING BAD HAPPENS. Nothing. We’re perfectly safe 99% of the time.

So why do we all have this creepy feeling of impending doom, of something horrible that’s going to happen to us right around the corner? And why does it matter?

The Empress card in the Tarot shows someone who is absolutely, perfectly at ease in her world. She reclines gracefully on her beautiful couch, surrounded by natural abundance. Her head is crowned with stars and she grasps a scepter of power, but holds it very casually. Her legs are slightly parted, as if she might welcome a little company on her couch, and her face radiates a quiet, peace. She is the Goddess in Paradise.

That is EXACTLY the vibration that we should have in our world, here on the beautiful Earth Mother. We have evolved here over hundreds of thousands of years and this is our home. In the words of the Desiderata:

“You are a child of the universe no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here.”

We might find a clue as to why so many of us don’t feel safe in our Magical Earth Home hiding in our brain structure. The limbic system of our brain is set up to trigger massive amounts of stress hormones when our fight or flight reaction is activated. Nick Ortner,in his book The Tapping Solution: A Revolutionary System for Stress-Free Living, posits what he calls a, “negative brain bias.” His thinking is that our ancestors who were the most frightened were also the ones who were most likely to survive. To use his example, the caveman who thought the rustling in the bushes might be a tiger was more likely to live than the one who assumed it was a harmless squirrel. And so, the more frightened, constantly freaked-out cavemen and cavewomen would have been the most likely to pass on their genes and – shazam! – we all have, “Holy crap is that a tiger in the bushes?” reactions built into our brains, even if we’re actually surrounded by harmless squirrels.

Maybe. Maybe not.

Psychological studies suggest that conservatives have a negative brain bias, but liberals do not. In a nutshell, if you show a bunch of pictures of gardens to both conservatives and liberals, conservatives will pick out the creepy spiders and snakes in the pictures and liberals will pick out the pretty butterflies and flowers. In other words, conservative cavemen were the ones who heard tigers in the bushes and liberal cavemen were the ones who heard squirrels.

And, if Ortner’s hypothesis were true, all of the liberals should have been eaten by tigers, but there are still a bunch of us around watching the butterflies and smelling the flowers.

Which suggests that a negativity bias really isn’t built into our brains. It was acquired. Where did it come from, then?

A lot of it comes from social programming, of course. It has long been a part of Judeo-Christian philosophy that the Earth was, “given to man,” by God and we’re supposed to control it and everything in it. We have to, “conquer mother-nature,” in order to survive and build more hamburger stands and condos and parking lots and Walmart Super Stores. God wants us to. When you view nature as something to be conquered, then nature – earth itself – becomes an enemy, rather than our Mother and home.

Then there’s politics. Think of what we’ve been hearing from our politicians for the last four years. BE AFRAID! Be very, very, very, very afraid of Mexicans and Knee-Grows, and Arabs and Jews and Chinese and lesbians and socialists and feminists and communists and . . . well . . . pretty much anyone who looks or sounds or thinks differently than we do. Every single one of them wants to Destroy Our Way of Life, rape our daughter, and steal our dog.

A certain amount of the fear comes from the globalization of information. We see things on the internet and our televisions that we would have been totally unaware of a short evolutionary time ago. If there are riots in Portland, train crashes in Pakistan, or bombings in Yemen, we are aware of that now. It’s all become a part of our daily lives. The work that’s being done with mirror neurons suggests that human beings are highly empathetic. If we see other people in pain or distress, we internalize that pain as our own, and we are being exposed to a LOT more people in pain than has ever been normal for the human race.

All of these factors – plus a lot more than could be covered in a blog post – have combined to create a massive illusion, a sort of a group hypnosis, where the world is perceived as a horribly dangerous place that could kill us at any moment. And, really, it’s not.

99% of the time, it’s perfectly safe for 99% of us.

Hopefully we can begin to stop the insanity and start EXPANDING that safety and peace to as many other humans as we can. Stop the wars, feed the hungry, eliminate corruption and greed, declare AS A SPECIES that racism and religious fanaticism will no longer be tolerated.

But first we need to recover that sense of safety in our own hearts and heads. We need to return to our home in the magical garden and become The Empress again.

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The Sex Cards in the Tarot

Everyone likes sex! Well, nearly everyone. I actually read an article recently about people who don’t like sex in any way shape or form and don’t feel any sexual desires. They’re calling themselves, “asexuals,” and actually have their own organization. How about that? What an interesting world.

Anyway, nearly everyone likes sex and there are certain Tarot cards which definitely indicate its’ presence in a persons life. It can be handy to know when it’s likely to pop up in a relationship, whether you’re interested in the other person or not. Come to think of it, it could even be handy for people who are official Asexuals because they’d know who to avoid. Nearly everyone, right?

FOUR OF WANDS

Two people dancing beneath what looks very much like a wedding gazebo. There is an element of sex here but in the more traditional sense of marriage and an on going union. A happy card that includes the idea of sex without actually signifying it outright.

TWO OF CUPS

A man and a woman hold chalices and gaze into each others eyes. This is a card of profound bonding and love, the start of a serious relationship. While it can often indicate something as mundane as a good business partner or a best friend, it can also indicate a deep romantic and sexual relationship.

THREE OF CUPS

Three women dance together, chalices raised in mutual salute. Sex is not necessarily a central theme in this card but it’s a possibility because the central theme is PARTY!!!! This is a card of joyous celebrations so why not sneak a little whoopee into the celebration? May also indicate a happy three way relationship.

THREE OF SWORDS

A heart pierced by three swords. This can often indicate a monogamous relationship in which one of the partners has decided to be not so monogamous. He or she may be screwing around and it’s breaking the partners heart.

THE EMPRESS

An Earth Mother type of woman reclines on a couch holding a sceptre loosely in one hand. Again, The Empress is not exclusively about sex but it’s definitely included in her vibrations. Unlike her sister card, The High Priestess, who appears to be a little prim and proper, The Empress is openly sensual. She reclines comfortably on her couch, legs slightly spread with a definite, “come hither,” look on her face. If you’re involved with The Empress, expect a good time. On ALL levels.

THE HIEROPHANT

An individual who looks like a pope sits stiffly on a throne between two pillars while two monks bow down to him. The Hierophant is mainly about organized religion and dogma, so it may seem strange to include it in this post. The point, though, is that The HIerophant is about CONVENTIONAL religion rather than spirituality. In that sense, if this card shows up in a reading about a relationship you can expect it to be a very CONVENTIONAL relationship with very CONVENTIONAL sex. In other words, always the missionary position, probably with the lights turned out and only when the kids are fast asleep. If you’re into sex toys and trapezes in your boudoir, RUN AWAY, RUN AWAY . . .

THE LOVERS

A nude man and woman stand in a Garden of Eden setting while a snake climbs a tree next to the woman and an angel hovers over them. As the name indicates, this card is about love and not JUST love but triple whammie hit in the head with a sledge hammer love. These two people are absolutely thunder struck and there WILL be sex. Really good sex.

THE DEVIL

This is obviously the same couple from The Lovers, only they’ve been driven out of the Garden of Eden and are now sporting horns and tails while a demon hovers over them instead of an angel. There is a very strong element of sexuality here but it’s not what you’d describe as happy sex. Instead of joy we find pain and enslavement. It can indicate sexual addiction, BDSM games that have gone WAY too far into pain and humiliation, or the sexual element of a physically or emotionally abusive relationship. And, to me at least, it’s a sad card: it’s taking one of life’s greatest joys and turning into something sick and twisted.

So there you have it. When you see these cards in a reading think about sex. Or think about it anyway – it’s always fun.

The Empress is, quite simply, the Earth Goddess. She is feminine sensuality and creativity at its’ height. Unlike the High Priestess she doesn’t sit rigidly on a throne but reclines casually on a chair that looks like it was made for making love. Her legs are slightly spread and she is openly sexual.

When the archetype of the Empress is blowing through your life you will experience a powerful blast of the feminine and all of its’ creative energy. For a woman this card may indicate a pregnancy or a desire for pregnancy. If already a mother it may show a refocusing on the nurturing, feminine side of parenting. For a man, this may show a gently powerful, nurturing person entering his life. There can be a period of material comfort and emotional abundance as a result of this. There may be an opening of the man’s gentler, kinder nature.

For either sex, this can indicate a period of immense creativity and fertility. The wheat in the foreground hearkens back to Demeter, the Goddess of Earth, agriculture, and fertility. This may represent a strong interest in gardening and growing and a need to reconnect with Mother Earth.

There is quite simply nothing negative about this card. It’s a card of growth, creativity, sensuality, fertility and expansion. We like it.

Reversed: Blocked creativity and a lack of abundance. In a woman it may represent complications around the issue of birth: unwanted or complicated pregnancies, infertility, abortion. In a man it may represent a total rejection of his feminine, nurturing side and embracing the cold, male archetype or perhaps sterility or vasectomies. In either sex it can indicate poor parenting and withdrawn, disinterested mothers or fathers. If real estate is involved it may indicate a poor choice that fails to enhance the spirits and lives of the buyers. A period of lack of financial resources may be at hand.

A few thoughts on this card beyond what I go in to in my book, “Just the Tarot.”

The United States is a society which was firmly rooted in puritanism. The Empress runs smack up against those elements.

For one thing, she is openly, joyously sexual. There is nothing hidden or coy about it. She is firmly and comfortably settled in her body and happy to be 100% of a woman. We emerged from a tradition that viewed women as socially and intellectually inferior and viewed their bodies as – at the worst, unclean and unholy – and at the best as some sort of fleshly trap to make good christian men think evil, lustful thoughts. The Empress looks those men straight in the eyes and says, “Go ahead and think all the lustful thoughts you want. In fact . . . what have you got?”

Another aspect of The Empress that goes against that puritan tradition is her wonderful sensuality. She is all about comfort, leisure, hot baths, tenderness and just plain loving life right here on this beautiful Earth.

The puritan tradition tells us that life is hard and that’s good. The more we deny our own sensuality the holier and closer to god we become. Think of the Shaker chair: upright, stiff, designed so that the person who is using it WON’T be comfortable because comfort might make us enjoy our bodies.

The Empress quite clearly says, “To hell with that! You couldn’t even make love in that chair without it falling over. Where’s my couch?”

Unfortunately, that’s still an ongoing battle in our national psyche. There are still way too many people who think that taking a little time for themselves, enjoying their bodies and luxuriating in this beautiful world is wrong. Incorporating The Empress into your life is about rejecting that puritan, workaholic, type A model and learning to self-nurture. Relax, stroke, love.