The Empress

A crowned woman in a rose-coloured robe sits with a lotus in her hand, a moon at her feet, and doves and a sparrow around her. A pelican feeds its young with its own blood; a shield with a white double-headed eagle rests beside her; bees and fleurs-de-lys pattern the field. She is Venus as mother of all forms.

Daleth, the door, on path 14 between Chokmah and Binah: the marriage of the Supernal Father and Mother, and the door through which everything born must pass. It is the only path joining the two upper pillars, and so the gate of creation itself.

Venus: attraction, harmony, fecundity, art and pleasure. Venus rules Taurus and Libra, is exalted in Pisces, and is the planet of Netzach.

Three, the Plane of the Naples arrangement: two points make a line, three make a surface, and with surface comes form. Daleth's value is 4, the first number of matter, the body the Empress gives.

The Great Mother in her nourishing aspect: nature, the body, fertility, unconditional acceptance. Her shadow is the devouring mother and the comfort that stops growth.

Waite shows a pregnant empress in a wheat field; Crowley keeps the fertility but adds the alchemical pelican, the white eagle of the alchemists and the twin moons, tying the card to the Great Work rather than only to nature.