The Empress · L'Impératrice

Black numeral III on a gold sky, the third trump at rest beneath it. Pamela Colman Smith set her seat out in the open field, red cushions behind her, red drapery falling over the ground. A wreath of green leaves rings her loose fair hair, white six-pointed stars rising from the leaves. Her gown is cream, scattered all over with red pomegranates. One arm is raised, a scepter in the fist with a plain orb at the top; the other hand rests bare and open. Propped at the foot of the seat, where the wheat begins, stands a heart-shaped shield of grey stone bearing the sign of Venus, its disc painted green. Dark trees thicken into a wood on the right, a stream falls out of it in blue steps, and ripe yellow grain runs the whole width of the foreground.

Nothing in her hands could cut a stalk, and the field came in anyway.

Classically she is Venus: the third that appears once two have met. The tradition reads her as generation of every kind, a body, a garden, a household, a piece of work carried far enough that it can feed someone. The field does the growing. She presides over it, and enjoys it.

Upright, the Empress is abundance that circulates. Care given without an accounting, pleasure taken without apology, the ordinary competence of making a thing and tending it.

Reversed, the same warmth closes its hand. Care hardens into control and the harvest never leaves the field; or the giving runs one direction until the giver is hollow; or nothing ripens and comfort goes slack. The grain still has to be cut and given away.