The Empress

The first thing we need to do when talking about The Empress is differentiate between her and The High Priestess. The original name of the High Priestess was "Papess," btw, i.e. the female Pope.

The way I like to think of this mystical Thelma and Louise team is the following. The High Priestess is a mortal woman who communes with the immortal realms, whereas the Empress is a goddess in human form. The High Priestess might be a psychic or a witch, a medicine woman or an oracle. In energetic terms, HP represents the intuitive part of us, the part that uses her mortality as a springboard to explore other realities.

The Empress, on the other hand, uses her immortal nature to get things done on the Earth plane. It's like the idea of "ascending to descend," the boddhisattva who turns his back on Nirvana to help out the human race.

People used to believe that kings were kings because God wanted it that way. So it was the idea of a temporal power that was, however, conferred by divine right.

When people talk about The Empress, a lot of times the word that comes up is "Mother". Although The Empress is definitely a creative force, I think the word "mother" is limiting.

The Empress is in charge. It is a feminine kind of power, meaning more yin than yang. The Empress can act when she wants, and when she thinks it advisable, but the Empress can stay her hand, and often does.

It is this idea of refraining that is peculiar to the Empress as opposed to the Emperor. There is so much value placed in modern society on action. "Just do it!" There is no brand of tennis shoes that says, "Just chill!"

And yet, there is no real or historical justification for this idea that doing is better than not doing. The fields have to lie fallow if they will produce. There is, in every life, a time of hibernation, and a time of production. Even Ecclesiastes gives equal weight to active and passive, "A time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing."

The movie Elizabeth shows this energy almost perfectly. Elizabeth was one of the most immensely powerful rulers of the Western world ever, yet the film shows her staying her hand rather than striking. The quality of mercy belongs to The Empress. Unfortunately, Elizabeth's soft heart cost her dearly, and her enemies almost succeeded in invading England, but in the end she was victorious.

The soft heart is the Achilles' Heel of the Empress, but it is also her foremost virtue. She does not govern with her head, like the Machiavellian Emperor, but with her heart, with her gut. The power of the Emperor is intellectual, whereas the Empress' power is emotional.

In the movie Pirates of the Caribbean number Four thousand and twenty-six, the goddess Calypso had been divested of her powers and chained to a mortal body, by her own volition, all for the love of a man. Now listen closely because this is THE crux of the whole Empress energy. Calypso did this to herself. She was a goddess, she ruled the seas, and for some guy who wasn't even that cute, she threw it all to the four winds. And then, of course, she was sorry about it, but by then it was too late to weasel out of the agreement.

Eventually, I forget how, the curse or whatever is lifted, and you see this perfectly normal and mild-mannered mortal woman grow to about 200 feet tall and let me tell you, she is pissed. All those years of bondage and humiliation have not left her in the best of moods.

And I absolutely love that image because that is the story of Everywoman. The power of women is immensely greater than the power of men, because women can create life and men can't. This is why the original deities were female, this is why the less developed economies have men running after women and not vice versa. But this power has undergone a disconnect. Women have psyched themselves out into thinking that the only way to be powerful is to imitate men, but the opposite is the case. Women's true power lies in being themselves.

When I see my friends running after men, I want to scream. And I want to say this: You will never catch him. Men are yang, they can run a lot faster than you. But does anybody believe poor Cassandra? No. The legend says that you couldn't catch a unicorn either. The only way was to have a virgin sit perfectly still in the forest, and the Unicorn would come lay his head in her lap. We will not get into the symbolism in THAT because this is a PG rated blog. But there is a definite lesson to be learned!

I am not going to generalize and say what that means. Women come in all shapes and sizes. The problem is thinking that only the shapes and sizes most similar to men are ok, and I'm talking emotional and social shapes and sizes as well as physical.

Much more than men, women seem to be constantly trying to be somebody else than who they are. Everybody wants to look like Gisele Bundchen.

Do you know what a Brazilian said to me about Gisele Bundchen? "She's eh-gly." (That's how Brazilians pronounce the schwa. You have "fehn" not fun, etc. It's kinda cute.)

"Skinny. Ehgly."

Brazilians, as it happens, like booty. Does that mean that Gisele Bundchen should run out and have seal blubber injected into her thighs, or go back in time and be related to my family? Obviously not, otherwise she would not be a multikajillionaire top model. The world is not yet entirely made up of Brazilians (gracas a Deus!)

The point is, everybody is somebody else's pinup. Every woman is beautiful in her own unique way. And beauty is power. Love is power. Embracing, refraining from embracing, it's all power. And power, guess what, is a good thing. But power is nothing if you can't connect to it and control it. No point in owning a Buick if you don't have the keys.

The High Priestess, whom we haven't gotten to yet, tells us: Know thyself. The Empress tells us: Love thyself. Respect thyself. Because if you can't love yourself, you can't love anyone.

If that sounds like crap, just think about it. Loving is not really that hard. It's not rocket science. It requires no effort. Love is already there, binding each of God's creatures to one another. All you have to do to love is stop struggling. Stop fighting it.

People treat love as if it were a used car salesman. They think they're going to give away all this love and then get ripped off by not getting enough, or the right kind, in return. But love is not on the barter system. Love is not a toll road. Love is a matrix. Love is The Matrix. And we're all in it, whether we know it or not. It's tapping into that Matrix that makes us powerful.

Love and power--here we are again at The Empress.

So, in terms of healing, what I want to say is this. What if you weren't really you, or at least, what if you weren't who you think you are? What if you were a goddess? Which goddess would you be? How would you behave as a goddess? How would you feel as a goddess? What would be your goals, your dreams? What would be important to you and what would be insignificant? Would you still go out with that cheapskate guy? Would you still allow yourself to be patronized, condescended to, offended, dissed and abused?