Prosperity, Abundance, Creativity, and the Empress

For a gay cisgender man, the Empress has long been a card for me to consider in only abstract terms: prosperity, abundance, and creativity are three of my go-to meanings for the energy of the Empress. I’ve typically enjoyed one, creativity, frequently (but embarrassedly) sought another, prosperity, and not really cared much about the third, abundance. I’ve only recently come to appreciate what prosperity can entail, and I’m not sure that I fully understand abundance. To me, it means excess: eating too many sweets and hoarding shit. I associate it with laziness. So many of us need to lack something in order to strive for anything. Yet I’ve been doing work to understand areas of lack and find new ways of cultivating power in those areas of lacking. Is abundance really so bad?

For the past year, I cultivated Temperance energy as part of some of that abundance-overcoming-lack work. It was a yearlong process, and it probably reached a high point with my work with the Angel (Key 14) of the Spirit Keeper’s Tarot. People who know me will tell you that I’m very calm and at peace, graceful under (most) pressure, so Temperance doesn’t seem an obvious lack. But I chose Temperance because I felt that I had everything that I needed except for time (tempus) and the ability to properly balance and find peace in a storm of competing responsibilities (the 10 of Wands is related to Temperance through the sign of Sagittarius).

When the year was up, I decided that I would direct my attention to an archetype associated with a different element. Temperance, through Sagittarius, is a fire archetype. Would I chose Air, Earth, or Water? My natal chart is fairly well balanced. I have slightly more planets in Air signs than any other element’s signs (and people often think I’m an Air sign because of my overly analytical wordiness). The “best” parts of my chart are in water signs. And I have several sensitive points in Earth, including my Sun and Rising signs. But to complement last year’s energizing work with Fire, I want to be better grounded, so I went with an Earth archetype.

What to choose? I could have gone with the Hermit for obvious reasons or the Hierophant because of my Taurus Sun. I clearly wasn’t touching the Devil, and the World has a special function in the year-long ritual. So I went with the Empress. She’s Venus, and I have a lot going on in Venus-ruled Taurus and Libra, not to mention an exalted Venus in Pisces. I love the Empress … for other people. And that’s kind of a problem, especially as I’ve taken the time to love (most of) the Emperor.

The Empress from the Muse Tarot by Chris-Anne continues such multitudes. Whole worlds grow within the Galactic Mother.

Growing up as a gay teen in the 90s means that I grew up with a lot of shame (and fear) around my own femininity. (It’s still an issue with the latest memes about “bottom shaming” and “big top energy.”) Some of it was internalized homophobia, but much of it was also externalized, and that’s with the realization that I was incredibly lucky to have grown up in a cosmopolitan family and in a very liberal town. Nevertheless, the shame and fear have persisted. I never completely shave my face (there’s always scruff), and I lift heavy things and put them down in the hope of developing hard muscle and losing soft fat. (Remember that dislike of abundance?)

In spiritual terms, I’ve worried about the strength of my anima compared to my animus, and I’ve worked to improve my relationships with the Magician, the Emperor, the Hierophant, and the Hermit over the years, but I’ve never taken that time with the Empress. Frankly, I’ve taken her for granted. As part of my own work to address that injustice, I’ll be engaging with her and her associations, but I’m also going to post more about that work. I’ll describe work that I’m doing to engage with Empress energy for prosperity, abundance, and creativity. And if it goes well, I’ll tackle some of her other associations, such as beauty, nature, and artifice.