The Gothic Tarot by Vargo - III The Empress

Annwyn

Yes the card is 3, she wears a crown with 3 points and has 3 bangles on each wrist and 3 arm bracelets on each arm. I immediately get TRIPPLE GODDESS, having a wiccan background this was the most predominant feature for me. She is the maiden, mother and crone. The ways she grasps and clings onto her coffin, she is fiercly protective of her home.

Her expression does appear to be that of shock. Has she awoken suddenly from her sleep to come to some realisation?
 

mercenary30

The Empress

Two grey marble columns flank an archway that is carved from white marble. Depicted on either side of the archway is a skeletal angel figure in a death pose. This is the same arch as was in both the Lovers and the High Priestess cards. It seems a place where formal ceremonies take place within the castle of the clan. Here we have the Empress, a vampire, who seems to be exiting her coffin. She is wearing a crown, and is garbed in a very revealing but seemingly comfortable white dress. She has armbands on each of her upper arms, bracelets to match, and a diamond shaped amulet that hangs down on her chest.

She looks as though she has just been awakened from a regenerative sleep, although she has not been in that stasis for long. She barely shows signs of hunger, and it shows on her face more than anything. She also looks a bit angered and confused as to why they have brought her back so soon. An unexpected event has occurred requiring her attention. Those who oppose the new power play being made by the newest vampiress in the clan have resorted to desperate measures, and brought the return of the established woman of the household to deal with this new upstart. It is going to get very ugly around here…….
 

annik

Maybe she is surprised or angered by something her children had done?

Otherwise, she seems to be very sensual...
 

Emeraldgirl

Maybe she is shocked that the fool made it that far?

I think she is coming out to great you. I see a lot more of the bored and dissatisfied housewife with a slacker husband in this card who's spirit is badly bruised cause all her efforts to make the best of the situation are for naught. I also think she knows that her husband The Emperor is visiting the HP's boardello down the road. She's the hollywood movie pretty girl that married the wrong guy.
 

caridwen

This is Lilith the antithesis of the mothering aspect of the Empress, for, according to Hebrew legend, she is a night demon who kills new born baby boys. There was also a 'lilith' character in Bram Stokers' Dracula, Lucy who murdered children. I think she became the White Lady.

According to The Alphabet of Ben-Sira (Alphabetum Siracidis, Othijoth ben Sira) Lilith was the first wife of Adam. She, like Adam was created out of the earth but she refused Adams' sexual advances unless he admitted that they were born as equals. Adam refused, he sustained his argument that he was superior to Lilith thus she fled.

God sent three angels (Senoy, Sansenoy and Semangelof) after her and they caught up with her in the sea where she made a rather strange pact:

"'Leave me!' she said. 'I was created only to cause sickness to infants. If the infant is male, I have dominion over him for eight days after his birth, and if female, for twenty days.'

"When the angels heard Lilith's words, they insisted she go back. But she swore to them by the name of the living and eternal God: 'Whenever I see you or your names or your forms in an amulet, I will have no power over that infant.' She also agreed to have one hundred of her children die every day. Accordingly, every day one hundred demons perish, and for the same reason, we write the angels names on the amulets of young children. When Lilith sees their names, she remembers her oath, and the child recovers."

The Lilith myth was perpetuated in the 17th century Lexicon Talmudicum of Johannes Buxtorf and in the late 19th century, the Scottish Christian author George MacDonald incorporated the story of Lilith as Adam's first wife and predator of Eve's children into a mythopoeic fantasy novel in the Romantic style.

'Power of Three' has to do with Alchemy. The Egyptian god Thoth or the Greek Hermes Trismegistus (Thrice Blessed or Thrice Great) are the progenitors of the Emerald Tablets describing the mysteries of Alchemy. The alchemy of three is demonstrated by its power of multiplicity. For example, in understanding the numbers - One gave rise to Two (1+1=2) and Two gave Rise to Three (2+1=3) and Three gave rise to all numbers (3+1=4, 3+2=5, 3+3=6, 3+4=7, 3+5=8 3+6=9). Thus in addition to being a number of good fortune, Three is also the number of multiplicity and alchemy among other things.

Many believe the Triquetrais an ancient symbol of the female trinity, because it is composed of three interlaced yonic Vesica Pisces (a.k.a. PiscisSLatin for "Vessel of the Fish") and is the most basic and important construction in Sacred Geometry, which is the architecture of the universe.

A Vesica is formed when the circumference of two identical circles each pass through the center of the other in effect creating a portal. 'The Triquetra' represents the 'Power of Three' or the threefold nature of existence i.e. body, mind and spirit; life, death and rebirth; past, present and future; beginning, middle and end; Sun, Moon and Earth; and the threefold co-creative process described as thought, word, and deed.

The Lilith myth also corresponds with that of the 'devouring mother', seen within many culture's mythologies and explored by Jung in Psychological aspects of the Mother Archetype. He says: "On the negative side the mother archetype may connote anything secret, hidden, dark; the abyss, the world of the dead, anything that devours, seduces, and poisons, that is terrifying and inescapable like fate."

Eric Neumann, in The Origins and History of Consciousness describes her thusly: "Thus the Great Mother is uroboric: terrible and devouring, beneficent and creative; a helper, but also alluring and destructive; a maddening enchantress, yet a bringer of wisdom; bestial and divine, voluptuous harlot and inviolable virgin, immemorially old and eternally young.."

Persuing this path then, of the devouring mother, it's not long before we stumble across the Vagina Dentata myth which this Empress, emerging from her symbolic coffin ready to feed, perpetuates. Fear of castration, fear of the devouring female et al.