Connections with Empress & Death RWS..

Toxicmage

I am just wondering if these two cards are connected? What I mean is that on the Death card, the Death rider is going from left to right..i.e from the past to a future event, or from what I call the non-physical realm to the physical realm.

Behind the rider, we see a river of water with a boat going in the same direction as the rider and can be seen passing between the two towers towards the sun.

Now on The Empress card, I interpret this card as many of my tarot books say as " birthing ". Behind The Empress is a river of water ( just like the Death card ) and what appears to be a waterfall.

Ok..this is what I am thinking, and please tell me if I am wrong, is the river in both the Death card and The Empress card the same river? If it is, that could explain the exsistance of past-lives..and the maybe never ending cycle of death and birth, death and birth i.e the death representing one form of transformation and birth representing another transformation. With the water ( emotions & feelings ) the common link between the two.

I am I on the right track? Or maybe there is no connection here.

Thanks
 

ana luisa

On a completely different note here, I have more than once read the Empress as a card of physical death. Both instances were, unfortunately, validated...
As to the river X waterfall, I would then see the empress more like the Tower. The gushy aspect of giving birth (hence, waterfall instead of river) seems as drastic as the breaking of patterns brought on by the Tower. The Tower, on the other hand is imposed on the people who fall while the Empress (one would supposed) opted for pregnancy :)
 

Sophie

In the sense that the Lord and Lady of Life are also the Lord and Lady of Death - in most of world mythology, and certainly in the mythology that was familiar to the RWS designers, fertility deities are also cthonic deities (and their mysteries enacted, inter alia, in mysteries such as the Mysteries of Eleusis, or the Mysteries of Isis and Osiris). In that perspective, the river, rather than being 'emotions and feelings' is the river of life, which is also the river of death (the Styx), and of renewal. Death is essential to Life, and vice-versa.

The Christian equivalent of this divine life-death-life expression is the saying: 'the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away'.


There is a numbers correlation too: in Roman numerology III is related to XIII: III can be seen as a higher expression of XIII, and indeed, on the Tree of Life The Empress is higher up the Tree than Death.

In the RWS, XIII is on the 24th path of the Tree of Life, the path of Nun (fish), that joins Netzach, the lower principle of life, creativity and reproduction, with Tiphereth, the Higher Self, the solar principle. Wang writes: 'To this Path is attributed putrefaction, the decaying black mass in the crucible which eventually turns into gold. It is the emergence of new life from death.' The principle of life is that eventually, its force will lead it beyond life - to putrefaction, as you might observe in the lifecycle of the plants in your garden. From that putrefying mass, new life will grow (putrefying plants become compost and feed the new plants). Within the self as within outer nature, it means that at the very moment life is at its strongest, it is also beginning its decline, until it reaches its nadir, at which point it begins its renewal.

III is on the 14th Path, the Path of Daleth (doorway), which joins Binah, the Great Mother, the principle of understanding, to Chokmah, the Great Father, the principle of wisdom (those two Great Parents have owed The Empress the esoteric title 'Daughter of the Mighty Ones'). The joining of Mother and Father in the pregnant Empress gives birth to the whole of the bottom part of the Tree: she brings the unmanifest into manifestation; which will later return to unmanifest through the process of death, and so on. The Empress is also known as The Mother of the Sun - the Sun, in the Tree of Life being Tipheret: and so She joins with the Death card in that Sephiroth, through her Solar Son. The Empress emanates down towards manifestion and Death emanates up towards unmanifestation: they meet in the middle and transformation occurs, as you noted, in both directions. In esoteric terms, it means we tend to go both from spiritual to material (the process of creation) and from material back towards spiritual (the process of 'going home'), and so on, an eternal breathing in, breathing out, expiration, inspiration (and isn't it interesting that 'expiration' is another word for death, and 'inspiration' is another word for the impulse behind creation?)
 

lucifall

Empress, Death and Seven of Cups

On the internet I found this interesting poem on:

http://www.dodedans.com/Etext2.htm

On this webpage is a description of Lubeck’s Dance of Death,
It is a poem where Death has a conversation with: The Empress, The Cardinal and The King.
The Cardinal and King we see on XIII (Uncrowned King and the Cardinal with the Fish(Nun) Shape Hat. The Empress (III) is speaking with Death in the poem (as the Cardinal and the King do)

The Empress of Waite is the lady Crowned with the 12 Stars from Revelation 12.

From http://endtimepilgrim.org/woman.htm

THE TWO PHASE DELIVERY OF THE MAN-CHILD OF REV. 12
In the normal birthing sequence the birth of the head comes first. Then the birth of the body must follow after that. Our Apostle Paul tells us that Christ was the Firstborn of the dead. (1Cor.15:20) Jesus was also said to be the firstborn of many brethren. (Rom. 8:29) Jesus Christ/Yeshua Hamashiach is our sacred Head. He was been delivered from death and the grave. This happened at His resurrection 2,000 years ago. As such our Messiah leads the way in the birth and the Resurrection of the man-child company. He is the "Firstborn of the dead".

The connection between the Empress and Death we find back in Seven of Cups.

The Empress/ Death / Seven of Cups.
According to the GD-correspondences The Empress is connected with Venus.
Death with Scorpio.
Seven of Cups is Venus in Scorpio.

Seven of Cups has a skull on a cup (connection with death) and maybe the Ghost we may see as the “wandering” spirit. The Spirit after Death and before the new Birth .
This same spirit will return from Death through Daleth (the Door) into Earthly existence with the Fruitful Mother of Thousands (refugium peccatorum) (PKT Waite).

The Ghost seemed to be bitten by snake in the nearest cup. Snakes are often seen as symbols for Life, Death and Rebirth. This connects both the Empress and the Death Card.

The head of “Aquarius-Man” has the same colour as the background and shows us a complete transparency. (Is this the Aquarius-Time Spirit?) This head is also connected with The Empress crowned by the twelve stars. (Rev.12, the child delivered by the Empress, Mother of Thousands)
Jesus was also said to be firstborn of many brethren (Rom 8: 29) and he is the Firstborn of Death (1Cor. 15:20)

In PKT Waite also add: In another order of ideas, the card of the Empress signifies the door or gate by which an entrance is obtained into this life, as into the Garden of Venus.
Further we see a castle (residence for an Empress) and jewellery (Empress) and the Wreath of the Empress (The vegetable kingdom-Eden) in 3 Other cups.

Light Lucifal