The Empress
"Profound" oil on wood in upcycled frame - 28” x 42” original available for sale
One day, quite some years ago, at the synagogue, our rabbi came up to my child, inspected their fingernails, and pronounced them dirty. I felt judged as a mother, criticized for not diligently scrubbing my young person's nail beds. Looking down I saw that my nails, as usual, also held strips of rainbow paint and dirt from my mornings shenanigans with the preschool. Recently my now 18 year old and I realized we both had dirt behind our nails, and laughed. They had picked a handful of candy cap mushrooms for me and their California maple syrup perfume invaded my senses, their spores sleeping in my nail beds. Funny to think back that I went to that synagogue in hopes of capturing that feeling of awe of 'God'. I wanted that feeling that supersedes all the mundane moments and sends us hurtling into the immense unknown heart of the universe. I rarely did feel that way among the pews. The dirt in our nails was the true sign post- Universe this way. It is the view looking down into the grand canyon, the wildfire coming over the hill, the sound of a penny whistle on the other mountain carried by the wind across mount Everest, the drops of rain filled with sunlight like a string of gems on every rose hip along the fence where I grew up making me cry with it's beauty. These are when I know I am small and wonderfully insignificant and that the immensity and beauty and scale of the world is beyond words (though obviously I'm trying to write a few here!). Dr. Keltner, a researcher at UCBerkeley who studies awe, wrote, people who find awe all around them, “are more open to new ideas. To what is unknown. To what language can’t describe.” Someday I will find the Rabbi who sees the dirt in children's nails and says "I see you found God today".
This morning I was weeding around my garden of calla lilies, beneath the persimmon tree. Blue forget me knots stuck to my socks in remembrance of years gone by, in hopes of future blooms. I didn't put on my gardening gloves and my fingernails held the belly of the earth. I cultivated the garden and the bees sang and danced patterns around me. The Empress, hearing my memories, smiled at me, her Mona Lisa smile. This is the mother that I am, who lets her child risk dirt in their nails, that digs their hands into the soil, feeling the awe of the beauty and magnificence of nature. That senses the earth worms churning below ground, plants a native garden, gathers and cares for the baby squirrel knocked from its nest by a crow, without judging the crow, that studies the amazing world of fungi. That learns where science and nature dance hand in hand. That knows, because she reminds me, that nature is cruel and full of shadow, just as it is full of light. The empress is often with me as I sink deep into hours of painting and emerge dazed, seeing my creation before me, mine and not mine.
The Empress is magic that dances hand in hand with science. She is the magic of creation, of inspiration and something from seemingly nothing. She is the science of Awe, that can be analyzed and recorded but that transports us beyond ourselves. She gives us perspective. She shows us we are insignificant and we are magnificent. She is the sexy mother nursing twins. She is the breakthrough that happens in our unconscious when we are sleeping. She is an idea birthed and created and decayed and born again. She is the dirt beneath your nails that actually turns out to improve your immune system.
I was quite happy to sink into the warm earth research of this card. The Empress! My focus card for her was the tower. It wasn't a scare to see that building in flames. It was nature's truth, that as things are born, so do they die and decay, that the falcon diving through the sunrise raises the goosebump feelings of awe on my arms, just as it strikes and kills a beautiful small bird. That my mother will die and the same week I will celebrate my grand-niece turning one year old. JP Martel says, "If we're going to be talking about the Empress we're talking about that part of reality. The part of reality that is always different. Every time that you look at it. Which is ever shifting like nature. Which changes and which deceives. When it looks like it's dying it's being born and when it looks like it's being born it's dying." (Weird Studies podcast episode 84 Mona Lisa Smile). The Empress is Aphrodite, sexy and born of the ocean, wearing her pearls and her skin without shame. The tower is fiery hot Aries, her lover and her opposite. He is the tower embodied within her. Researching this card I read about how the symbol for Aphrodite is the calla lily, depicted as the fleur-de-lis . Calla lilies were unfurling across my back yard, welcoming the spring, their stamens the phallus in the yoni. Later that night I danced at the pub where Lucky Old Bones was playing for St Patrick's day and there was a little silver fleur-de-lis on the ground in the shine of the rain, a synchronicity smiling up at me. The empress is often depicted as Summer, as Demeter, the Greek goddess of the harvest, the mother. But with all these Callas about me this April, with the mad burst of Spring flowers, I knew I had to paint her in the spring, with her scepter the calla lily. With the green of life. I posed her as the hindu goddess the Green Tara, the earth mother. I bought my mom a Danka of Green Tara when I was in Nepal a million years ago and her image inspired this work. I will soon inherit her. But don't be fooled! Kali, the hindu goddess of death and destruction, and life and creation, with her necklace of skulls, is also the Empress, and a skull looks out from the waterfall necklace she wears. Nature and the earth mother are not only la-la-la, self help and love and self care. She is darkness, shadows, and decay as well.
Traditionally the Empress is represented by the eagle, same as the Emperor. The eagle is a magnificent ancient symbol but rather overused (in Tarot but also in America). In the US of A it's eagle this, and boy scout emblem that, and royal blah blah, and biker gang jacket, and All American yeash, and let's face it, just not up to spec for this archetype, this wild Lady! Moreover, as I researched this archetype, I kept seeing peregrine falcons. First on the way down to Santa Cruz, there's a nesting ground where I stopped and made eye contact with a falcon who was meditating on a cliff in the ocean spray, perhaps getting his world bearings for his next long migration. His mate played on the ocean wind currents above. My youngest child watched them mate and then share a kill there the previous week. Falcons are the superior hunter. Actually they are the superior, mind blowing everything! They are possibly the fastest creatures on the planet, diving at 242 miles per hour! And they can see up to two miles away. These amazing creatures almost went extinct because of us stupid humans use of DDT, a pesticide, which weakened their egg shells. Scientists became aware of this and pushed through a ban on DDT around 1975. These environmental scientists then bred and released falcons into the wild for over twenty years and miraculously AND scientifically reestablished a healthy population of wild Peregrine falcons! What a symbol for hope for our relationship with nature! The falcon is hope, and courage, and strength, and royalty (sorry eagle!). My fabulous model for the image of my empress painting is the beautiful healer, teacher, and dancer, Tristan St.Germain, who embodies the sexy Empress and works earth magic. As she posed for me in her backyard sunlight, and as I told her about the symbols for this painting, a falcon flew over and called down to us. I asked her if this happened to her a lot, as they'd been happening to me, these synchronicities, and she verified that they indeed did!
My empress has no eagle shield. Her shield is alive and flying. She will be protected. If you mess with her you will eventually pay for it. Her throne is backed by the stone wings of a falcon, grounding and supporting her. Perhaps they will become real. I wouldn't be surprised. The throne is solid rock with four sides. The waterfall is birthed through a vent in the canyon, where the river continuously crashes through. I took the picture on a vacation to the Canadian Rockies years ago. Talk about Awe inspiring! The waterfall smooths the rock and tells a story of time passing. The river moves through the mountains and eventually falls across our Empress on her throne. The power of the water and yin moves from the sublime to the subtle. It is in the gentle water of the wild pool that creation also takes place.
To be honest I'm still not certain why I'm working with this archetype. Perhaps for me, now, I must be aware that creation is born of destruction. That life ends and begins and ends again. I've seen and am seeing a lot of death lately. Done a lot of letting go. I can only make decisions as I walk the spiral. Only let go of control. You can't control nature. I can only be in awe of it, and let that feeling resonate in my soul, to reset my nervous system. I can only feel the awe and let it release me. This, Dr. Keltner said, is especially critical in the age of social media. “We are at this cultural moment of narcissism and self-shame and criticism and entitlement; awe gets us out of that,” Dr. Keltner said. It does this by helping us get out of our own heads and “realize our place in the larger context, our communities,” he explained. One word kept coming up again and again while I painted my empress: “Profound”. Profound called out in books on Awe, in conversations with strangers at a memorial, in BBC podcasts about witches, and movies about mushrooms. This is a profound moment in my life! My mom and friend dying, my son moving across the country, my other child moving out. I need to get purposely lost in the woods on a regular basis.
The Empress is profound. Her Calla Lily scepter is the birthing of creation and symbolizes the power of the Empress. It transforms into the peregrine falcon, screaming into the roar of the waterfall that is the awe-inspiring majesty of nature. The yin of water carves away solid rock. And the falcon lands in the right hand of the Empress with his kill, the sacrifice and destruction of nature. The blood (does it merge with hers?) falls and transforms, a new creation, as the fish that eventually evolves again and again, as we evolve again and again. Science and magic interwoven.
less dark image coming soon! oil on wood in upcycled frame
