Every Tarot Card Empress, Wheel, Star

In part three of my series on Every Tarot Card I'll be talking about the Empress, the Wheel of Fortune, and the Star. These make up the third column of the tableau formed if you lay out every trump card in order, save the Fool, in rows of seven.

Empress

L'Imperatrice, Daleth, and Venus. The Empress is traditionally, in French and Italian packs, depicted holding a scepter and a shield, usually with a one-headed eagle -- as opposed to the imperial two-headed eagle found on the Emperor. She rules, but of course in patriarchal medieval and Renaissance Europe, not as much or as rightly as the Emperor. She was, simply, a queen, in early interpretation. Etteilla called her a protector or support, and described her as both the mother of Christ and the mother of the Empire which she must continue by bearing a child. So the Empress is very often associated with pregnancy and fertility, both literally and figuratively.

She is now very firmly associated with Venus, and you'll probably have seen the Waite-Smith image of the seated Empress, surrounded by her garden, holding a shield with the Venus figure on it. That of course continues the theme of fertility, and adds in harmony and beauty. Venus rules Libra, after all, the sign devoted to harmonizing disparate things. Venus is also one of the benefics in astrology, meaning she tends to portend good things when aspected to markers of the question or natal chart.

As Daleth, "door," the Empress is the entryway, but also particularly a means of entering a house. Several Hebrew letters are associated with houses: one literally just means house, while this one is "door" and the following is "window." If you really want, you can probably do some sort of sacred sexual imagery of feminine "receptivity" as a doorway, and since we're dealing with imagery concocted in patriarchal times, it's there, but I tend to kind of think more of greenery. The Empress is the gardener, which means she's both the one who plants and the one who is receiving the plants -- she also knows when to prune.

Wheel

The Wheel of Fortune, Fortuna, Kaph, Jupiter. The Wheel shows us figures rising and falling as Fortune decrees, but it also implies that everyone rises and falls. There's only one way off this ride; until then, you're bound where it takes you. Susan Chang has said that in theory the Wheel can mean both good and bad "fortune" but in practice it usually means good fortune, because if a querent is coming to a tarot reader, they're already in the bad, downwards moving part of the wheel. So it points to some improvement, some rise, in their fortunes, to come. If you're incorporating regular reading into your practices though, that may not be the case, as you're not confining yourself to bad times.

There are other versions of Fortune. Some 18th and 19th century decks depict Fortune riding a wheel across and over people, while distributing wealth off one side and nothing off the other. That version is a little less regular, less fixed, and more that you never know if the bus is going to run you over or take you to a new job.

As Kaph, an open hand, the Wheel is a gift-giver. This lines up nicely with its association with Jupiter, the other benefic planet in astrology, and often the "gift giver" planet. Some forms of astrological magic have the operator go to Jupiter for any "gifts" or preferments they ask for, anything that's given to them rather than earned, taken, or traded.

I also personally associate this card with both the "wheel of the year," particularly if I'm using a druidic or generically neopagan deck, as well as the zodiac itself. It, too, is a wheel, and one whose rotation governs the "fortunes" of our lives.

The Star

The Star, Nut, Ishtar, Sirius & Isis, Ganymede, the Star of Bethlehem, Tzaddi, Aquarius. That's a lot, yeah. In short, the Star is often associated with celestial goddesses particularly in the 20th and 21st centuries.

Some old packs depict an astrologer with a compass peering up at a star, rather than the more familiar woman pouring water. Because of the star image combined with the water, the card is often associated with Ganymede, the cup bearer of the gods, and thus to Aquarius, the water-bearer. Given that the star shows light far out in the distance, and Aquarius can be thought of of as the outer reaches of the world, that works.

It can be thought of that way because Saturn rules it, as well as Capricorn (as we saw last time with the Devil card). Capricorn is here, and Aquarius is "out there." Both are defined by knowing the boundary and limit of things, which is part of what Saturn does. It's just that Aquarius is what's on the other side of the boundary, while Capricorn is what's in it.

Tzaddi -- and yes, if you have a reason to object, give me a minute -- Tzaddi is a "fish hook" and the idea with this association is that when you fish you're casting out into the unknown, looking for what you need -- as opposed to farming or hunting, where you can at least see what you're working with.

Now, if you didn't know why I interrupted myself up there -- there's a small controversy about whether this card should be associated with this Hebrew letter. And, let's be honest, the whole association of Hebrew letters is arbitrary anyway. But, Tzaddi is associated with the Star because all the letters are in order, and Tzaddi is the 18th (the Star is 17, but remember the Fool is zero and thus first in this system). Aleister Crowley, in some of his received spirit work, heard the sentence "Tzaddi is not the Star." He ultimately attributed the fish hook to the Emperor and He to the Star. He is a window, and you can think of the stars as windows out into stellar night, the furthest reaches of the universe. You can see how it works either way. Pick the one you prefer, or keep both in mind -- just like I think of the Wheel as both Jupiter and the Zodiac itself, you can simply think of the Star as both Tzaddi and He. If you do, you just consider the context.

You'd do the same with two of the simplest meanings of the card: "hope" and "meditation." While they're not exactly opponents, they're not the same thing. So you simply scan the situation, the question, and the other cards to decide which to use in this situation. Which, let's be fair, is the entire business of reading tarot in the first place.

The Empress and the Wheel went together because both are astrological benefics, but Aquarius is associated with a malefic instead. The column works because the card itself is mostly positive. And, in fact, if you think of the Wheel as life's motion from extreme to extreme -- the wheel turns and the outer hub moves but the center is still -- then the Wheel is in the center of a pair that begins with the earthy gardener and ends with the meditative space cadet.