Key 3: The Empress (The Fourteenth Path)

Key 3 - The Empress - Dalet - Door
Gematria Value: 4
14th Path Sandalwood, Myrtle | Emerald, Turquoise
From Binah to Kochma | EAST

THE EMPRESS / VENUS / BOWER OF BLISS

Creative Imagination, Power of Symbol

Chaotic systems, fractals, seed level, Archetypes and Symbols

The Great Mother, Nature, Growth

Abundance, luxury, comfort, being grounded

Connection with nature, rootedness, earthly refuge

Material wealth, marriage, increase, growth

The seed of love and truth. The fecund, bountiful, loving mother.

Your inner relationship to your own mother

She Who Sets In Order - the Consort of the Emperor

The nurturing aspect of the anima.




The Empress is the fertile, life giving mother reigning over the bounty of nature and the rhythm of the world.

The Empress and the High Priestess are the two halves of the female archetype:


The Empress is pregnant, actively generating life, while the High Priestess is the consecrated virgin, the field ready for planting.

The High Priestess is the Veiled Isis, while the Empress is Isis Unveiled.

The High Priestess is undifferentiated cosmic subconscious; the Empress is activity in the subconscious mind, gestating the idea-seed planted by the personal self.

The Empress is Venus, the warm mother Goddess; the High Priestess is Diana, the cool virgin Moon-Goddess.

Simple Pleasures. Key 3, the Empress, reminds us that a walk in the woods can bring more comfort than our more complex, obsessive entertainments.

"Dalet," the Hebrew letter for Key 3, means door. This has many connotations. This is the same passage manifested as a bridge in Key 2. Both are links to the higher realms; they are a "plexus," a "siddhi," or a "revelation."

Dalet is a "Double Letter," with two sounds.
The Empress's door has also been compared to the womb, as the gateway of life; the prenatal epoch is for most people the source of dim memories of an Arcadian, perfect world, an Avalon, a bower of bliss, a sundappled, sheltered glen.

EAST, the direction assigned to Key 3 on the Cube of Space, is the direction of sunrise, the Doorway of the Sun, and the Birth of the Day.


The Empress is Gaia, or Mother Nature - she is the same woman opening the lion's mouth in the Strength card, and she is the woman in Key 17.
3, the number of the Empress, is the number of "conditions," or "states" that the 4 elements take in the Zodiac. The Empress (3) and the Emperor (4) work together to create 12.


The Empress holds her arms in the "coagula/solve" position - meaning "coagulate (or join) - and "dissolve." The "coagulation" is a drawing-in of energy. The "solve" is the use of the energy to dissolve, or cut like a laser. Keys 0, 1, 3, 4, 11, & 15 share this symbolism.

The Empress wears a crown of 12 stars

The Empress is a doorway to the Symbolic realm, the way to transcend the content and merge with the form. She is "relaxing into" a symbol, a dream, or an event, and using its dissonance to create new strategies, and harmonize with it. Key 3 balances, or offsets the shadow, Key 2.

She copes with the unpredictability, the confusion, and the seeming deception and disorder of the High Priestess, the Kali aspect of the Goddess and the Universe. She is the feminine that rules by virtue of her stamina, determination, and ability to deal with chaos (i.e. child rearing).

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