The Empress Art and Meaning
Visconti B Tarot Deck Fragment
About the Deck
(aka Pierpont Morgan Bergamo Tarot Deck) One of the earliest Tarot Decks, the Pierpont Morgan Deck is entirely gilded, with fine paintings upon it.
It is estimated to have been produced around 1451 or 1452, possibly for a triumphal event in 1453.
Provenance
Italy, c. 1452.
According to Many Schools of Thought
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings
The Empress, who is sometimes represented with full face, while her correspondence, the Emperor, is in profile. As there has been some tendency to ascribe a symbolical significance to this distinction, it seems desirable to say that it carries no inner meaning. The Empress has been connected with the ideas of universal fecundity and in a general sense with activity.
S. L. MacGregor Mathers's Divinatory Meanings
Upright
Action, Plan, Undertaking Movement in a matter, Initiative
Reversed
Inaction, Frittering away of power, Want of Concentration Vacillation.
Papus's Divinatory Meanings
Action. Initiative.