Card of the Week: The Empress

Maternity is all about being fully alive.  It is a period of growing, transition, and of new beginnings in the journey of life.  All of humanity has been conceived, born and nourished of women.

The Empress card represents the fruitfulness of the earth and human fertility.  She embodies the encouragement of growth and development, while luxuriating in sensual pleasures and indulgence in her femininity.  This card might suggest creative new ideas, or ways to bring together existing disparate elements to form a new harmonized union.

An inverted Empress might suggest a smothering or demanding mother.  Vanity might lead to extravagance or overindulgence, blocking healthier paths to growth.

In “Friday’s Child” the Enterprise has been sent to negotiate a mining treaty for the rare mineral topaline on planet Capella IV.  A Klingon, Kras, also wants the same treaty.  They meet with the Ten Tribes leader, Akaar, and his wife, Eleen, pregnant with their heir and due at any time.  The Ten Tribes people pride themselves on honor in battle.  Kras leads a nighttime raid with Akaar’s rival, Maab.  Akaar is killed, and Kirk, Spock and McCoy are forced to flee with Eleen to the hills, where Eleen gives birth in a cave.  At first, she does not want the child, mourning her husband and willing to accept Maab as new leader.  But when Kras breaks his word and Maab recognizes Kras’s dishonor, Maab renounces his own leadership and sacrifices himself to take out Kras, leaving Eleen and her child as the new leaders of the Ten Tribes.