Pamela Colman Smith · RWS deck
The Major Arcana
The Empress
- Hebrew Letter
- PE
- Element
- VENUS
- Path
- Netzach ↔ Hod
- Polarity
- Prosperity / Desolation
Upright · Prosperity
Desire that enriches what it touches. Love, attraction, creativity, all of it flows toward another person or another end and leaves them fuller for having met it. This is desire doing exactly what it’s for.
Reversed · Desolation
Reversed your desire pulls at something and leaves it thinner rather than fuller, love that consumes instead of building, attraction that strips rather than feeds. Nothing about the want has weakened, but the effect that it has on you and those around you does not nourish, but drains you and those around you.
The image
A crowned woman sits at ease among cushions, not on a rigid throne. Her gown flows loose, patterned with the fruit of something already ripened, and a wreath of stars circles her head. Before her, wheat stands full in the field and water moves freely toward it. The shield at her feet carries Venus’s sign, resting against the cushions.
This is a path about what desire does once it reaches something outside itself, and the image is entirely at ease with that. Nothing here is hoarded or held back. The wheat isn’t stored, it’s standing in the open field. The water isn’t dammed, it’s already moving toward what needs it. Abundance a condition, something flowing outward simply because it’s full enough, rather than a state to be posessed.
Learn how to read The Empress in a spread
This page shows you what The Empress means. Knowing how to read it — how it shifts next to the other cards, what the reversal is really telling you, and how to turn a spread into a clear answer — is what the RWS Decoded course and book teach, card by card.
