L'Impératrice
She
is an Empress. And yet ...
Read the Tarot definitions. How often will you find her described as 'feminine', 'mother', 'sister', 'children', even the ludicrous crystal-ball gazer's fall-back 'marriage'?
It's as if the Impératrice can only act within a narrow sphere, restricted to 'female' roles. Still harping on mothers and daughters ...
Look at her, though. She carries the sceptre like a club. Her right arm brandishes a shield, decked with a dragon or a griffin. Her back is winged, signifying dominion, the ability of oversee and dominate. Her gaze is distant, signifying the life of the mind, intuition.
And here is an attribute that any novelist would find useful in any one of their characters: the ability to motivate others, to cause actions, not just to react to others' actions.
Reversed, the Impératrice loses heart, vacillates, delays.
It is almost a given that all forms of strength depicted in the Tarot - strength or purpose, strength of arm, strength of intellect - will, when the card is reversed, be undermined by lack of interest, by apathy, hesitancy and anxiety.
The opposite of strength is not weakness, but the inability to wield that strength.
