Tarot Mothers Beyond the Empress
Or, five other tarot cards that better capture the archetypal mother
An alternative title for today’s newsletter that I was playing around with was “Reading tarot for myself helped me realize I didn’t want children. Or, Happy Mother’s Day!”
But seriously. Do you want to know how reading tarot for myself helped me realize I didn’t want children?
Because I have never - not even once - interpreted the appearance of the Empress in any tarot readings for myself as pointing to bearing children, raising children, or mothering anything beyond creative ideas and projects.
Don’t get me wrong. I realize that interpreting the tarot Empress (who is traditionally depicted as a pregnant woman) as a representation of motherhood and bearing children is an obvious and necessary part of that tarot card’s meaning. And I firmly believe in honoring and learning these traditional and customarily accepted card meanings.
At the same time, tarot - like mythology - is a visceral and symbolic language. That means it’s not meant to be taken quite so literally. At least not all of the time. Letting our subjective, intuitive interpretations dance with our intellectually learned definitions of these cards is precisely where the magic of tarot reading happens.
Just as the Empress doesn’t necessarily signify the most motherly tarot archetype (my personal favorite is the Queen of Pentacles, actually), we could also argue that qualities of characteristics of the Mother Archetype exist in various other tarot cards as well.
Below are five such cards. Let me know which one you were most surprised to see!
First, what is the Mother Archetype?
An archetype refers to a pattern or personality type that is universally and even unconsciously recognized and understood by most humans.
The Mother Archetype refers specifically to a caring, nurturing figure - most often a parent and most often a woman, but not necessarily - who tends to the growth, nourishment, and support of someone or something - most often a younger child or animal, but not necessarily. Other hallmarks of the Mother Archetype include sacrifice, protection, and unconditional love.
The Empress as the Mother Archetype
So you see, once we really think about the Mother Archetype, how does the Empress qualify other than the fact that she is opposite an assumed male partner - the Emperor, who is the next card in the Major Arcana - and is usually depicted as pregnant?
I don’t think any of us has to search far in our own experience to know that birthing a child doesn’t necessarily make one a mother, and some of the most loving mother figures in our lives did not give birth to us.
So the Empress = Mother correspondence is a bit lazy, in my humble opinion. It’s a beautiful card, one I adore in many ways, but I think we can do better in this regard.
1. My top pick for Mother of the Tarot Deck: The Queen of Pentacles
The Queen of Pentacles is shown against a backdrop of lush fertility, which portrays her as a nurturing, provider archetype. Most important is the Queen’s doting on the pentacle in her lap. This gesture of maternal attention, devotion, and care represents the role this Queen - like Demeter of Greek mythology - finds the most meaningful and important in her life.
I wrote about the Queen of Pentacles and the myth of Demeter and Persephone in a past Mother’s Day missive when I was reflecting on my evolving relationship with my own mother. If you haven’t read it yet, you can do so here:
While the Queen of Pentacles may be an obvious alternative to the Empress as the ultimate Mother Archetype in the tarot, so many other cards capture the essence and hallmark characteristics of this maternal archetype as well.
Here are four more - perhaps a couple unexpected ones - below.
2. The Queen of Swords as Maternal Advocate
One of my students was telling me about how embarrassing his mom is when they meet with the academic accommodations office on campus.
“She makes me sound so lazy when they ask if I need an aid! She was all like, ‘He can’t cook for himself, he can’t keep his room clean, he forgets his homework assignments,’ and I was like ‘Mom, I can cook, what the hell! Why are you exaggerating?”
I gave him a sympathetic smile and replied, “Mama’s advocating. She’s going to say what she needs to say to make sure you get the support you need.”
The other student chatting with us, who happens to be a mom herself, chimed in, “You know she’s going to do that your whole life, right? It’s her job.”
I always think of the Queen of Swords as the advocate of the tarot - the voice for the voiceless or timid. You can read more about my feminist reckoning with the Queen of Swords here:
3. The Nine of Wands as Maternal Warrior
The figure in the Nine of Wands is sick, injured, and exhausted but holding the line nonetheless.
Any time any of us, including my father, were feeling under the weather, my mother would drop everything and make a giant pot of chicken soup and fill an entire pantry shelf with cans of soothing peach compote - the only thing sweet and slippery enough to slide down a sore throat.
As a child, I never stopped to think that there was nobody to make my mom chicken soup when she was sick. Nobody to take her temperature and tuck her into the couch so she could watch Price is Right and doze off.
For better or worse, mothers so often give and give until they can’t give anymore, and then they give just a little bit more.