She is beautiful.

She is magnetic.

She is looking…

She is looking at you!

You should approach her. Are you shrinking? It’s time to behave peacock! Spread your feathers in a fan!

Any woman at the height of her attractiveness is an empress. She holds the power. She has a sceptre, a coat of arms with an eagle on it, and a crown. She commands over desire and attention. She may bestow bliss and honour, are you worthy?

Are you ready for love?

Are you going to be crushed by the sheer power of her gaze? She sees you. She is sitting. She is not going to do the walking. Her eagle is waving at you.

Jodorowski wrote that the wing of the eagle is not fully formed. Jodo is an expert, so maybe I should believe he’s right? But maybe there is more than one possible interpretation. It’s not because these cards are deep esoteric teachings that there can’t be a bit of humour. What the empress signals with her gaze, the eagle means it with a lovely little hand gesture.

The almost anonymous writer of Meditations on the Tarot says that the Empress is the Arcana of magic. The Bateleur is the Arcana of mystic experience, of communion with Spirit. The Popess is the Arcana of Gnosis: being able to reflect Spirit. Then comes, as a practical application of the previous ones, the Arcana of magic.

The Eagle, king of the heavens, may not be waving, but throwing or catching something. Maybe it’s casting a spell, or intercepting a dart of energy thrown at the Empress, as magical shields do. And possibly waving hello in the process?

One thing is certain : once we have noticed that something is going on with this wing, we can’t unsee it. Action is taking place in spirit. Or is it at the psychic level? It’s in the blue for sure, the colour of the coat of arms. An eagle flies high.

A number of mystics have written poems of love or intoxication to express the delights of reaching spiritual heights. The Empress tells us that falling head over heels awaits those who search for Spirit. We may feel unworthy to the last degree when entering her magnetic field. Our souls may twist and turn like worms on the grill or prove to be balanced enough to approach one step closer…

Isis, I want to be with you!

(At the level of the soul, we are masculine and feminine, or rather we have masculine and feminine experiences, independently of the gender of our current incarnation)

But what if this Isis wasn’t a lover but a mother? She is watching over her children. She is the centre of their world. She cares, she is ready to intervene, but as long as there is no danger in sight, she lets them live their lives. Her magnetic field keeps them within orbit. Her subtle influence protects, defuses, soothes like a love gas in the air they breathe.

One day they will see reflections of her in someone else. They will want to enter the field as lovers, and it will not be granted without a preliminary test. Can you handle the power?

What is this green drop, or is it a leaf, at the end of the little finger of the hand that holds the sceptre? It’s difficult to be sure but what’s sure is that it’s there, in front of a region of the woman which is cyclically fertile. Jodo pointed a finger at the Moon in the folds of her robe nearby. Creation urges and perfumes of fecundity…

What is the difference between the butterflies in the stomach you get when the girl is a blonde with blue eyes, and when the eyes are green?

The Eagle is casting a spell.

The number is three.

If one is the Tao, the Absolute Unique Undivided Thing that can’t be named, and two signals the apparition of Yin and Yang, the fundamental polarity, what is three?

Could there be Yin, Yang and… Yok? A third fundamental vibe, neither Yin nor Yang?

Could we have hot, cold and klot? Klot would be neither hot nor cold nor lukewarm, but another dimension of temperature.

Could there be presence, absence and a way to be neither present, nor absent, even when you open the box and give Schrodinger’s cat a hard look?

No. Three can’t add an equal to Yin and Yang.

All we can do with the number three is watch reality unfolding along other lines. There are three dimensions in space, and three moments in time.

Within time, Brahma brings the world into existence, Vishnu maintains it and Shiva destroys it. Everything that happens has a beginning, an existence and an end.

Is space really three dimensional?

If there were only two dimensions in space, we would be flat like extra thin sheets of paper.

To get a fourth dimension to height, width and depth, (or length, width and height…) adding time is cheating. Time is not space.

No architect needs to draw the plans of a building in four dimensions, and if one did, the result would look like a drawing of Stephen Eisher to the power of ten. Contradictors, shut up, we do live in a three dimensional space!

And if it’s an illusion, we are living in it anyway.

With time and space, Yin and Yang can interact in an infinite number of ways. That’s probably why Jodo says that this number symbolises explosion and creation.

Musically, when there are three times, we feel movement, not stability.

There is Heaven above, Hell below and we, on Earth, in Between.

And there is, of course, Man, Woman and Child, the Natural Trinity.

What does the Empress want?

One, another and a connection between the two.

She wants I love you.