In Sumerian mythology, Inanna was the goddess of love, beauty, sensuality, fertility, procreation, and even of war. Identified later by the Akkadians and Assyrians as Ishtar, and assimilated by the Greeks as Aphrodite, she has also been correlated with the morning star Venus and, of course, with the Egyptian deity Isis. Such as the Empress, her story navigates in between the boundaries of love and power. In fact, she is usually depicted with wings, which brings us to many winged versions of The Empress, or reminds us of the eagle that usually accompanies her in decks such as Camoin (Marseille) and Crowley. Her scepter brings us another clue about her Venusian character: when inverted, it represents the symbol of Venus. In some other versions, such as the Rider-Waite, the Spiral and the Mucha decks, this symbol has been depicted more clearly for the reader to envision.
Among the shadow aspects attributed to The Empress by Sallie Nichols in her book Jung and the Tarot, one can cite the indomitable vigor of Mother Nature and the thirst for power, personified by the Hindu goddess Kali. In Inanna's most renowned myth, we learn the story of her descent into and return from Kur, the ancient Sumerian underworld. Blindly following her ambition, she decides to dethrone her sister Ereshkigal and become herself the Queen of the Underworld, remaining the sovereign of the Great Above. Despite the different versions of this myth, there is one core fact that underlies in all of them: once victorious in the Underworld, she is not allowed to leave unless she finds a replacement for her position (which ends up being her husband, situation some authors attribute to her revenge, provoked by his lack of interest in her disappearance). In his book A History of Religious Ideas, Mircea Eliade explains the disastrous consequences of her captivity: "human and animal reproduction ended entirely after the Goddess' disappearance. (...) the catastrophe was of cosmic proportions" (Eliade, p. 66).
This symbiosis between life and death is clearly explained by Alejandro Jodorowsky in his book The Way of Tarot. Basing himself on numerology, he establishes a correlation between and within the Major Arcana and the Minor Arcana. In the case of the Empress, being the third Arcana, she also relates to the 3s in the suits, as well as the Arcana 13, the Death (or Nameless Arcana, according to Jodorowsky). Naming this interconnection third degree, he ascribes it the quality of being a burst of accumulated energy, and somewhat an aimless action. At the same time, he observes a deep transformation facilitated and undergone by these energies.
Bibliography:
- Eliade, Mircea: A History of Religious Ideas. Volume 1: From the Stone Age to the Eleusinian Mysteries. USA: The University of Chicago Press, 1981.
- Jodorowsky, Alejandro: La Vía del Tarot. Madrid: Editorial Símela, 2004.
- Nichols, Sallie: Jung and the Tarot: An Archetypal Journey. N.p.: Weiser Books, 1980.