Major Arcana · III

The Empress Year

Earth

Things grow in an Empress year, and you're allowed to enjoy that they do. Ideas come faster than you can write them down. You make things and let yourself want them without the running tally of whether you earned it. This is a year for tending: your own ground first, then whatever and whoever you're growing. It runs through the body and the senses, through good food and real rest and being cared for instead of only doing the caring. Creation here isn't forced. You give life room and it takes it.

What to do with an Empress yearTend your own ground before you pour into anyone else's. Let yourself receive care this year, not only give it, and make something for the pleasure of it rather than to prove you earned the rest.

Your twelve months

Each month steps one place forward through the cycle. The same twelve, in the same order, for any Empress year.

January
The EmperorFebruary
The HierophantMarch
The LoversApril
The ChariotMay
StrengthJune
The HermitJuly
Wheel of FortuneAugust
JusticeSeptember
The Hanged OneOctober
DeathNovember
TemperanceDecember
The Devil

Element weather

How the twelve months balance across the elements.

4Fire months3Water months3Earth months2Air months

The rest of the cycle

The nine Majors an Empress year doesn’t touch.

The FoolThe MagicianThe High PriestessThe TowerThe StarThe MoonThe SunJudgementThe World
The full year-ahead reading

The whole Empress year, woven

This page is the theme. The full reading walks all twelve months in the Almanac’s voice, reads the element weather, brings in how your Bearing meets the year, and closes with the skills and reflection questions an Empress year calls for.

See a sample reading →

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More on this card: The Empress, the full meaning · The Empress as a Bearing · all seventy-eight cards