Cassandra Snow - Lessons from the Empress: A Tarot Workbook for Self-Care and Creative Growth

In Lessons from the Empress, authors Cassandra Snow and Siri Plouff have offered a unique and deep exploration of the tarot using the archetype of The Empress as your guide in your journey toward self-care and creative growth. As you move through the workbook, you'll find magical rituals, suggestions for self-care, unique tarot spreads, and generous creative prompts, all woven together beautifully to support and nurture your spirit. The message here: be indulgent, make art, and let magic enter every area of your life! This is the book we all need in today's turbulent times.

Theresa Reed, author of Twist Your Fate:
Manifest Success with Astrology and Tarot

In Lessons from the Empress, Snow and Plouff go beyond the Empress's superficial social media meme to show that embracing the archetype isn't just about crystals and bubble baths. It's an act of digging deep into your soul to find your authentic, creative, and bountiful self.

Rashunda Tramble, coauthor of
The Numinous Tarot Guide: A New Way to Read the Cards

In Lessons from the Empress, Snow and Plouff have combined their considerable wealth of knowledge to share powerful and useful tips on integrating creativity into daily life through the use of tarot cards. From reminding us that creativity is our birthright to providing a self-care equation tying in all four suits of the deck, this book is packed with personal stories, original tarot spreads, and helpful insights on using the cards for inspiration, expression, and discovery. Lessons from the Empress is an excellent resource for anyone looking for inclusive, accessible methods for integrating tarot into their creative workings.

Meg Jones Wall, author of Finding the Fool:
A Tarot Journey for Radical Transformation

Lessons from the Empress brings tarot to life! With a pack of cards in hand, you'll find this is your guidebook to better mental and spiritual wellness. When the world needs these lessons the most, Snow and Plouff come through for us all.

Benebell Wen, author of Holistic Tarot

This edition first published in 2022 by Weiser Books, an imprint of

Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC

With offices at:

65 Parker Street, Suite 7

Newburyport, MA 01950

www.redwheelweiser.com

Copyright 2022 by Cassandra Snow and Siri Vincent Plouff

Foreword copyright 2022 by Lisa Marie Basile

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form
or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information
storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC.
Reviewers may quote brief passages.

ISBN: 978-1-57863-793-5

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available upon request.

Cover and text design by Sky Peck Design

Interior images used by permission: The Empress and The Fool from

The Radiant Tarot Alexandra Eldridge, 2021; The Nurturer from The Numinous Tarot Cedar

McCloud, 2018; The Empress from The Shining Tribe Tarot Rachel Pollack, 2001.

Typeset in Arno Pro

Printed in the United States of America

IBI

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

www.redwheelweiser.com/newsletter

This book is dedicated to the memory of the incomparable Jane Hawkner,
luminary and friend in life and death.

The artist seeks contact with his intuitive sense of the gods,
but in order to create his work, he cannot stay in this seductive and
incorporeal realm. It's the artist's responsibility to balance mystical
communication and the labor of creation.

PATTI SMITH, Just Kids

s children, creativity was our universal language. Do you remember? We spoke it fluently, and with ease. In fact, we only need to think back on our childhoods to know that creativity is a natural state, emanating from within.

We'd wake on a Sunday morning, stretch our limbs, and tumble into the dewy grass or build a castle of sand. We created because it felt good and right, and because it helped us care for ourselves. It helped us grow. Even as children, we knew this. We knew that joy and purpose were something worth creating. We were tiny spell-casters, and our words were our wands. Our imaginations were incantations.

It didn't matter if we wrote little books of poetry (the pages haphazardly stapled together), told stories to our invisible friends, or envisioned a quest through the stars as we peered out the window into the evening sky. We could easily create these whole worlds and fall headfirst into them. We changed our reality by daydreaming, by drawing, by writing, by dancing, by storytelling.

This, I believe, is where magic comes from: the mysterious but oh-so-real impulse to make life more beautiful, more joyful, and to feel connected. It is inherently within us and as luscious as flowers or silkbut that magic becomes stagnant and quiet if we don't tend to it. This is how The Empress can nurture us. The Empress tells us to take stock of our senses, to express ourselves wholly and truly, and to access the Venusian because we deserve it.

Sadly, The Empress's energy is often dismissed. We are pushed to ignore or forget its ways, especially in today's capitalist trenches. Especially when we are marginalized and fighting for safety and inclusion. Especially when we are told we are not good enough or talented enough or beautiful enough to dress in proverbial satin or sleep in the proverbial meadow of our imaginations.

The world tells us to live in false binaries and clean lines, to be rational, to not waste time on creativity without purpose. That art and pleasure and magic are relics of another time or are reserved for only certain people.

But we know better. This is why you're herereading this book. And this is why I am writing this, right now. Because The Empress tells us to make space for flowers, for light, for growth, for what's in between the lines, for messages from beyond what we see before us: to close our eyes and describe what we feel, to light a candle and divine an image within its dancing flame, to allow the Major Arcana to unfold the worlds we hold within us, to let the archetypes pull us into a garden of reflection and lessons and growth. Because life is deeper and more lush when we understand our Towers and our Stars.

The Empress teaches us that acts of creation are the ultimate practice of self-care. This authentic self, this abundant space, is not something we go findit's something we create Plouff and Snow write.

And, as Plouff and Snow express, creativity isn't hinged on any one definition. No, the creative self is the self that creates and indulges for the sake of creation and pleasure: dance, baking, arranging aromatic flowers, penning poems to read only to the moon, or creating a soft and nurturing home. It's about casting a circle and saying, I am here. Their book reminds us of thisthis abundance of peak-season flowers and freshly baked bread, as they writebecause it's our birthright.