Celtic Wisdom Tarot
Text by Caitlin Matthews, art by Olivia Raynor
Destiny Books, 1999  ISBN 0-89281-720-8

The Shaper (Empress) shows a basket overflowing with fruit sitting near a cornucopia with grains pouring out.  They are both surrounded by a green branches bearing red Hawthorne berries.  Looking over the basket and cornucopia is an image of Triple Mother, who was honored throughout the Celtic lands.  She is surrounded by humans, animals and birds.  Birds are traditionally the companions of the Celtic Goddess of Life and Death.  Mortal and semimortal women also often take the shapes of birds.  And rays of light shine forth from her head.

The Book says:  The Shaper of Growth gives life to all that is.  The Mother maintain the fertility of the land, the life of its animals and people, and were often venerated as the guardians of the land's sovereignty.  They maintain their loving watch over all life, transmuting the Soul from death into life.  The Mothers are the midwives of the Soul, nurturing it with qualities that enable it to respond to the good things of life.  They also imbue the Soul with its instinct or mother-wit, the basic common sense by which we are protected and sustained.
Keywords:  Abundance, wealth, fulfillment, reverence for the earth, motherhood, fertility, loving guardianship, value, house, health, harmony and wholeness, emotional growth.
Reversed:  Infertility, poverty, delay in accomplishment, squandering of resources, laziness, inaction, emotionally immature, self-neglect.
Soul-Wisdom:  The Shaper of Growth gives life to all that is.  The Mothers are the midwives of the Soul, nurturing it with qualities that enable it to respond to the good things of life.  They also imbue the Soul with its instinct of mother-wit, the basic common sense by which we are protected and sustained.  What spiritual nurture is your Soul seeking now?

Bee's Buzz:  This card represents the gifts we are offered from the Earth, the blessings we receive from friends and family and the bounty offered all around us.  The Shaper is the source of all of these things.  She is the one grants us her blessings and allows us to bloom and flower under her beneficent gaze.  She not only offers us her blessings and her abundant gifts, but she reminds us that we need to share them will all things who share the Earth with us.  Her gifts are not just for people, but for animals, plants and other inhabitants of the planet.  By her nature she also symbolizes the cycles of life.  As well as life, she helps the Soul pass into death.  Along with abundance and prosperity, there are cycles of scarcity and want.  But the Shaper reminds us the these times are a nature part of life's cycle.  They don't indicate a loss of nurturance or caring.  The Shaper's abundance and fruitfulness bring us her blessings and bounty.  But if we hoard these things and don't share them with those around us, then we are denigrating her gifts.  They are meant to be shared, enjoyed and appreciated; not hoarded and hidden so that others won't take them from us.  If we hide these gifts from ourselves or from others, then we are not honoring the Shaper and don't truly understand her gifts.  And if we don't use them, we risk losing them.  And once again we are reminded that these gifts may not be of a physical nature.  If we have creative gifts that we hide from the world, then we are not honoring our creative spirit - a writer who doesn't write (even if it is never published) is a sad thing indeed.  Take time today to honor the gifts of the Shaper - both the physical and the spiritual ones.