The Fool and The Empress

The unformed thing beside the one that grows things, and the tradition reads it warmly. The Empress does not require The Fool to arrive competent; she is the condition in which something not yet finished is allowed to continue. It is one of the gentler pairs in the sequence.

Associated with being taken in rather than being chosen, and with a relationship where one person is visibly further along. Read as generous rather than unequal, though the second reading exists.

Beginning under somebody who has the resources and the patience for a beginner. The pair does not read as being carried; it reads as being given room.

Accept the support without pretending you did not need it. The Empress is not diminished by being leaned on and the pretence is what wastes it.