III. Those Who Worship the Empress

Some of her worshipers see the Empress as the patroness of artists. It is, after all, the feminine principle that gives birth, and since art is the most arcane of births it is only suitable that the Empress is praised as the aesthetic mother. She is at once both muse and ur-artiste. Artistic adherents of her faith often purposefully leave their works unfinished; since the Empress is associated with ideas--the seeds of artistic birth--they claim that works half-done are a fitting tribute to the ephemeral inspiration the Empress provides, but which cannot be fully realized.

Other worshipers of the Empress view her divinity as a fecund principle. These adherents believing in birthing families of enormous size. The pack, the horde, the writhing mass--that is the ideal they see within the Empress. The faithful of this order often depict the Empress as a goat-like being of ambiguous gender; "she" is a figure of motherhood, yes, but of a motherhood that surpasses the boundaries of biology. In their eyes, the Empress is the beginning of a multiplicity they must work to extend until the world teems with pious offspring.

The Empress is also regarded as a personification of love, but some adherents of her faith revere her as a manifestation of the cruelest form of love. They see the Empress's love as that of the conqueror, one who bends another's will to her own under the auspices of romance. The Empress's love is a colonial, imperialist love. Following her example, the faithful who worship this aspect of the Empress are usually gigolos and powerful courtesans who use their wiles to curry influence and power.