Major Arcana
The Empress
growth, care, initiative, doubt
Upright
Fruitfulness and action lead Waite's list. The image is a crowned figure resting in ripe wheat, with a stream and trees behind, so the card points to things that grow when they are tended. Waite adds doubt and the unknown, since growth happens partly out of view.
Apply it to a business, a garden or a friendship: steady care now, results in their own season. The old phrase about fruitfulness is no forecast of pregnancy or long life. For those questions, talk to a doctor.
Reversed
Oddly, Waite's reversed meaning is bright: light, truth and a tangled matter coming clear. Another account gives vacillation, and both can apply when care has stalled.
Perhaps you keep changing your mind about what to look after, or you have given until little is left. Say aloud what is confusing you. Once the facts are plain, choose one thing to tend and let the others wait.
A card is a prompt for reflection. It cannot promise a result, and it is no substitute for medical, legal or financial advice.
In Waite's words
Upright: Fruitfulness, action, initiative, length of days; the unknown, clandestine; also difficulty, doubt, ignorance.
Reversed: Light, truth, the unravelling of involved matters, public rejoicings; according to another reading, vacillation.
From A. E. Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1910), Part 3, on Wikisource. The meanings above are by Cast & Chart.
Card art by Pamela Colman Smith, 1909, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.