The Emperor

✦ Associations

Fire / Aries (Mars)

✦ Keywords

Cultivating growth through supportive structures, stability, order, personal power, leadership, stewardship.

✦ Quote

Yet he who reigns within himself, and rules passions, desires, and fears, is more a king— which every wise and virtuous man attains. — John Milton, Paradise Regained All kings is mostly rapscallions. — Mark Twain, Huckleberry Finn

✦ Meaning

✦ Critical Context

In an age when the rule of man has led to the subjugation, slavery, and genocide of humans, to the extinction of entire species and cultures, and to impending environmental catastrophe, it's hard to imagine the Emperor as a good thing. Traditionally depicted in a martial and/or regal fashion, the Emperor has long carried connotations of authoritarian power, war, the might of human civilization, and the cold unemotional rule of law. Not a leader so much as an oppressor.

✦ Author's Reinterpretation

I argue that this old rusty bully is no Emperor at all, but a bent and twisted usurper, poisoned by toxic masculinity and enthroned by the greedy, powerful, and fearful scions of the white supremacist capitalist patriarchy. As I write this in 2020, much of Western culture is gripped in a process of awakening to how we've been controlled by and complicit in systems of oppression. We are in a process of unlearning and unsettling, of reclamation and reparation. We are collectively imagining different ways of power, support, protection, provision.

✦ Archetypal Shift

As part of this revisioning, the archetypes of the human consciousness are shifting. The Tarot is a system of archetypes, and so the cards must shift as well.

✦ Emperor and Empress Relationship

If the Empress is nature, then the Emperor is civilization, which is to say humankind separated from nature. Our challenge (and so far, failure) as modern humans is to understand that we are not the rulers nor owners of the earth but, if anything, are charged with its tending. As Demeter withdraws the plenty of the earth when her daughter Persephone is kidnapped, so can nature provide and take away. Indeed, the Empress and the earth do not need the Emperor at all, though they can benefit from the partnership. The Emperor, however, is dependent on them. Without the Empress of creation and the fertile earth, the Emperor has no resources, no abundance, no wealth. The Fisher King's land is barren without the well-maidens of the grail. We are trapped in a wounded wasteland.

✦ Alternative Models of Leadership

Instead of presidents and kings, perhaps we need to look elsewhere for our Emperors. As the farmer, the Emperor plows the fields, rotates the crops, consults the farmer's almanac, and applies order and structure to the cultivation of the earth's bounty. As the scientist, the Emperor perceives the intelligent design in nature and works with it, around it, within it, to heal the sick and support ecosystems back into thriving. As the architect, they plan cities and map watersheds and design green buildings, engineering new ways to live in supportive harmony with the natural world.

✦ Benevolent Stewardship

Like any good leader, our Emperor is wise enough to learn from the past and progressive enough to innovate for the future. In their hands, the tools of civilization need not be weapons, but instead can be wielded to fulfill any Emperor's highest duty: the benevolent stewardship of the land and its people. If the Empress is natural creative growth sprawling its wild fruiting vines, then the Emperor is the sturdy trellis that lends its structure so that the vines may climb closer to the sun.

✦ Practical Guidance

When the Emperor appears in a reading, it is to empower us into the benevolent stewardship of our own lives and the cultivation of sustainable abundance within our domains. The Emperor instructs us to turn a wise eye onto the running of our individual kingdoms. What could be working better? Where may we be of better service to ourselves and those who rely on us? How are we showing up with authenticity and integrity? How may we build better systems and structures for a more functional and fruitful life?

✦ Call to Personal Power

The Emperor charges us to step into our personal power, to stand up for ourselves and our principles, and to employ our intelligence and tools into the service of building wise and sustainable foundations for the future. Here, we learn that we never need to take power from others because we already have our own.