Everything about The Emperor makes me bristle. The feeling I get when I look him in the eye, brings me back to childhood, being born as someone who doesn’t like to be told what to do. “You are not the boss of me!” I would declare and stomp off and slam the door.
The Emperor is The Holy Roman Emperor, the Father archetype, The Leader, the enneagram 8. Yup, I have Emperor qualities. But the mature Emperor is not a boss in the way you might imagine. He is the epitomy of power but he exercises his power with authority not force. These days words like power and authority are loaded, sometimes triggering. The world feels out of control, and people who are “in” power do the unthinkable, the unimaginable. But this is not the Emperor’s power.
The Emperor of the tarot sits on a throne ornamented with rams’ heads and holds a sceptre with an ankh on the top. The sceptre is a symbol of sovreign authority but it also represents a staff or rod which a shepherd might use to herd his flock. The sceptre and The Emperor himself are political in nature. Aries the ram is a fire sign and of the three fire signs it is the most bold. However, as usual, Pamela Colman Smith pivots to choose the ankh on top of the sceptre, and the ankh is the Egyptian symbol of life: life on this earth, eternal life, reincarnation. There is a sense that The Emperor must in fact answer to a power greater than himself, which then reminds us that systems of earthly power are still subject to mystery.
In Kim Krans’ Wild Unknown deck, she depicts both Empress and Emperor as trees, The Empress tree stands with the moon and The Emperor tree stands in the sun. Both depictions remind us of what it is to be of this world, and also the power and strength of nature and the cycle of days. It’s not lost on me that Krans shows us the feminine energy of the moon and the masculine energy of the sun, but they are both trees, rooted in this world.
Offerings
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Xo Hanna