The Emperor Card
CW: discussion of personal/collective childhood trauma
The Emperor is a card I often see changed in modern decks to represent a more diverse approach to how we shape our worlds and who we respect as authoritative. I think this speaks deeply to the themes in the Emperor card (law, society, patriarchy, control, dominion/domination) and the discomfort we feel around them. By “we” I mean modern tarot readers, often women, femmes, and queer folks.
In the Taschen Library of Esoterica: Tarot volume, written and edited by Jessica Hundley, the Emperor is summarized as such,
Smith-Waite Emperor by Pamela Colman Smith and Thoth Emperor by Frieda Harris.
“The Emperor represents total power, the divine masculine, the cosmic father. He is authority and order, regulation and rationale. He reigns over systems of knowledge, discipline, strategy, and law. His rule is resolute, yet paternal. The Emperor relies upon structure and control to create security and stability. He protects and commands.”
These themes, and the name of the card, derive in some ways from the Roman Empire, where, according to Rachel Pollack,
“The concept of law versus chaos was carried to the point where stability, or ‘law and order’ to use the modern term, became virtues in themselves, apart from the inherent morality of those laws. No progress can be made in conditions of anarchy (runs the argument); bad laws need to be changed, but first the law must be obeyed at all costs. Any other approach can only destroy society. Today, we see this viewpoint embodied in the abstraction we call the ‘system’. The Romans saw it more concretely in the personal figure of the Emperor, whom they described as the father of all his people.”
The Emperor can be seen as a counterpart to the Empress but it is too convenient to simply see them as Father and Mother. The Emperor also finds a counterpart in the Hierophant, as the Empress finds one in the High Priestess. The Emperor is Father to the Empress’s Mother and is also Law to the Hierophant’s Religion. In the webs between these cards is where I stumble upon the Emperor.
In my personal mythology (autobiography, lol) the Empress found the Emperor and the Emperor didn’t pull his weight as Father and so the Empress then found the Hierophant. In other words, my mother chose to raise my siblings and I in organized religion to give us the stability and structure that our own father could not.
Each and every one of us have some imprint of what the Empress can be as light and shadow through our own experiences of being mothered or lack thereof. The Empress as archetype is connected to nature, nurturance, creativity, abundance or on the flip side: abandonment & coldness or smothering & excess. For many generations however, experiences of being fathered have been tainted by toxic masculinity, unrecognized war (& other) trauma/PTSD, abandonment or neglect, leaving many with only the negative aspects of the Emperor/Father archetype. Obviously, I am simplifying here and these experiences of Mother and Father archetypes are far from universal. Nor am I a qualified to speak on this as a sociologist, psychologist, or historian, I am merely an observer with my own biases and experiences.
The diversity of experiences of the Father archetype has inspired many ways in which the Emperor has been subverted and re-worked in the context of tarot. Here are some of my favourites from my personal collection.
L to R: the Fountain Tarot, The New World Tarot by Cristy C. Road, and Slow Holler Tarot
The Fountain Tarot does not rename the Emperor but updates the imagery to evoke architecture and design. The Next World Tarot by Cristy C. Road renames the Emperor to the Teacher. Road says of the Teacher,
“Having learned from experience, failed from obstacles, and regrouped through experimenting with right and wrong, the Teacher gathers her research and separates it into control and variable positions. She wants us to be able to chose between self-reflection and action - righteous control or an abuse of power. The Teacher asks you to hone your wisest self and turn chaos into a map.”
And as if that map is spread out in front of us, in the Slow Holler Tarot, the Emperor becomes the Navigator, described as follows,
“They have authority without conceit, as they know their capacities as well as their limitations. Often skilled at working within or through institutions, they know how to understand the signs, speak the language, and adopt the norms of their context to achieve their goals.”
And finally, the first deck to turn this card inside-out for me, was the Collective Tarot’s version, titled The Code. Their guidebook says,
The Collective Tarot Major Arcana 4: the Code
“The Code is the ruler of the systems that define the cultures and communities we are a part of - the rules, structures and unspoken hierarchies of the scenes and aspects of society with which we choose to identify ourselves. It can be very empowering to feel you’re a part of something, to know the system and the rules and to know where you belong. This card shows those aspects of queer culture we can claim as our own, the fun stuff; the ways we redefine gender and reclaim our own authority over ourselves. But it can also represent the way we police and are policed by the others in our community. Do you play by the rules? Do you fit into the order of things around you? Do you fit into the categories of butch/femme, top/bottom, dom/sub, boy/girl, L,G,B,T, or Q? What are you and who do you do?”
The Collective Tarot’s work on this card is so essential that I could quote the entire section of their guidebook! They go on to discuss the “Daddy” quality of this card and the inherent sexual energy though its connection to the Mars-ruled zodiac sign of Aries.
And, I must include this bit because it is so important to the themes of this card,
“We need to be “out” about the ways we condone the uses and abuses of power and misogyny in queer communities. Take time to think about reclamation and empowerment vs. mirroring the oppressive constructs we have been inundated with over the course of our lives.”
For my version/pendant, I have, as usual, tried to strip it down to what I can fit onto a small oval. The ram’s head for Aries/Mars. The upward triangle for alchemical fire but also referencing the barren (yet phallic) mountains often depicted in this card. The orb or globe representing dominion and power over others.
On the reverse of the pendant I’ve used the sceptre from the Smith-Waite card as the main feature of the sigil. The sceptre is an ankh, Egyptian symbol of life, “to indicate that under the law he bears the power of life and death, and will hopefully use it well,” according to Pollack. The glyph of Mars, which has come to be known in many contexts as the “male” symbol, bursts out of the top of the ankh in a configuration that, after I carved it, reminded me of the Artist Formerly Known as Prince’s symbol. Prince had a powerful Mars signature in his natal chart, with his rising sign being Scorpio, ruled by a Mars in Aries. His sexuality was so important to his public image but was also fluid, a subversion of the Emperor’s masculine power.
Bibliography
Hundley, J. (2020). Library of Esoterica: Tarot. Köln, GmbH: Taschen.
Pollack, R. (2007). Seventy eight degrees of wisdom. San Francisco, CA: Red Wheel/Weiser.
Road, C. (2017). Next World Tarot. New York, NY: CROADCORE The Art of Cristy C. Road.
Various Authors. (2007). The Collective Tarot Guidebook. Portland, OR: Eberhardt Press and Brown Printing.
Various Authors. (2017). Slow Holler Tarot Guidebook. North Carolina.
