The Major Arcana and the Hero’s Journey: The Emperor

This is Big Daddy, Big Business, Big Government, The Pentagon, and Science and Industry. All the things we love to hate, but still count on to keep us safe from foreign invasion and common criminals, bring food to our tables, solve problems, distribute Social Security and Medicare, and fix the potholes in the streets.

The Emporer is the quintessential macho man; the fertile, tough, authority/father figure; The Magician on a double dose of testosterone. He stands for law and order, assertiveness, fairness, strong leadership, use of practical intelligence to guide and support creativity, protection of the weak, and all round studliness. A super hero, you might say. But think again. Super heroes swoop in and right wrongs, uphold law and order, out wit the bad guys, and slap them around. But then they leave. The Emporer stays and deals with the consequences of his actions and takes the flack if he bungles it. That, of course, is the only way to create an empire, rule a country, build a business, or conquer an enemy. And this wreaks havoc with his image. To paraphrase the quote attributed to Abraham Lincoln, “You can [please] some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not [please] all of the people all of the time.”* And then there are the Evil Emperors like Hitler, Nero, Ghengis Khan, and G.W. Bush that send people screaming into the streets whenever a strong leader emerges and begins to accumulate power.

The Emperor’s letter is heh or hei, whose image is window. Windows let air and light into a room and let people look out to see what’s coming and decide what to do about it. Looking ahead and thinking clearly are basic Emperor skills.

He is associated with the astrological sign, Ares, the sign of the leader, the pioneer, and the warrior. Ares, the Greek god of war is, of course ruled by the planet Mars, the Roman god of war. Ares’s symbol is the ram. No surprises here.

The Gods I associate with The Emporer are the top guys in all the pantheons and all the horned gods. It’s easy for us to see The Emperor archetype in Zeus, Jupiter, and Thor, as they sit up on Mt. Olympus or in Asgard tossing down the occasional thunderbolt. Zeus was particularly fond of raping (or seducing, depending on how you look at it) both mortal and immortal women. He had lots of children—Wikipedia lists nearly a hundred. He became a swan and seduced Leda, who later gave birth to the twins, Castor and Pollux, and Helen of Troy. He ate the Titan, Metis,

goddess of wisdom and knowledge, who was pregnant with his child, because he was afraid of a prophecy that said her daughter would be greater than he. Metis gave birth to Athena inside Zeus’s body and she grew there until Zeus started getting headaches and called for Hephaestus, the smith of the gods and general fix it man, to split open his head (the original splitting headache). Out burst Athena from his forehead, fully armed with helmet, shield, spear, and lightning bolt. A Jungian patriarchal nightmare if ever there was one!

We have trouble understanding the horned gods, and the Catholic Church engineered much of this misunderstanding. It worked very hard at

converting pagan Europe to Christianity, and one of its tricks was changing the pagan gods into demons and devils—with horns, of course, because the most important pagan gods had horns. And they had horns because horns represented the physical power and reproductive potency of the animals (who all had horns) that formed the economic basis of the ancient hunting and farming societies. Their phallic shape indicated raw sexuality. In a final masterstroke, the Church’s propaganda machine gave horns to the fool and the cuckold, two of the most laughable figures in medieval society.

But to a pagan, horns represent power, virility, wealth, fertility, and kingship. The coinage of Alexander the Great’s empire bore his image wearing rams horns, the symbol of The Emperor.
The two horned dieties that come to mind are the Greek God Pan and the Celtic god Cernunos, mighty lords of the forest and protectors of nature.

They are bawdy, earthy deities, bursting with raw, sexual power. It’s difficult to imagine them addressing the senate, chairing a board meeting, or commanding a battle, but I have no doubt that they could get their “point” across.

In a reading, this card means stability, practical intelligence, strong leadership, control, a protector, or an authority figure. If it’s reversed, there’s trouble. Depending on where it is in the reading and the other cards around it, it could be the querent, the querent’s struggle with authority, a protective influence, or a powerful person in the querent’s life. This person may have good intentions, but sometimes the unsubtle, heavy-handed energy of the Emperor is not what is needed to solve a problem.

In the hero’s journey The Emporer seldom appears as the hero, he’s already made his hero’s journey—several probably. He’s too straightforward to be a shape shifter, and it’s unlikely that such an important person would be a herald, unless he offers a quest to one of his children. He can be a mentor, an ally, a threshold guardian, and/or a trickster. The plot really thickens when he is a shadow.

*the correct word is “fool”.