Tarot card meanings · Major Arcana 4
What does The Emperor mean in tarot?
In A. E. Waite's Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1910), the Emperor upright means “Stability, power, protection, realization; a great person; aid, reason, conviction; also authority and will”, and reversed “Benevolence, compassion, credit”.
Upright
Stability, power, protection, realization; a great person; aid, reason, conviction; also authority and will.Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot, Part 3
Reversed
Benevolence, compassion, credit.Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot, Part 3
What does the picture show?
He has a form of the Crux ansata for his sceptre and a globe in his left hand. He is a crowned monarch—commanding, stately, seated on a throne, the arms of which are fronted by rams' heads.Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot, Part 2
Where does the Emperor fall in a reading?
The Emperor belongs to the Major Arcana. On this site you draw three cards, which take three of the places in the ten-card method Waite describes: “This covers him”, “This crosses him”, “This is before him”. The same card reads differently in each place, and the I Ching cast beside it may agree or disagree.
Ask one question. Draw three cards, and cast an I Ching hexagram beside them to see where East and West agree. Free.
Draw three cardsWaite's words are quoted as printed, and left out where they speak of money, law, illness or disaster. The pictures are the 1909 deck drawn by Pamela Colman Smith. For entertainment and self-reflection.