The Emperor Commands Us to Be Responsible for Our Own Actions

Law 4 (The Emperor/Aries/Fire): Take charge of yourself; move forward with confidence.

The Emperor of the Tarot represents absolute authority as he sits confidently upon a throne. He also symbolizes an expression of male energy. Most men innately have a drive to take action to get or win what they want. When my elder daughter was only 5 years old, she astutely observed that “boys have winning power while girls have healing power.” Having acknowledged that, I believe we also can embody both male and female qualities and energies. So, as a woman, if you do not embody the male qualities in yourself, the men in your life will hold their power over you. If you don’t take charge of yourself, then others will direct or control you in ways that suit them more than you. So when the Emperor appears in a reading, it is important to take the power in your own hands, take initiative, and carpe diem!

Until I learned to take more responsibility for my own actions, I found myself always second to the men in my life. I was surrounded by male bosses from early on. Both my birth and step-fathers owned and ran companies which put them in the habit of dictating how life should be lived from the moment you woke up in the morning and that ought to be bright and early they insisted! I clearly had something to learn about my own male energy from men in positions of power. Whether in love or in work, the best of men wanted me by their side supporting and respecting them, but they did not necessarily turn around to be supportive and respectful of me. Eventually after much blaming of the men for my heartache and loss of self-esteem, I realized I should look more closely at the philosophical mirror. What did this mirror reflect back about my own male energy? On the positive side, I saw confidence, freedom, and independence. On the negative side, I saw emotional selfishness. So I said to myself, ok it is time for me to take charge of my own male energy, and to quit being so emotionally self-centered. As soon I made this affirmation to myself, miraculously all the men in life from fathers, to bosses, to partners started to be supportive and respectful towards me and they remain so to this day.

Now that I’ve achieved that much, I’m asking myself why I haven’t become a boss IF I have had so many bosses in my immediate mirror? At 42, many of my friends with similar education and experience to myself are in positions of authority. Upon reflection, I realize that the mirror shows you what you are capable of becoming but equally as much shows you what you might want to avoid becoming. I’ve observed that being a boss is not as wonderful as it might seem. Your business becomes like your child and you must mind it constantly. The burdens of overheads, employee reliability, and financial sustainability weigh on business owners and bosses greatly. For many years, I considered running my own creative and intuitive arts center, but then with meditation on the Emperor I realized I could do my own creative and independent work without the burdens. As a tarot reader and teacher for example, I am happy enough renting space for my work in direct correlation to client demand so there is never a pressure of overheads.

So when you draw the Emperor card, examine your own male energy and make an affirmation of how you would like to confidently move forward and behold the emperor in yourself!