Autumnal Equinox and The Emperor: Balance and Inner Power

Happy Monday and welcome back to The Alchemy of Tarot. As this evening (in the Northern Hemisphere) is the fall equinox, we celebrate Mabon/ Wheel of the Year. Here we have the Harvest, and the descent of the Goddess Persephone into the underworld. The path that flows through the Wheel of the Year is also reflected in other archetypal journeys.  In the past few weeks, we have explored the path of the Fool throughout the Tarot. As the card of beginnings, the Fool first encountered the Magician and then the High Priestess. In these archetypes, we explored the conscious and unconscious acts of intuition and ritual. Last week the Fool discovered the Empress, the Mother, symbolizing abundance and nurturing. Today the Fool encounters the Emperor,  representing the wisdom of the Father, structure, and authority. This is the first card to offer rules to the childlike innocence of the Fool. Through this structure, he can better prepare for his journey through the more challenging cards of the Tarot.

Rider-Waite Tarot

This fourth card of the Major Arcana, corresponding to the planet Aries, also allows us to explore concepts of balance and inner power. The Emperor, husband to the Empress, is a noble, confident, and reserved leader seated on a large throne, a scepter in his right hand (representing the masculine) and an orb in his left hand (feminine). This balance of polarities, a visual representation of Jung's anima and animus archetypes, is also symbolic of the Great Rite. This amalgam of balancing elements; the polarity of masculine and feminine, religious wisdom and political authority, nurturing and discipline helps us (and the Fool) to find better balance within ourselves. We may feel liberated and carefree as the Fool, and empowered to rely on our intuition and magick as The Magician, High Priestess, and Empress, however unless we have the appropriate skill, discipline, structure, and training, we cannot progress much farther on our journey. As much as our inner children might not like authority figures and the structure they represent, these archetypes help to better define us contextually, and in turn allow us to plan, learn, and develop the tools we need along our individual paths. The Emperor reminds us to eat our metaphysical vegetables, take good physical care of ourselves and keep our focus strong and healthy. We can not hope to lead others, until we ourselves are empowered through discipline and hard work.

We may also see the Emperor as the Green Man, an anthropomorphized figure that connects us to the wild energies of nature. Here we find a 

Tarot of Transformation
Willow Arlenea & Jasmin Lee Cori

figure yielding a scepter with a crystal illuminating his power and alliance with nature. The viewpoint of the audience for this card is ground level, so the figure of the Green Man appears imposing and authoritarian (much as a father figure might appear to a young child). There is a dynamism to this image, and the world appears concave, enveloping him in a shroud of galaxies and starlight, as if all of the natural world was responding to his charismatic power. If we meditate on this image, or come across it in a reading, we find ourselves diving deep into our own divinity, and that which allows us to prosper. Through the individuation process we enter a balanced space of confidence and nurturing wisdom. 

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