04-The Emperor – Reversed Golden Deck

Your Chosen Card – The Emperor Reversed Golden Deck

When reversed, the Emperor suggests that in some way you may have been remiss in fulfilling your role as a leader, organizer, or person in charge. Perhaps you have been pussyfooting around or, at the other end of the spectrum, acting in a dictatorial manner. Don’t be a wimp; it’s time to act your age and put your life in order. You need to analyze the situation, establish boundaries and limits, and develop a plan so that you do what needs to be done. President Harry S. Truman kept a sign on his desk that said ‘The buck stops here!’ to remind him that the president has final authority to make decisions but also ultimate responsibility for their consequences.

Keywords Reversed: Domination, arrogance, inflexibility, conventionality, butting heads, wimpishness, impotence, lack of confidence, immaturity, lack of reason or excessive rationality, indecision, disorder, loss, lack of structure, male infertility, abuse of power, vanity, inability to get things done, failure to take charge when you need to.

Key IV: The Emperor
Myths/Archetypes: The Great Father. The Ruler. The Knight of Knights. Zeus. Yahweh. Ouranos. Priapus. George Washington. Head of State.
Dates of Aries: 21 March–20 April (tropical); 14 April–13 May (sidereal)
Astrology: Aries, the Ram (a Fire sign ruled by Mars)
Numerology: 4 (Emperor) ~ 1 + 3 (Death) ~ 2 + 2 (The Fool)

Mathers: Realization, effect, development; (R) Stoppage, check, immature, unripe.

When The Emperor is reversed you can pretty much take it that life is going well but that’s when life takes us by surprise.  If The Emperor is unclear it may help to choose a card from the Major Arcana to provide more insight into what it is The Emperor is trying to tell you.  If you had a particular issue in  mind, or want to seek clarification on something else, you can also choose again to get more guidance.

This chosen card is part of your reversed card reading for The Emperor using cards from the Golden Tarot Deck. You will find many more tarot pages that will be of great help if you need tarot card meanings. Use the search at the bottom of the page. We have some amazing tarot books for you to browse. Please see below.


Here are some snippets from a few of my favorite books

Complete Book of Tarot
Book Details
Complete Book of Tarot: The fantastical nature of such stories prompted me to become a sceptic at a young age. In each successive grade in Catholic school, we studied the Baltimore Catechism with its images of white milk in glass bottles being stained with ‘evil’ black spots every time we sinned. The white milk represented our immortal souls and the black spots all the bad things we had done. The only way to remove these evil spots was to pray and do penance. The alternative was to burn eternally in the fires of hell. Each year the catechism began with the same questions and answers, which we had to memorize verbatim:

Tarot Books

Complete Book of Tarot: Sign 1: Aries and the Emperor—How are you expressing your power, authority, and individual identity in the world?

Portable Magic: While concentrating on the face of the person with whom you wish to unite your mind, lay all seven planetary modifiers on the circle, beginning with the Emperor in Aries if any planet in the person’s birth chart falls on that sign, and proceeding clockwise. The heads of the modifiers point outward, in the same orientation as the trumps of the circle they cover. Planets seldom fall directly on the middle of signs in astrological charts, but the planetary modifiers are always placed directly over the trumps of the signs. If two planets fall on the same sign, both modifiers are placed on top of that zodiacal trump. The circle will resonate strongly with the identifying energies of the person you seek to reach.

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Portable Magic: While concentrating on the face of the person with whom you wish to unite your mind, lay all seven planetary modifiers on the circle, beginning with the Emperor in Aries if any planet in the person’s birth chart falls on that sign, and proceeding clockwise. The heads of the modifiers point outward, in the same orientation as the trumps of the circle they cover. Planets seldom fall directly on the middle of signs in astrological charts, but the planetary modifiers are always placed directly over the trumps of the signs. If two planets fall on the same sign, both modifiers are placed on top of that zodiacal trump. The circle will resonate strongly with the identifying energies of the person you seek to reach.