I
The Emperor is one of those cards that never seems to get a fair shake in the tarot. Ironic, since this card is one of its most powerful. The seated figure, the red cloak, the armor, the mountains behind him…all of it associated with raw, dominant, masculine power. If the Empress is the warm, inviting, nurturing all-mother, then the Emperor is the all-father: stern, imposing, brutal, stark. The Empress soothes, tends and nourishes, while the Emperor disciplines, punishes, and scolds. Most people, at some point in their lives, in some form of their lives, have had to weather mistreatment and abuse from Emperors in their own personal orbits — if not fathers, then brothers, uncles, grandfathers…and beyond that, friends, lovers, and partners. They’ve have had to live through the effects of Emperors assuming their control and power through violence and force. If not through a closed fist, then at least through a sharpened word. The Emperor then, is a symbol of the abuse of power, at its most masculine.
The Japaridze Tarot, painted by famed surrealist artist Nino Japaridze, labels its Emperor card as War, with a starkly realized black and white sketch of vaguely humanoid forms locked in terrible, grotesque, mortal struggle. Their formations vaguely resemble the battle lines of ancient armies poised to meet each other in a long-forgotten battle. The Women in Science Tarot, a uniquely feminist and STEM-centric tarot deck, keeps the name of the Emperor, but the card features not a virile man at the peak of his armoured prime, but the withered and aged body of J. Robert Oppenheimer, standing in the pyramidal shadow of the Trinity Atomic Test Site memorial. A mushroom cloud towers over them both, growing and glowering in the distance. It is at the same time both the apotheosis and the pathos of masculinity — the decrepit and weakened man juxtaposed with the penultimate expression of masculine power, perhaps the greatest in the history of human civilization: nuclear weapons.
II
The Emperor is one of those cards that never seems to get a fair shake in the tarot. Ironic, since this card is one of its most powerful. My father was a powerful man, like the Emperor. He radiated power in a way that when he entered a room, you could somehow sense his presence coming through the threshold, feel his essence coming through the doors. Like my voice, his voice was of a higher pitch and tone than most men, but his words still came off with a booming bellow that never failed to make others take notice and direct their focus at him. The Emperor then, is a symbol of will, at its most masculine.
For all of his seemingly unbreakable will and power, he never seemed to get an even break in life. During periods of wistful and nostalgic scorn, he fed me bits and pieces about his life in the Philippines before settling down in Canada to focus on my mother and raising me. As a factory foreman working for Westinghouse, he had boldly put himself in the firing line on behalf of the people under his supervision. He paid dearly for it in the form of microaggressions and the promise of upward mobility forever executed with awkward glances and silence fired through the back of his head. One time, while housesitting for wealthier friends, he had let some of his homeless family members stay with him. Somehow, behind his back, they had contacted the owners and made some rather unsavoury and untrue accusations about him. His family members would end up staying and continuing the housesit; my father was kicked out. And then later, he was in Canada, working a toxic and degrading engineering job at a corrupt plastics factory, all to support a son who was a little too disabled and likely a little too queer for his liking. I remember him verbally launching himself at me once for losing myself in a long stare at cloud lighting far off in the distance. “Are you going to sit in the corner and cry!? CRY LIKE A WOMAN!?” he would say, after his screaming had routed my emotional resolve, leaving me defeated and defenceless.
III
The Emperor is one of those cards that never seems to get a fair shake in the tarot. Ironic, since this card is one of its most powerful. Long before I stopped assuming that my power was in me being straight and heterosexual, I was drawn to the misfit queer crowd in my B.Ed teacher training program. I was drawn to their rebellious spirit, and gravitated towards their disillusionment with the more mainstream students and their social politics. Their refusal to bow down to what others thought of them, and their relentless pursuit of seeing what no one else could see, resonated with me. Yet, as an outwardly presenting cis man, I would always look to them like I was one of their oppressors. Too much unacknowledged queerness to neatly fit in with the other smiling and normative cis and hetero students, and yet, still a little too cis and hetero for the subversively risqué queer crowd. To them, through me, the Emperor, is a symbol of oppression at its most masculine.
I would never stop — have never stopped — carrying that feeling of insufficiency with me. The worry that I don’t come across as being queer enough. The hidden panic that someone will expose me as being a liar for calling myself queer, that asexual or grey asexual or demi or whatever the hell microlabels I’ve chosen to call myself don’t count and will never count. That for the same reasons someone will expose me as being a liar even when I’m in a space for asexuals and ace people. The anxiety that other ace or queer people still see the oppressor or abuser in me by virtue of my Adam’s Apple, my facial hair, and my deeper voice. It is only when I realize that others share the same fear — my other grey asexual and demisexual online friends, my other asexual friends and my bisexual friends — that I worry less about people seeing the Emperor’s penetrating glare in my eyes.
IV
The Emperor is one of those cards that never seems to get a fair shake in the tarot. Ironic, since this card is one of its most powerful. For a long time I unconsciously felt like my masculinity, and all of the perceived power and sexual expectations that it carried, was something I would have to carry around with me forever: Meet a woman who could perform domestically, settle down with them, consummate the union, then build my castle and establish my eminent domain around her, and then use her to sire my offspring to be the heirs to my empire. I thought I could be powerful, in my own real and tangible way, by sticking to the script and following what the rest of society told me to do. It didn’t matter how I felt about the armour. What mattered was that I was wearing it, and that I had to perform the role it bore.
But what happens when the Emperor wants to abdicate his throne? When he realizes that there is no freedom in adhering to this script, but that it is simply slavery to societal norms? Maybe he doesn’t want to meet a woman. Maybe instead, he may want to meet a man, or a person who didn’t or couldn’t ever fit such boxed classifications. Maybe he doesn’t even want to meet anyone at all. And if he did meet someone, maybe there are other things he’d rather be doing with them than consummating a marriage, or raising heirs. Maybe then, this is the root of someone’s true power: The power to find one’s own path, and not be afraid to refuse the script someone feeds them. To say, “no”, in face of societal norms surrounding masculinity and sexuality and romance and relationships. Maybe power is knowing when and how to walk away and live one’s life on a totally separate system of ideals: Ideals for being healthy and affirming. Ideals that say yes, I will cry like a woman. Yes, I will not fight you, or use my army on you (or even have an army at all) or use the atomic weapons of my fists and screams at you (and in fact, I will lay them on the ground and strip myself bare of all of my armour). I want all of these things now. I want to strip myself naked to my very core and shout out that I love you, and I should be the one to serve you. And after that, we can learn to serve and nurture each other. I have never gotten a fair shake in life, because I have lived for other peoples norms and rules and not once thought to live for myself.
It is only once I’ve gotten out of that chair, taken my robe off and shed my armour that I’ve begun to know what true power really is, and what it really looks like. It doesn’t use fists. Doesn’t fire words. Doesn’t detonate bombs. It marches with the disarmed and the disenfranchised, and the disempowered, and shouts Hands Up, Don’t Shoot.
For the first time, I feel like I can finally give myself — and us — the fair shake I know I’ve deserved all of this time.
Previous: The Empress
Next: The Hierophant
