Anna K. 4 The Emperor

Anna K, 4 The Emperor

Here we see the Emperor sitting at his throne with his sword firming pointing to the ground and his right hand gripped tightly on the top. In his left hand is a golden round bottle with a cover. The Emporer legs are spread apart a little showing a door that is opened in the front of his throne. On the opened part of the door is writing. There is a carving of a bird above him. The floor is like the one Empress card, black and white checkered, but it continues to the upper part of the throne.

The book reads that 'the Emperor is the archetypal father, law and order, duty and responsibility, rationality and self-confidence. Negative influences of this card are rigidity, strickness, inability to show emotions.

I see this Emporer card as, 'It's my way, or the highway.'

Questions I have for this card are;

what kindof bird is that? I have seen it in Royal Shields and coat of arms.
Also, the significance of the checkered floor.

IV- The Emperor

This Emperor doesn't look very civilized, with his scruffy beard, mustache and long hair. He looks more like a barbarian, someone who does not represent higher consciousness but rather a more primitive level of consciousness and sense of right and wrong. He looks harsh and lacking in compassion, like he could give someone a death sentence without a second thought. He has power over other people while lacking in compassion, more the Bad Father archetype than the Good Father. Like an authoritarian father, where he dominates and others have to submit or take the consequences of not submitting to his will. In his case (different than the Empress) it makes sense that he is on a black and white rigidly-patterned floor. He looks like someone who would see things as black or white, with no gray area, and who believes he's always right. This may be stretching it, but it seems possibly significant that the black and white pattern is above him as well as below him, like he has elevated this black/white, right/wrong, good/bad, live/die thinking into his belief system that he doesn't question.
As a personality type, he would be bad news to have as a father, spouse or boss. There's no room for the other person to have a different view. It has to be all his way, always. He could be a bully and a brute. Love is lacking. Power and control are all.
It kind of seems like a representation of the male ego taken to an extreme; also of a narcissist. He is not a ruler who cares about the wellbeing of his subjects. He just cares that they do his bidding and follow his rules.

So, yes: an authoritarian, controlling, domineering male who always has to be "right". If it's a part of you, it would be what Freud called a severe superego, always judging and finding fault, whose approval you can never get. His sword points downward; in Justice, the sword is upward. I don't think this is the sword of truth and justice, but the sword that represents a threat: You better ..... or else ...
An abusive father, who you follow out of fear only, who seeks to squash rather than nurture your spirit.
Even though each card has a light side and a shadow side, I only see the shadow side in this card. I would want to get as far away from him as I could.

One more thing: the tablet next to his left leg, which has writing on it. A perfect symbol of things being "written in stone", black/white, no gray.

And the gold orb that he holds: what does that represent? Something he can knock you over the head with? (just kidding)

He reminds me of the role of the father in the psychoanalytic philosophy of Lacan: the father as symbol of the external system, law and the (rational) word, to separate the baby from the mother (organic nature).

Together with the preceding cards this would make quite a logical sequence: first the undivided consciousness, then the rise of the ego (split consciousness - unconscious) = magician, then the confrontation with 'the other' in a symbiotic organic/emotional bond, including the frustration of a lack of control (having to cry for food) = empress, then a third party breaking up the emotional unity (feeding off of an emotional merger) and introducing a triangle (the mother has other relationships, there is an outer world the child will have to find a position in) = emperor, etc.

I believe Anna somewhere mentioned having a bit of a background in Jungian psychology and philosophy?