IV The Emperor
Aries _ Mars

The card embodies masculine energy, leadership, and the enforcement of laws and tradition, a contrast to the more nurturing qualities of The Empress card.

There is no Freedom without Responsibility. The Emperor represents success through self-discipline.

The Emperor is a powerful and potent force in your life. He often appears to indicate a time of action and manifestation, a time when you are required to assume a role of responsibility or power, a time to ground your ideas and dreams into concrete reality.

It may also suggest a need in your life for more stability, order, and control in response to uncertainty and difficulty.

If you are finding it difficult to bring some project to completion or to make your life circumstances easier, the Emperor advises that you need to take control of the situation and take full responsibility yourself for it.

The Emperor often represents a stable time of certainty and the achievement of ambitions. He can appear in work- and career-related readings to indicate a boss or somebody in power who can either help or hinder you. It can also indicate father figure or yourself as a father or in a fatherly role to another person, and indicates the ways in which you rule, give guidance, and demonstrate leadership.

When the Emperor appears, he can also advise you, that you need to take a leading role in a project, rather than being a follower. In other situations, he may suggest that the best approach to the situation is to practice careful self-control, rather than seeking to control others. True power, the Emperor says, does not lie in having power over others but in recognizing the power within oneself.

This card points to ambition, plans for achievements, and great heights of triumph, showing a person who is ready to fight for their goal and take every action possible to make it happen. There is no room for waiting with the Emperor, no room for simply considering something or letting another person take action: there is only room for you to take action, and to do so soon.

Yet there is a structure and order to the Emperor that may not sit well with some, since he brings with him the rules and laws that create order. As such, this card may advise that you follow existing rules and guidelines rather than trying to find a way around them.

Keywords: Domination, authority, accomplishment, wisdom, stability.

Love/Relationships: You and a loved one or partner will unite and discuss plans for the future. The desire to take charge of a relationship.

Finance/Career: Force and strength of will needed to attain goals, determination will lead to success after victory over obstacles.