EP 131.5: Tarot Analysis: The Emperor | Major Arcana | Willpower, Authority, and Rigidity

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Summary

The next Tarot card in my Tarot Analysis series is my portrayal of Joel as The Emperor!

Joel is one of the main characters of my @tapas_app graphic novel, "The Book of Joel," which you can read here: https://tapas.io/series/The-Book-of-Joel/info

See full view and read the full description on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/posts/iv-emperor-joel-55674750

In its upright form, the Emperor stands for authority, structure, and establishment. It also represents a father figure (which Joel later becomes, as we can see in the fantasy version of his story, "Scale, Blood, and Bone" by @tete.depunk).

As @tete.depunk and I have discussed, Joel is a man of authority. Although he's not in a position of power, he has a lot of convictions and beliefs that he holds firm to and won't budge from. He takes pride in establishing a structure for himself, although this structure can sometimes become too rigid for his own good...

Transcription

Hi, everyone. Today, we're going to be talking about The Emperor. I have chosen to represent The Emperor as Joel from my Tapas graphic novel, "The Book of Joel." You can read it using the link in my description.

I have chosen Joel as The Emperor because in its upright form, The Emperor represents structure establishment and authority. It also represents a father figure, which Joel later becomes as we see in the first few chapters of Tete.Depunk's "Scale, Blood, and Bone," a Tapas fantasy novel that she is writing based on some of the events in "The Book of Joel."

As I've discussed on my podcast, "The Nuts and Bolts of Writing," Joel is a man of authority although he's not in a position of power (since he's just a bookkeeper). He has a lot of convictions and beliefs that he holds firm to and won't budge from. He takes pride in establishing a structure for himself although the structure can be too rigid for his own good.

In reverse, The Emperor represents inflexibility, domination, and excessive control. This fits Joel very well since he sometimes takes his thought experiments and self-regulation too far.

In fact, he can easily become isolated as a result of his self-containment. Worse yet is his sense of pride and desire to be right because he always wants to be right. He's exceedingly stubborn about his convictions even if they don't make any sense, such as his desire to prove to society that he doesn't need sexual or romantic love to be happy and that seeking happiness through these forms of love isn't for him.

The falcon here is a nod to the falcon that the fantasy version of Joel, Zhuel from "Scale, Blood, and Bone," has.

His name is Skoro and he's a male falcon who is small and awkward like Zhuel/Joel perceives himself to be as a child. Most people hunt with female falcons since they are larger and more adept at hunting, but Zhuel chose Skoro because he felt he was similar to himself.

Like most representations of The Emperor, Joel has a number of ram heads on his throne. However, instead of being a reference to Aries, these are references to Capricorn, which i've tried to make more obvious by adding water to this picture as well as the purple and blue color scheme.

Joel is a Capricorn, as Tete and I have discussed many times, and he embodies many Capricorn traits such as being overly argumentative, a strong sense of responsibility, and being overly pessimistic and stubborn.

Thanks for joining in, guys! We're going to be looking at another card next week.