Alleged Tarot Deck

About the Deck

A modern digital cartoon deck featuring traditional symbolism in a whimsical stick-figure style.

Provenance

Damian Cugley. Web, 2002. Used with permission of the artist.

Meaning of The Emperor from the Alleged Tarot Deck

Upright

authority, responsibility, promotion

Reversed

inferiority, restriction by rules

According to Many Schools of Thought

A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings

The Emperor, by imputation the spouse of the former. He is occasionally represented as wearing, in addition to his personal insignia, the stars or ribbons of some order of chivalry. I mention this to shew that the cards are a medley of old and new emblems. Those who insist upon the evidence of the one may deal, if they can, with the other. No effectual argument for the antiquity of a particular design can be drawn from the fact that it incorporates old material; but there is also none which can be based on sporadic novelties, the intervention of which may signify only the unintelligent hand of an editor or of a late draughtsman.

S. L. MacGregor Mathers's Divinatory Meanings

Upright

Realisation, Effect, Development

Reversed

Stoppage, Check, Immature, Unripe.

Papus's Divinatory Meanings

Will.