The Emperor
Trump IV of the tarot: a crowned king on a throne. A. E. Waite read it as stability, power and authority.
Meaning
Waite describes "a crowned monarch--commanding, stately, seated on a throne, the arms of which are fronted by rams' heads", holding a sceptre in the form of the crux ansata, the looped cross, and a globe. He called the Emperor, "by imputation the spouse" of the Empress, the power of this world.
What does the Emperor card mean?
Waite's meanings are "stability, power, protection, realization; a great person", and also "authority and will"; reversed, "benevolence, compassion, credit; also confusion to enemies, obstruction, immaturity".
In older decks
Papus joined the card to the fourth Hebrew letter, Daleth. A nineteenth-century Milanese pack in the British Museum titles it L'Imperatore.
See also
The Empress, The Fool, The Magician, The High Priestess, The Empress, The Hierophant.
Sources
- The Pictorial Key to the Tarot, by A. E. Waite, William Rider & Son, London, 1910 (the sacred-texts.com transcription, on the Internet Archive), The Trumps Major; The Greater Arcana and their Divinatory Meanings
- The Tarot of the Bohemians, by Papus, Chapman & Hall, London, 1896, translated by A. P. Morton (scan on the Internet Archive), The Symbolical Tarot
- A Descriptive Catalogue of Playing and Other Cards in the British Museum, by W. H. Willshire, Trustees of the British Museum, London, 1876 (scan on the Internet Archive), Italian tarots, second quarter of the nineteenth century, Milan
Last reviewed September 27, 2026 by Rory Hansen. How we research