What does The Emperor mean reversed?

The Thoth Tarot is traditionally read without reversed cards: the reader judges from the cards around it whether a card is well or ill dignified. This is its ill-dignified or blocked reading: Authority that wavers or overreaches: rigidity, conflict with people in power, inability to set limits, or on the contrary despotism.

What are the Kabbalah and astrology correspondences of The Emperor?

In the Golden Dawn system The Emperor corresponds to the Hebrew letter Tzaddi, path 15 of the Tree of Life between Chokmah and Tiphareth, the element Fire and Aries in astrology.

Thoth Tarot · Major Arcana

The Emperor

authority · structure · initiative · power · order

A reflective starting point

What is The Emperor asking you to look at?

Meaning changes with the position, the surrounding cards and your question. Take what follows as a language, not a verdict.

Read this card in a ritual Draw it from your own deck

Upright

Take the situation in hand with decision and method. Energy, courage and the ability to give structure are favoured.

At first sight

Authority, stability, leadership, established power. It points to a person or a situation that imposes rules and carries out with energy what it has decided.

Within you

It represents the ability to take responsibility, set boundaries and turn energy into order: the paternal principle internalised.

On the path

Path 15 from Chokmah to Tiphareth, the letter Tzaddi (the fish-hook, 90) and Aries, the sign of Mars in which the Sun is exalted: the Father's force descends into the heart of the Tree as energy that founds and governs. It is the fire of the spring beginning made into an institution.

The shadow

Ill-dignified, it becomes tyranny, rigidity, aggression, a need for control that smothers life.

Reversed

In the Thoth tradition a reversed card is read through its dignity with the neighbouring cards; this is its shadow side.

Authority that wavers or overreaches: rigidity, conflict with people in power, inability to set limits, or on the contrary despotism.

In love, work and spirit

Love. A protective, decisive partner, or control dynamics that need rebalancing; a strong need for stability.

Work. Leadership, founding a business, dealings with institutions and superiors; initiative is rewarded.

Spirit. Govern yourself before you govern the world: discipline as an expression of the Will.

Correspondences

Tzaddi צ · path 15 (Chokmah – Tiphareth) · Fire · Aries

Crowley's note

Following the Book of the Law, Crowley swaps the letters: Tzaddi passes to the Emperor and He to the Star ('Tzaddi is not the Star'). The Emperor sits among Himalayan rams, with the heraldic bee and lily, symbols of power that arises from creative energy.