drawing the emperor tarot: rich, inspiring yang authority
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I drew an interpretation of the Emperor card as a (very belated) birthday gift for my friend Amelia (of my tiny tarot practice) as her card of the year. we’ve been talking for years about making a tarot deck together - with her writing and my illustrations - and this card feels like a first experiment in tip-toeing into that eventual culmination.
feelings about male authority
I was really excited to take on this project — as deepening my tarot practice has become a part of my morning ritual and intuitive practice that I really look forward to — AND, I could feel the mental resistance of starting the series by drawing a male ruler.
I’ve often struggled with male authority - and it took me many years of de-programming work to constantly value my own feminine being in a culture that objectifies, diminishes, or dismisses it. confronting this card brought up all of those feelings within me — and it also pushed me to recreate and reimagine my own ideal of masculine leadership.
since tarot is a practice of channeling archetypes, it’s about asking:
how do I embody and practice the qualities of the Emperor, within me?
my relationship with this card is an ongoing meditation. in my first tarot diaries entry, I wrote about those qualities — how I see the Emperor as representing power and certainty without the need for control. his power is sourced from the divine — requiring no pushing or forcing. other qualities include:
providing wise counsel and guidance
the clarity of logical detachment
extreme patience & focus on the long game
a sense of absolute certainty
at its ideal, the Emperor archetype makes me feel held by the masculine, and allows me space to occupy the feminine with a deeper sense of groundedness, and safety.
the creation process
I started this project by creating a moodboard with Amelia as references — and looking at the symbology: the throne, the rams, the crown, the spectre, and the globe. I wanted to include all these elements — then leave the mood up to re-interpretation.
the Emperor reminded me of sourcing power from the Sun — and from fire, from Mars, from Aries energy. so, I wanted to create an Emperor that was deeply in the yang and with a sense of luxurious regality — but instead of his authority feeling stiff or cold or hard — I wanted it to feel warm, inspiring, and rich.
thus, I drew a background pattern that formed a brilliant, bright celestial ring around his throne, and turned his throne and ram heads into gold. I also made him younger, softened his eyes and personalized his gaze, and gave him robes threaded with gold and sprinkled with stars.
work in process gif
creating this card took me ~6 hours from start to finish. a lot of it was spent trying to figure out the direction of the overall card (below).
later on, I spent all my time executing the finer details of his face and robes:
I’m already looking forward to drawing the next card, and deepening/expanding my skills and process for this kind of archetypal illustration. probably if I draw the Emperor again in 3 years, it’ll look very different.
next, I’m thinking: The Empress?
🔹