The tarot is a deck of 78 cards, and the earliest versions date from the Middle Ages. Over the years, people have been creating their own versions. Here's mine.
I'm not sure where I'm going with this, but there's something about this that feels right.
Here's another attempt. I still feel that I'm grasping for something that I can't quite reach, but it'll have to do for now.
To me, the Emperor is the World-builder, the Demiurg, or the Grand Architect of the Universe in Freemasonry. (And yes, I do know that equating the latter with the Demiurg is not common practice in Freemasonry).
This is the fourth of the major arcana of the tarot. The number four denotes, among other things, structure and creation. A lot of creation traditionally comes in fours - like the four elements and the four compass directions.
The Emperor has great knowledge and great power, and there's a great deal to be learned here. At the same time, there's a lot of structure here that you'll need to familiarise yourself with in order to understand what the Emperor has to teach you, but that you'll subsequently need to learn to let go in order to proceed on your path.
Still playing around with the same ideas, and getting closer.
On this page Transitional HTML 4.01 and CSS 1 are used. If you're seeing this text you either have CSS switched off in your browser, or you're using a browser that can't handle CSS. If you're using an older browser version, you might want to consider upgrading.