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The Goddess Blog

Body, Mind & Spirit for the Divine Feminine

Lost Emperor, Make Way for the High Priestess


The High Priestess
of the Major Arcana in Tarot, embodies the Divine Feminine, sacred knowledge, intuition, change, and new beginnings. At this moment, we are coming out of thousands of years of rule by The Emperor. In his positive aspect, this archetype brings authority, establishment, and structure. In his negative aspect, these qualities appear in excess and become destructive. The Emperor becomes a tyrant, controlling, rigid and domineering.

The positive qualities of the Emperor are intrinsic to the functioning of a healthy society, however, it is glaringly obvious that this energy has spun out of control. When universal energies are not balanced by their counterparts, they become toxic. The Divine Feminine has been crushed and trampled almost to death, but the age of her return is upon us.

Emperor Out of Balance: Domination and Control

The Emperor, in his excessively negative and dysfunctional presentation, represents domineering and controlling energies. Remember, all archetypes present in all genders, but for clarity I will refer to them as they are depicted in the Rider Waite Tarot deck.

A tyrant is someone who places his needs before others, valuing himself above others, one who lacks compassion, human connection, and uses more force when force does’t work the first time. It is the energy of someone who cannot compromise, only knows how to up the ante, and cares only about winning. Major Arcana cards represent archetypes. Actual human beings are comprised of many different energies that are usually somewhat fluid and changeable.

Domination and Control in Governments

Now take a moment to compare the above mentioned characteristics to the following “evil” forms of government: An autocrat is defined as someone who insists on complete obedience from others, using cruel and despotic means to control and subjugate them. Dictatorships, a kind of Autocracy, are typically viewed as brutally repressive regimes where power lies in the hands of a single individual. Basically, everything Western democratic governments supposedly abhor.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was established in 1948 in response to the atrocities of WWII, led by one of the most infamous autocrats of all time, Adolf Hitler. And what did the worst autocrats like Hitler and Stalin do? They ruthlessly and systematically dehumanized people.

Hitler dehumanized anyone who did not bestow him with absolute allegiance. In fact, toward the end of the war, he even threatened to eradicate all Germans who did not support him completely. His sense of entitlement over others was absolute and universal. According to the Tarot, Hitler clearly embodies the characteristics of The Emperor at his worst. Manipulative, cruel, selfish, non-human. In my view, a body without a soul. A human-less human.

Many decry the comparisons of the current government in the US to previous tyrants. We know that Putin already ranks. But what people fail to comprehend is that the decay is progressive and gradual. The analogy of the boiling frog is poignant once again. Liberty is stolen one step at a time, until the circle is complete and we are trapped inside. The wise ones know to pay attention from the first footstep.