In control

Wild Unknown Tarot, 2013

The Emperor from Wild Unknown Tarot also has a sun with a black circle over it, but for some reason it is not saying 'total eclipse' to me. It's saying 'control over everything'. For some reason, I'm seeing the tree in shadow as being the one blotting out the sun, rather than a shadow falling onto the tree from an eclipse. I reckon that is what I'm supposed to be seeing, because the Emperor is certainly about control.

The tree in this card stands tall and proud, solitary. There's nothing else in the frame, other than the sun and the earth. The title underneath the tree suggests to me that the tree's strength isn't even derived from its roots, but from itself. How can a tree be strong without roots, without depth? I don't know, but this tree strikes me as being perfectly capable of taking care of itself and ruling everything around it, with no help whatsoever, behind the scenes or otherwise.

Unfortunately, the tree is a shadow, dark against a white sky. Its view of everything is black and white, literally and figuratively. There's no lushness there for it, no scope for anything other than this stark control. I wonder how long the tree can keep this up. Well, it can probably keep this up for a very long time, but I wonder how long the tree will want to keep this up, for it all becomes too much for it. That's the real question.