The Emperor Has Fallen from His Throne

Have you ever had one of those days where you perhaps didn’t get enough sleep and reality isn’t quite as stable as it normally is. You may go to sit down and suddenly the chair is just not behind you. You may end up on the floor. Of course, modern science would say that you probably weren’t really paying attention to where the chair was, or you moved it and forgot. Metaphysics might explain it as some spirit-being came and moved the chair. In quantum physics, one might say that the chair hyper-jumped. However, you explain it, reality is just not behaving according to expectations. And this is the world in which the Emperor in reverse has to live. If you are of the mind, in which you are a ruler, as you in essence are in the world in which you live, it can be quite unsettling for your throne to move of its own accord. It can be equally bothersome if some of your servants came along and moved it while you were standing and addressing your knights, your kids, spouse, roommates, coworkers. Just imagine how you would get your bum hurt when you went to sit back down! You might be a little embarrassed too. If you are an emperor and someone has moved your throne while you were not looking, you are no longer the person in charge. It is time to over compensate with showing a little extra control. Now new rules have to come into place to prevent this from ever happening again. People must have been given too much freedom in the past or this kind of thing would never happen. An emperor cannot just fall off their thrown. That is unacceptable. Well, even if this wasn’t really people causing the throne move, the upside-down Emperor feels stricter standards need to come to play to make reality behave according to expectations.

I have to say I feel sorry for the Emperor in reverse. This is a person who needs empathy. He or she has had something unexpectedly difficult happen in their world on more than one occasion. This person has been accustomed to a world in which he or she has control and has been quite good at navigating the terrain of life. However, now something has changed to shake the foundation of reality. Perhaps the person was unexpectedly laid off from work. Maybe he or she was just about to get married when the bride or groom did not show up at the altar. He or she may have planned pretty hard for the wedding. Perhaps a business partner left the person hanging with all of the responsibility. Whatever it was, this person was managing very well before hand and now everything needs to be put back the way it was and held firmly in place so that it never falls apart again. That’s the mentality this person feel he or she must maintain. If the person experienced heartbreak, then perhaps he or she very firmly fix life so that this experience never recurs. If he or she lost a job unexpectedly, this person could become very tight with money and refuse to let him or her self experience any joy in spending it. The upside-down Emperor may come across as excessively domineering. He or she wishes desperately for others to obey as no one or thing in life has done before. If you feel powerless around the Emperor reversed, just know that the Emperor feel pretty powerless, too.

Persons in the position of the upside-down Emperor need to be guided back to a place of trusting in the natural laws of balance. Think of this as a form of post-traumatic stress from loss and failure. This person needs to be able to re-experience the loss and failure again and understand that it doesn’t lead to ultimate demise. He or she may also need to relive successes and re-experience how a combination of successes and failures has led to the current situation.

Practical Elemental Dignities

I would like to talk a little bit about elemental combinations, or dignities as they are called, from a practical perspective, rather than a purely esoteric one. I have seen standard configurations regarding how elements combine and the effects they have. In some cases, certain combinations are considered neutral. People say to forget about it because it doesn’t mean anything. If you are reading cards, the last thing you want to do is tell a querent is that they have neutral going on, so just pay up and go home.

The reason that these combinations are assigned neutral value is because people using this method are assuming a dualistic metaphysical perspective, where you have an esoteric and an exoteric model of the elements. I have had it explained to me that the exoteric elements are less pure than the esoteric ones and therefore these have greater or different strength than elements of the exoteric nature. This is further hierarchical thinking. Perhaps when we think of esoteric elements as pure, we can consider them as simpler, whereas, the exoteric elements are complex. And when we read them in the Tarot in combination, we must consider both. If we don’t consider both, we have to hope that our intuition will do so for us.

I think if we look at the Tarot we can see that the cards do not explain things in terms of esoteric or exoteric, rather both at the same time. They assume a middle ground. So we don’t really have to think one way or the other. Below are some examples of thoughts regarding combinations of elements that can give you an idea on how to meditate on them in your own way. By no means should this be read as a proclamation of an ultimate truth. Feel free to leave me any thoughts or comments that come up from reading this post, I would love to hear others free association on the subject.

The Elements

Wands	Fire		Active
Swords	Air		Active
Pentacles	Earth		Passive
Cups	Water		Passive

According to magical systems Fire and Air are Active. Well, even without a magical system, we can still consider fire and air quite active at the mundane level, when we think of them in terms of doing and thinking respectively. But the question is, are they always buddies as many people say they are. I think it isn’t always the case. Nor do I think it helps a querent if they are told that there are two most excellent situations going on, especially if they are not that great.

Fire and Air

Wands	Fire			Air	Swords
Here, reading the cards from left to right, it might be said that you have a little fire started and then came a little air to feed the fire. If you read it from right to left, might we equally say that it is easy to start a fire in the mists of wind? It is better to start a fire in stillness, and then have a wind come along. Sure it is possible to start a fire with wind, but it isn’t as easy. So here it is reading the cards from left to right we can see that a fire was started and wind came along to strengthen it.
Wands	Fire			Air	Swords
In this scenario, if you just get started on a project and you have a lot of air coming into the scene next, it will wipe the fire out. This is an extreme example but you can see that the greater the amount of air the harder it will be for a new flame to build into a bigger one. This would be the same if the cards were in opposite order as well as if they were reversed.
Swords	Air			Fire	Wands
In this case the air and fire are close in intensity, so the oncoming fire may have had some difficulty in starting and won’t be as intense as it would have next to an Earth card.
Swords	Air			Fire	Wands
But if we reverse the fire card, it looses even more intensity, and it may not grow into as much because it is a smaller flame.
Swords	Air			Fire	Wands
Reversing the air card may do well for the fire card because it brings their intensities closer in alignment. So you can see that the elements do not automatically support each other in some instances with air and fire. But in all of these scenarios we can agree that the situation is active, for better or worse, more difficult or easier, activity is responsible.
Swords	Air			Fire	Wands
If you have an Ace of Wands, you may have a situation where you have just had a fabulous idea. But what happens if you suddenly become so overburdened by activities that you end up forgetting about it and it goes nowhere? It could have been a bad new idea, but do we really assume it? Perhaps it becomes postponed or just forgotten.

Fire and Water

Wands	Fire			Water	Cups
In the case of fire and water, magical systems state that water and fire do not get along and water will put the fire out. Even at the mundane level we typically think of water as a way of putting out fire. What really happens is that we are applying a passive element to an active one and making the passive element function in an active capacity. In this situation it is stifling the fire. With fire and water what we have at the mundane level consists of doing and feeling. Feelings can get in the way of our activities. In this situation, if we consider the Ace of Wands as the beginning of a project, and the Ace of Cups as the start of new emotions, we might think that the water would slow the activity of the project with a cooling effect. The more emotions we have the more it will slow the activity produced by the fire of the wands.
Cups	Water			Fire	Wands
But what happens when we have a good amount of emotions manifested and we add a little activity to that? This may warm the emotions, reduce them a little, and utilize them as part of the new activity.
Cups	Water			Fire	Wands
If we just came into a sweet relationship and there is a lot of love going on, like in the Two of Cups and suddenly one of the couple gets a job that is demanding and has to focus all of their time on the activity, then it could hurt the relationship, or make you both sad. But likely the feelings related to the relationship will also put a damper on the quality of work the person does in their demanding job. The thing to think about when looking at fire and wands together is that they draw on each other and minimize each other. They are not exactly compatible. In equal proportions they may cancel one another out, but with more of one and less of the other, they can reduce the energy of the other depending upon the direction of the interaction. Consider the phrases, “all work and no play, makes one dull” and “idle hands are the devil’s work”

Fire and Earth

Wands	Fire			Earth	Pentacles
Oftentimes pentacles are represented as money, or finances, or job, but they can also represent values or a material presence. When the wands are followed by a pentacle, I typically see this as input followed by output, actions, and results. People say that these cards are neutral together. In a way this is true. But it doesn’t mean that they don’t say anything about each other.
Wands	Fire			Earth	Pentacles
In this situation, it could mean that you did very little and produced quite a lot. In that case, the Ten of Pentacles is saying about the Ace of Wands that it was productive and efficient activity. So the energy of the Ten of Pentacles contributes to the energy of the Ace of Wands, and vice versa. If you think about it, not only can water be used in putting out fire, earth also extinguishes it. This isn’t an active property of earth, like fire’s active nature is to burn. That it can extinguish fire is inherent in its relationship to fire, because earth doesn’t actively extinguish.
Wands	Fire			Earth	Pentacles
Here, you might have worked your butt off and the outcome produced but very little. You could have ended up taking a new job. Or changing your way of thinking after a long moral battle. Consider someone who went to law school for many years, passed the bar, and then discovered they didn’t want to be a lawyer. The person thought they valued the profession and they worked really hard for it, but ended up with getting little value out of it, and maybe found something new they valued instead. So in this situation the Ten of Wands influenced the energy of the Ace of Pentacles. Really, together they forge a whole new path. What’s worth remembering for these two elements is that you have an active force working on a passive one. However, there are times when the passive force causes action.
Pentacles	Earth			Fire	Wands
If you just bought a new house and find out that it needs many repairs, if it isn’t you making all the repairs, then you work extra hours on the job to pay for them, or take a second job. If you bought a restaurant or started a business, that could also lead to a lot of start up activity. Even if the Ace of Pentacles were reversed, you may find that the Ten of Pentacles has extra emphasis as a burden, because something went wrong or was unexpected, maybe even delayed, and thus the extra activity around it, may not have been planned.
Pentacles	Earth			Fire	Wands
In this scenario you have an Eight of Pentacles, which looks like activity, because the person in the picture appears engaged in working on something. This is a passive card. Really it is just a position in which to build stability. However, the quality of the stability depends pending the support of neighboring cards. If a Four of Wands, reversed, follows it, then you have action that is unequal in intensity to that of the Eight. It is an even number, which makes it more stable than the Three of Wands, but it is in reverse. Because the Four of Wands is in reverse, it very nearly points back to the Three of Wands. You can maybe call it the 3.5 of Wands. So what you have is the Four of Wands, reversed, eating away at the energy of the Eight of Pentacles. I would not call this a passive or neutral situation.

Air-Earth

Swords	Air			Earth	Pentacles
What is earth’s relationship to air? If we think of mountains or tall buildings, earth forms structures around which air can flow. So earth forms an obstruction to air but it also guides its direction. On the other hand, the active force of air, wears down the integrity of structures, depending on the force and the length of time it works away on a structure. Air can also push smaller structures around to form new ones. This is the force and the relationship between ideas, worries, fears, values, morals, possessions, jobs, and social structures.
Swords	Air			Earth	Pentacles
Here we have the Three of Swords, or three winds moving along and they come upon the Eight of Pentacles, or eight structures. You will be forgetting your problems in no time with many structures ahead to conquer. Just these two cards can’t tell you how permanent that is but you can see that the Eight Pentacles will trivialize the Three Swords. You could also become so focused on your work that what ever was worrying you won’t be a thought.
Pentacles	Earth			Air	Swords
If you have only three structures established, as represented by the Three of Pentacles, in this case you could have maybe a positive sign of something, yet it is diminished because it is reversed, and along come Eight Swords, or eight winds, the structures will be totally blown away. For example, you had a club you just formed and you had three members. And with those three members they brought in an overabundance of ideas, worries, and concerns, then the structure of the club will become quite weak.

Air-Water

Swords	Air			Water	Cups
Swords and Cups: Thoughts and emotions. Some people reading this might think, “when do we not have thoughts.” Good question! Unless you are highly experienced in yogic meditation of thought transcendence, you might never be without thoughts. The entire deck of Tarot might just as well be Sword cards. Except there is the concept that thoughts, in their action, move life experience to action, emotion, and manifestation. And each of these in turn also give birth to new thought. Thoughts can overpower these elements. Equally, these elements have the capacity to overpower thoughts.
Swords	Air			Water	Cups
Here on the left we have someone resting with their thoughts and on the right, another person has had some emotional upset. There is not much that emotions can do to thoughts, but thoughts will disrupt emotions quite easily. In the Five of Cups card, we see some of the cups have been knocked over. If the Four of Swords card represents a person who was at peace with their thoughts and easily contemplated which ones to keep and which ones to put to pasture, then the Five of Cups comes along with one more level of intensity, an extra emotion, not quite in balance with the Four of Swords. Perhaps the double edge nature of the Swords, as of thoughts, lead to emotional asymmetry. One of the thoughts or ideas may have led to an emotional struggle.
Cups	Water			Air	Swords
Here we have one card, the Two of Cups, where people are brought together in their emotions. And then comes Eight Swords. The person in that card is alone, tied up, blindfolded, and captured in a net that is bound to one of the swords. When too many different ideas appear, it can be confusing and we might needed to hang on to one of them, for security. However, that action can result in isolation. This is similar in nature when there is too great a wind over the water, and it leads to turbulence.

Water-Earth

Cups	Water			Earth	Pentacles
What happens if you add earth to water? Your water will rise. It will not become more, but it may seem like more. It simply displaces it spatially. This is why people frequently distract themselves from their emotions with material endeavors.
Cups	Water			Earth	Pentacles
If we have more material substance in our lives we may have little room for our emotions. In this situation, we may be sitting with our emotions and reflecting on the experiences to which they gave rise. Our emotions are not many but also not too few. Then when something occurs in our lives that brings about the Six of Pentacles, where sharing is involved, it will easily balance our emotions out and not overwhelm them.
Pentacles	Earth			Water	Cups
In the previous situation we had a Six of Pentacles and here we start with a Five of Pentacles. Take one of the Pentacles away and the environment becomes much more unbalanced. It looks like two individuals are out in the cold walking away from a church or their community. They may have lost support but at least they have each other. If you can image the situation as an unstable sand castle, when the Seven of Cups comes along, much of that will wash away. The Seven of Cups is not a lot more than the Five of Pentacles. The oncoming Seven Cups could overwhelm the average person. However, the Five of Pentacles can handle it and might welcome an abundance of opportunity.