During the Denver ATA Tarot conference (Summer 98) I attended a wonderful, creative and lovely presentation by Arnell Ando which was the total inspiration for my collage deck: the Jumbledance Tarot. Arnell sugessted that ANYONE could make a Tarot deck simply by saving and cutting pictures and collaging them into a deck. I had done a lot of collage... but what really impressed me about Arnell's cards was that the original collages were card sized - very small. All the collages I'd done before were paper sized. I thought it would be a fun challenge to create a new deck and to do collage in this tiny format. So when I returned from Denver I pretty much straight away began to cut and paste...

In a desperate effort to write a small (do you think I can keep it small?) booklet for this deck I will begin to compose these Major Arcana excercises:

The Jumbledance EMPEROR:

DESCRIPTION:
The card features an Aztec man dressed in a brilliant suit made of tiny squares of real gold. His collar is of red bird feathers with a sunrayed pattern extending from the neck. He has giant gold earings and what looks like a very uncomfortable nose ring of pure gold. Seated crosslegged he holds a golden sphere and wand. He is framed in the front by oak leaves and a large double headed eagle, a symbol of empire. Behind him is the facade of the cathedral of San Marco in Venice - with its arches and porches. A crown floats above his head and a sun above that. There is a ram peeking over his right shoulder.

SYMBOLOGY:
He is shown seated (as are most Emperors) - because he is the "seat" of power.

He is wearing red and gold. Red, the color of Martial Mars (pardon the repetitive statement)-- and Gold: the metal of the sun. The Emperor, as the secular leader of the land - was charged with its defense and is the head of the army. He is connected with the glory and power of the sun - the supreme light of the world- because he is the supreme ruler of the world (on the Roman model here!) The Sun is regarded as the masculine light of the day (in most traditions - not all) - the sun is connected to the power of the sky gods and to their leadership in the council of Gods - as Zeus and Jupiter and even Christ ruled "heaven" above.This emperor also has the solar rayed symbol around his neck - showing that the head is the seat of his temporal power.

The crown above the Emperor's head is a repeat of this symbol and emphasises the head as the seat of our power, the intellect and the mind and its ability to decide and to control. The sun represents the connection of the Emperor card with the life of the sun - with the spring equinox - and reinforces all the other solar symbols of this card: oak, eagle, crown, gold.

The oak leaves call to mind the connections with ancient oak Gods - with Zeus/Jupiter and with Thor. The oak is associated with strength because its form looks so muscular and because it lives so long. It is often the attractor for lightning in storms and through this became associated with the sky Gods. There is also the wonderful connection to the power of the sky in Mistletoe which grows on the oak tree - but has no roots of its own into the earth. This again symbolically represents the masculine power of the sky; also the white berries of the Mistletoe reminded the ancients of semen because of their viscose texture. The acorn, visible in the oak branches, was long thought to resemble the glans of the penis (funny actually - I just looked up *glans* in the Shorter Oxford and right there it sez;"A small conical or acorn shaped structure esp. that at the end of the mammalian penis").

The Jumbledance Emperor has as atributes the eagle and the ram - generally in older decks the animal symbol is limited to the Eagle and frequently it will be the double headed eagle. The eagle as the "king of birds" has been connected with power (particularly military power) and rulership from very early times. The eagle's ability to fly so high - so close to the sun - and see so far is analogous to the Emperor's ability to "see" over his kingdom and again identifies the Emperor with the sun's energy and power. The double headed eagle was borrowed from the east by many empires as a powerful symbol of Empire with a large "E". The double eagle shows the dual nature of the solar God (often hero twins like Heracles and Iphicles, Castor and Pollux, Dylan and Llew Llaw or brothers: Osiris and Set, Cain and Abel, Jacob and Esau etc.) as the bright growing sun born at the winter solstice and sacrificed at the summer solstice at the height of his power and the dying sun of winter born at summer solstice and decreasing in power till the winter rebirth of the glorious sun.

The ram represents virility and again reinforces the Martial aspects of the Emperor. The powerful ram is renown for fighting for the right to mate in the spring when the new sun has reached the height of its power (Aries = springtime). When the most powerful ram gains access to the ewes he becomes the father of the new lambs just as the king is the symbolic father of his people.

MEANING:
To me this card is much like all other Emperors - he is powerful and decisive - as an Aztec ruler in the original image from which I excerpted this image he was watching over the sacrifice of captured victims in order to ensure the continuation of the sun. He is an Earthly representative of the sun spreading the heat, power, stregnth of his own being into the world. He, like the sun moves in a prescribed path - his life is ordered as he orders the lives of others and as the life of the sun orders our days and years. He represents Glory, Power, Rulership, Achievement in the world, etc. He is equated with the Creator God and represents the creative will that orders and defines the parametors of life.

The Genetti's
thewheel@mcn.org

wheelofchance.com
http://www.wheelofchange.com