Comparative Tarot

Description:
A man young man stands in the forground looking straight at you. He has shortish brown hair, a bit of a mustache, a small beard on his chin, and wears a blue t-shirt whose sleaves come down nearly to his elbows. The ground behind him is a flat light brown with some medium brown hills in the distance. The sun has just come over the hills and is sending rays of light across the blue sky. A cloud can be seen across the top and to the right. The color of the cloud is a very pale violet.

Quoted from the LWB:
Our industry darling has hit the jackpot with nifty new technology. he's taken his company public and made a gazillion dollars - on paper, anyway. No suit-and-tie, golf-and-martinis for him - strickly jeans, T-shirts, Frisbees and microbrews. He's got that errie, can't-fail, immune-to-calamity aura that fate awards the under-30 set. Jealous? Just wait a few years.

Success, riches, perfect positioning.
Reversed: Competition, rapid turnover.

My thoughts:
This card doesn't do much for me. Again, like the Hacker (Fool), this card is more of a stereotype than representing an archetype. This card, though, is a logical result of the previous card, Garage (Empress). The company he started in a garage has hit it big and now he is successful and rich. But it has all come too quickly and easily. He does not have the experience and wisdom that I see in am Emperor such as in the Robin Wook deck.

He is also a non-comformist, at least compared to established business leaders. He does not fit in with them and does not have the same kind of influence as older successful men do. It has taken quite a while for the newer companies in the Silicon Valley to start appling their influence in areas such as politics. They definitly have begun to do so though. The Emperor on the other hand I see as being very much a part of the whole community and has influence there.

Last night on the way home from work, I came up with another image for the Emperor that to me works better than The Mogul. This is a father at the head of the table at mealtime. He'd have a seat with a tall back and would be starting to carve the meat at the beginning of the meal. Around him you would see some of his family at the table. Them Empress when would be sitting at the other end of the table. They would both be older than The Mogul (who as Dylan advised doesn't trust them since they are over 30).

I've got a feeling that this card represents Steve Jobs back when Apple was first a hit. He could just as easily be Bill Gates or one of the newer people to hit it big in the past couple of years. It has been recently that people becomming rich when their company goes public (the IPO) has been big news, especially with the Internet companies.

In any case The Mogul has a quite a few years ahead of him before is would be an Emperor. Am I jealous of him, well let's just say that I wouldn't mind having that kind of money :-)

Tom Granvold
thomas.granvold@eng.sun.com