IV. The Emperor


The Emperor (Tarot card) - Wikipedia

Meaning: Order, power, boundaries.

Depiction: Old Captain Peleg, as Ismael first encounters him, sitting in his oaken chair in his whalebone "wigwam" behind the mainmast.

Text: Chapter 16, The Ship
And half concealed in this queer tenement, I at length found one who by his aspect seemed to have authority; and who, it being noon, and the ship’s work suspended, was now enjoying respite from the burden of command. He was seated on an old-fashioned oaken chair, wriggling all over with curious carving; and the bottom of which was formed of a stout interlacing of the same elastic stuff of which the wigwam was constructed.

There was nothing so very particular, perhaps, about the appearance of the elderly man I saw; he was brown and brawny, like most old seamen, and heavily rolled up in blue pilot-cloth, cut in the Quaker style; only there was a fine and almost microscopic net-work of the minutest wrinkles interlacing round his eyes, which must have arisen from his continual sailings in many hard gales, and always looking to windward;—for this causes the muscles about the eyes to become pursed together. Such eye-wrinkles are very effectual in a scowl.

Know Your Famous Captains | Online Quiz | Mental Floss

Comments: I originally had both Peleg and Bildad for this card, but their personalities are so different, it seemed better to separate them. You'll find Bildad as the King of Pentacles.


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