Oswald Wirth's Emperor

The Emperor card in all three versions of Oswald Wirth's Tarot is essentially the same.

Three versions of Oswald Wirth's Emperor card (1889, 1926, 1966)

For comparison, here is Nicolas Conver's 1760 Emperor card, representing the mainstream Tarot de Marseille tradition.

Wirth differs from the standard Marseille design on the following points:

• There are four points at the top of the crown and no points along the brim.
• The scepter bears a fleur-de-lis rather than a globus cruciger.
• The emperor holds a large globus cruciger in his right hand instead of holding his belt.
• The emperor wears a breastplate with a sun and moon on it.
• Instead of having a shield with an eagle leaning against his throne, the emperor sits on a large cube with an eagle on it.
• The emperor's right leg is crossed under his left rather than over it.
• The plant at the left side of the card is a red flower rather than grass.

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Influence of Geneva and Besançon Tarots

Wirth was Swiss, born in the Canton of Bern in 1860, and his Emperor's scepter shows the influence of decks from that country. One thinks of the fleur-de-lis as a French symbol, but in fact the only pre-Wirth Tarot I have been able to find with anything like a fleur-de-lis on the Emperor's scepter is the one printed in the Canton of Geneva in 1840 by François Gassmann.

Gassmann's eagle appears to have influenced Wirth's as well. It is distinctive because of the stylized shape of its wings, suggesting German rather than French heraldic conventions, and because of the escutcheon on its chest. Wirth adopted the stylized wings for his 1926 and 1966 cards, and the 1889 version has what appears to be a lyre on the eagle's chest where the escutcheon would be.

Also relevant is the Tarot de Besançon which, despite taking its name from the French town to which production of the cards was moved in the 19th century, actually originated in Switzerland.

Johan Jerger (Besançon, 1801)

Jerger puts the traditional globus cruciger at the end of his Emperor's scepter, but the strange shape of the shaft itself clearly influenced the 1926 and 1966 Wirth cards. This is also the only pre-Wirth Emperor card I know of that features a flower. (Gassmann has an oak leaf; traditional TdM has only a patch of grass.) The 1926 and 1966 Wirth cards also follow the Tarot de Besançon in giving the Emperor a braided golden necklace but omitting the pendant.

Notice that on Jerger's card, the Emperor's legs are not crossed, and the left leg covers the right one. Jerger also gives the Emperor red hose, as does Wirth, whereas blue and green are the standard TdM colors. The Emperor's skirt is made up of separate tongues of material, like Greek armor, as in Wirth.

We can also see Besançon influence in the shape of the Emperor's beard, hair, and headgear.

Wirth (1889), Jerger (1801), Conver (1760)

There are no points along the brim, and the brim protrudes in the front. The central rib of the crown is divided into three parts. The small gold circles are perhaps influenced by the studs or rivets seen in the Besançon card.

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Other innovations

Of the distinctive features of Wirth's Emperor, it appears that only three -- the globus cruciger, the cubic stone, and the breastplate -- cannot be traced to earlier Swiss cards.

The globus cruciger is easy enough to explain. Since it no longer appears at the end of the Emperor's scepter, Wirth places it in his hand instead. Bonifacio Bembo's Emperor card painted for the Visconti-Sforza family also shows the Emperor holding a scepter in his right hand and a globus cruciger in his left.

The association of the Emperor with the cubic stone of the Freemasons seems to originate with Éliphas Lévi, whose influence on Wirth is indisputable (see his Wheel of Fortune card, for instance). Here is Lévi's description of the Emperor card in Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie:

ד The porte or government of the easterns, initiation, power, the Tetragram, the quaternary, the cubic stone, or its base.

Hieroglyph, THE EMPEROR, a sovereign whose body represents a right-angled triangle and his legs a cross -- image of the Athanor of the philosophers.

The Athanor is an alchemical furnace; the triangle and cross is a symbol of alchemical Sulfur. Elsewhere in the Dogme et Rituel, Lévi refers to the cubic stone as a symbol of alchemical Salt, and also includes the prayer, "Angels of Netsah and Hod, establish me upon the cubic stone of Yesod!" (These are the 7th, 8th, and 9th sephiroth of the Tree of Life, with names meaning "eternity," "splendor," and "foundation," respectively.)

As for the breastplate with a sun on the right breast and a moon on the left, my hunch is that it must have reference to the Urim and Thummim, but I have not been able to find any specific source for this. In Dogme et Rituel, Lévi identifies the shoulder ornaments of the Charioteer as "the URIM and THUMMIM of the sovereign sacrificer, represented by the two crescents of the moon in GEDULAH and GEBURAH" (cf. the two "moon blocks" used in Chinese divination). Elsewhere in the same book, Lévi writes that "the URIM and THUMMIM were the above and beneath, the East and West, the yes and no." Wirth may have combined these two ideas -- the Urim and Thummim as crescent moons, and as polar opposites -- to arrive at his representation of them as sun and moon.

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Influence on the Rider-Waite

The Rider-Waite Tarot was published in 1909 -- after the first version of Wirth's deck but before the two later versions -- and it shows the influence of that particular version of the card.

Here are the points the Rider-Waite Emperor shares with the 1889 Wirth.

• The Emperor wears red clothing and armor. While the breastplate is not visible on the Rider-Waite card, the armored knees and feet are otherwise unique to the 1889 Wirth.
• The Emperor's beard is long as in Wirth, rather than short and pointed as in the Tarot de Marseille.
• The Emperor's legs are uncrossed -- closer to the posture in Wirth than in the TdM.
• The throne, while not cubic, is made of gray stone as in the 1889 Wirth. (The ram decorations are due to Waite's ill-starred schema of astrological correspondences.)
• The Emperor holds an orb in his left hand.