free online tarot readings can help guide you through your troubled emotions and clouded thoughts by reflecting on your past, present and possible future and showing you a fresh prospective on your life.
The cards can be said to be a collection of symbols, and within that collection, the message, and the lesson can be myriad as the cards are shuffled and laid in a spread.
The tarots are never static. Each time the deck is shuffled the formula is re-invented as the symbols (in this instance used to describe the cards themselves, rather than the individual symbols contained within each card) are shuffled.
The Emperor can be masculine authority, the need to confront a masculine presence, the necessity to understand how a masculine presence has influenced the querant; the need for discipline and rules in owns life; personal power and leadership; experience; the laws of society; be aloof and removed...all based on the query, how that query was asked, the spread, the position in the spread, the cards that precede and follow, the deck, the day, where the card feel in previous spreads, etc., whether or not the tarotist uses kabalistic influences, and whether those influences are Golden Dawn or based on another theory; are the elements part of the cards structure? What about alchemy? The variables are endless!
Even in readings with only a few cards, one key to successful tarot reading is carefully defining and understanding the card positions within a spread. The design of a spread gives the reader the ability to focus, to see the questions and the interaction between the card and the position, and to identify the points of the questions.
The question you ask will most decidedly affect the interpretation of the card(s) you choose. When we are reading for others the question becomes even more important as we have fewer contexts related to the question. Carefully defining what each definition is a spread and having a set of meanings for the cards that related to those positions greatly enhances the impact and the accuracy of our readings.
Often by just looking at the images on the card and relating them to the position in the spread, a goodly amount of information can be gleaned.