The Emperor

   
                    *warning, this contains a graphic meditation and also mentions abuse*
     
     Holy Shit balls! That was interesting. Quite a way to create an introduction. One of the thing that I do every morning, that is if I haven't woken up late, is I pull an angel oracle card, reflect on it, and toke notes on any information that I get from the card. Today I pulled creative writing. I knew that later on today I would be attending Michelle Blooms class Healing the Tarot:The emperor and decided that I would have my creative writing piece be about the meditation that would happen in the class. In the past on days where I have attended classes like this I would often pull The Learning and Teaching card.  It has been pretty current. I haven't ever written much about these classes or these works that I have been doing and thought that writing would be a good way of Teaching and Learning. So voila, there is how I came to decided that my writing piece would be about todays meditation.

     First off a little introduction. Every month Michelle Bloom teaches a class called Healing with the Tarot and each month we go through, in order, one of the archetypes.  She discusses what the card means, characteristics all that kind of stuff and then everyone pulls cards to get a reading for "What does the (insert archetype of the month here, in this case the emperor) have to teach me. We then do a reading, she has always been great help for me reading the cards as tarot does not come as intuitively, I feel like that is an incorrect statement, as the angel cards. She gives ways in which we can work with that archetype through the month, how to create an altar for it, what types of stones would be good and why, and any other information. Then the guided meditation where we go and meet the archetype and and receive whatever type of information there is to receive. In the past these have all been quite magical and left me feeling upbeat and wonderful. Todays mood wasn't the case and I felt the "oh fuck here comes the shitball" when she said that when she did channeling for this it was going to be especially significant for anyone that has a dysfunctional or abusive relationship with their father. Yes, she did just mention the F word. I knew I was in for it. I thought later on, well if there is one thing that I have learned is that there are lots of people who have very hurtful relationships with their fathers.  I could feel myself getting tense, I began to doodle and I felt the urge to disassociate as people talked about their abusive relationships with their fathers.

     We partnered up and did a four card spread. The first card was to be; What does the emperor want us to focus on internally. The second card was to be what does the emperor want us to reflect on externally. The third card was to be what does the emperor want us to let go of and the fourth card was to be the theme for the month. I pulled The Seven of Wands, The Hermit, The Eight of Swords and the Six of Swords. Michelle helped me come up with a concise sentence after my partner and I tried to interpret it and the message was "I need to pull away from the world and focus within"

     Now it's time to meet the emperor. Everyone closes their eyes, and my guard drops and I lose the of I am cool and strong exterior and the tears start to fall down my face I feel myself choking up.  I will from this moment on do my best to write about the meditation.

     I am traveling in the air, my heart sends a root down to the center of the earth, up from that root energy travels to my body and there it goes to my heart and my heart blooms a gigantic flower that blooms out of my body and takes up all visual space.

     I am then walking down a staircase, it is not like the staircase in the past meditation that was one that went to a hobit hole. This one was made of marble. I could see that I was wearing elegant clothes, I might have been the empress at this time. I ascend the stairs and come to a door, the door is made of marble, crystal and rubies and some other blue stone. Engraved on the door is a cobra head.  We are to open the door and step into our sanctuary. Except when I open the door there is only a cliff there, I have a fear of heights and a fear of falling, there is nothing in my sanctuary except for fear. So I know I don't want to stand on this ledge so I use my powers and build a house, but my house is floating in air so then I build a tower of earth to meet the house but the house is still in the air, so then I build an ocean around it so there is no more this falling feeling. I do my best to try and make this place peaceful but it isn't so. I can't remember stuff that happens here either that or the order is all a mess so I am going to gloss over it. The emperor comes and he is dressed as a man of royalty and wearing a purple robe. We talk. He tells me that I am loved and that I am not alone, that I have all my ancestors and spirit guides here and they love me and will always be with me and are her to help me in my journey.

     The emperor then transforms into a black cobra, I had a nightmare about black cobras last night, I also have a fear of snakes. The cobra bites me over and over. The emperor is attacking me. This is not how guided meditations are supposed to go, they are supposed to be lovey dovey and make you feel good. The cobra kept on biting me so I had to take my sword and decapitated it. Then when it was time for me to become the emperor another black cobra entered the body of the emperor and then entered my body by going up my vagina. I think I might have began thinking about how I don't want to be here anymore, how I want the meditation to be over. More stuff happened and then she said it was time to leave our "sanctuary" and when I did, the land behind the door, where the staircase was was more like my sanctuary than the land of the emperor. There were flowers and birds and everything was happy.

     I was not so happy. I felt totally disregulated by the stories people shared, by confronting my own memories and by this super scary guided meditation. I told Michelle about it cause I didn't know what to make of it. Why was it awful and scary and terrible? I told her and she said "Sounds like you have some fears to deal with."  Also, that not all work is beautiful. Some of it is very dark and scary.

     So, I have the choice of working with this. I can make an altar, put a photo of my father in the center of it and work with the energy of the emperor.  I am feeling pretty hungry, zapped and like it is time to close this piece up. There is more that I learned about the emperor that would be good to share and I don't feel like doing that now. I think I've done enough work for now. If you want to learn more about the emperor and how working with the emperor if you have had a dysfunctional or abusive relationship with your father, let me know. It was pretty mind-blowing and pretty accurate the stuff I learned today.

     I feel a bit strange sharing all of that, I don't really know what the purpose was and today I wrote down in my book that I would write about my guided meditation and post it here. So there you have it. Goodnight, Good Morning, Good day, may there be some good and love in your life.

xoxo

Chrystal Brooke