Tarot card readings often have a life of their own.

That is their beauty, and sometimes, of course, their frustration.

People say, 'but I didn't want to know about my past!'. And that's true, they didn't.

But what may come up in a tarot card reading is precisely that: the past.

The fifth tarot card in the major Arcana is variously called the High Priest, Hierophant, and Pope.

In the Marseilles version of this tarot card, the Hierophant appears as le Pape, an older man seated on his throne. He holds a triple-tiered cross to symbolize his authority.

His is the figure of the Wise Old man, the man of spiritual beneficence.

He is, in essence,a bridge builder between the world of form and the world of Spirit.

How do you bridge that world in your life? Who and what holds such authority for you?

The fifth Tarot card in the Major Arcana is the High Priest or Pope.

It's a tarot card which varies enormously in how it is depicted through the many sets of tarot decks available nowadays.

Essentially, the High Priest (as I shall call this card here) calls forth the question: where do we stand in the world of our beliefs? Who is that Other in our lives in whom we invest a sense of authority and wisdom?

One way of working with tarot cards is to select a card, turn it upright, focus on it, and then turn it over so that you can't see it.

Write down what you can remember of the details of the card. Do this three times. See what you come up with.

If you like, draw what you see too.

So you want to read tarot cards?

Fabulous! How do you start?

Firstly, choose a deck of tarot cards that really 'speak' to you.

The Emperor card in the Major Arcana of the Tarot represents the active masculine principle at work in a person's life.

This is the card of the conscious, creative world, the world of form and order.

Often in this tarot card you will see an eagle depicted, usually in symbolic form on a shield.

This represents the power of the Emperor's authority, and vision.

If you were circling above the world of your life, what would you be seeing?

In the Norse Tarot deck, the Emperor is an imposing figure who looks directly at us. His is a firm look, even stern.

His concentrated gaze represents the force of not only his concentration but his will and determination.

The Emperor here is the Wise Old Man in action in the material world. It is the world of form and order.

How much space do rules and regulations take up in your life? Do you have to do things always in one way and not another? Or are you someone for whom everyone else's interest come first?

Tarot cards invite a dreaming.

Not in the aboriginal sense, which is so much more powerful and remains as a cosmological wholeness, but as a kind of reverie, a step into the world of imagination, intuition, exploration.

All tarot cards have their general meanings. Indeed, some decks of tarot cards have those meanings inscribed on to each respective card. That can be distracting or useful, depending on the individual.

One way of learning the tarot is to imagine you were the person and persons shown in the individual tarot card.

The Emperor card in the major Arcana of the tarot is a number four.

The Emperor represents authority, order, organization.

Whether that authority is liberal or dogmatic will depend on the other cards around it in a tarot card reading.

It will also depend on how we view such authority figures ourselves.

What authority do you bring to any situation in your life? How do you see yourself?

The Emperor is the fourth card of the major Arcana in the tarot.

In the Druidcraft Tarot, the Emperor is depicted as the Lord.

In this version, the Lord appears as a man of great strength, will and acumen.

He looks intensely at us. His is a gaze that would not deviate.

How do you relate to authority figures? How do they appear to you?

Paradox lies at the heart of creativity. It also lies at the heart of the tarot.

Consider it like night and day.

It's hard to understand the one without the other.We don't know day as day if we have not experienced the night.

In the tarot, each card is a description of a moment and a portent of how that moment will change.

Thus many swords in a tarot card spread usually mean a lot of mental energy, thinking, striving, and the potential for conflict. Swords correspond to the element of air, to logic. And yet people who are very logical contain the great potential to be highly emotive; their logic may even rest on a substratum of emotion.

John Matthews titled a chapter in one of his books, 'remembering the future'.

How might that work in a tarot reading?

Tarot cards are complete in themselves.

But just like us in that we are not isolates no matter how we live our lives, they also really make sense most when studied in relationship to the other cards revealed in a Tarot card reading.

Tarot cards are rich in symbolism.They are like signposts and markers along the paths of our lives.

Symbols act as triggers for the imagination and for our intuition.

The link between the symbol and an idea and how we interpret a tarot card is the image.

So when we look at a tarot card we start to enter the world of that card and the world of the person for whom we are reading.

Let's look a little closer at the Empress card.

The Empress card in the Tarot deck represents a union of the masculine and feminine in life.

The Empress both indicates that as a possibility in a tarot card reading - the portent of things to come; it also represents something of the form that will take.

In the major Arcana we are dealing with large and powerful forces, the archetypal energies that describe the patterns of life we encounter.

Just as the Moon is something out there, in the sky; and yet within us. We are tidal too in our emotions.

When you see the Empress card turn up in a reading, expect something of generosity to be present.

What would you like most happening in your life most of all?

The third Tarot card in the Major Arcana is the Empress card.

The Empress card speaks of beauty, bounty and creativity.

She reminds us:Nature rules!

And so she is often portrayed as being outside, 'in nature, garlanded and precocious, a harvest figure.

She is the Earth Mother, who both reflects and contains within her those primordial cycles of time - birth, maturity, endings, new beginnings.

We live in a world of immediacy, instant answers, email, text messaging, touch controls.

The Empress invites us: ground, centre, respect the flow of life.

What happens when a card is reversed in a tarot card reading?

Reversed cards are not necessarily the opposite of the meaning attached to the upright Tarot card.

Yet often they will take on that moderating or softening quality when the cards are difficult, such as the ten of swords; or they can indicate frustrations and delays associated with those transition times highlighted by the six of swords when it appears in a tarot reading.

When working with the imagery of a tarot card, it's good to think in terms of opposites.

For instance, just as in hexagrams of the I Ching, look to the opposite within.

The opposite is always contained in any moment, just as the sun expresses the moon and the moon is also a reflection of the sun.

Let's look at the example of the High Priestess in the Glastonbury tarot deck.

A tarot card is, fundamentally, a picture of our life at a particular moment.

Like a snapshot.

What gives that snapshot life is the movement we can discern in the moment.

Let's look at that a little closer.