4 - IV The Emperor

Principle of Personal Power and Leadership

If you are born with the number 4, you are like the Emperor in your capacity to inspire and motivate others. You have strong leadership ability , and often people will put you in a leadership position whether you want to be there or not. You have a natural ability to go into business on your own or to work in organizations or institutions where you could be the head of a program or department.
For both men and women, this archetype reveals your relationship to power and leadership. The Emperor is a symbol of the father or the patriarch, so it might be that through your own father or through other paternal figures in your life you may have defines who you would be and who you would not be. The Emperor requires that ultimately you own your own power and authority and that you don't abandon your own authority or give your power away to others. It is generally known that if you are testing external authority figures or have difficulty with authority figures, that you have not yet fully owned your own power and leadership qualities.
For a woman, The Emperor is your golden man within, or what in Jungian psychology is referred to as the woman's animus. With this symbol as your life-time spiritual symbol, it reminds you that you have strong leadership ability and the resourcefulness to work well on your own. Since your own inner masculine nature, the animus, is well-developed internally, you need men around you who are as strong as you are, if not stronger; otherwise, you become easily bored or lose respect for those who are not as strong as you are. For a man with this symbol as your life-time spiritual symbol, it is important that you surround yourself with people who are as strong as you are, especially in teamwork and partnership endeavors; otherwise, you, too, will lose respect for or become easily bored and impatient with those who are not as capable as yourself.
Both genders with this life-time symbol have a deep love for the creative process, setting something new in motion, and capacities to implement visions, dreams, and ideas in practical ways. They could start their own business, department, or program. They could be gifted in anything associated with engineering, design, construction, or photographic or film work. They could be interested in the travel industry, in international work, or could find themselves traveling quite extensively in life, either for personal or professional reasons. Creative interests might include the arts, building models of their ideas, chemistry, physics, writing, and sports.
Your greatest challenge is to manifest your leadership and visionary gifts. You have an enormous capacity to model for others the quality of leadership that empowers others and serves to benefit the continued, or renewed quality of excellence, in a family, organization, community, or country. Like the element of fire, you are warm, nurturing, electric, vital, and energetic tin those activities that are meaningful and challenging to you.