Masculinity and the Tarot: The King of Fire

Welcome Back, Dear Readers

In this week's blog post, we are diving deeper into the Four Kings Method and beginning our exploration of the different aspects of masculine development portrayed in the tarot. As I mentioned last week, the four kings of the tarot represent mastery of each of their elements and serve as models for us, as men, to begin working through and developing expertise in each domain of our lives.

Regarding the element of fire, represented by the wands, we’ll be exploring the emotional, sexual, and creative aspects of our lives. When we zoom out, there are several ways society tries to control and suppress the fire of men. First, cultural norms limit the kinds of emotions men are allowed to express. Secondly, social mechanisms control male sexuality, turning it into a resource for value extraction. Lastly, the structure of work and commodified leisure ensnares the creative energy of men for profit. We will examine each of these elements and reflect on the lessons of the King of Wands to gain insight on responding in a way that emphasizes freedom.

Understanding the King of Wands

The King of Wands represents mastery over the emotional parts of our lives. His concern lies in the management of the spark of life that exists within us. Like managing a fire, the king understands the need to encourage growth while setting boundaries, so the fire doesn't destroy everything around it.

Looking at the imagery of the card, there are a few elements to focus on. First, you’ll notice that the King is seated on his throne, facing the left. In ancient metaphysics, the left side is associated with the active, masculine principle. Thus, we can infer that the king's work requires his constant attention and guiding hand. Passion and energy cannot be left alone; they must be fostered and cared for.

Secondly, you’ll see the massive staff he holds in his right hand. In tarot, wands are often considered phallic symbols, representing the penis. In occult and magical traditions, the phallus is associated with the spark of creation, good luck, and masculine power.

Reflecting on the Ace of Wands, there is an inside joke among tarot readers that it represents masturbation—there's a grain of truth in that. At the Ace stage of the suit, we are merely reflecting on unmanifested, eternal energy. Engaging in masturbatory practices at this level is not about creation but about reveling in the infinite potential of our passion. However, the King of Wands is no longer in the phase of waiting to engage in creation. His phallus is now being wielded with purpose and wisdom.

Lastly, take note of the small lizard on the platform next to the king. While interpretations vary, I favor the idea that it represents our "lizard brain," or in psychoanalysis, the "Id"—the intuitive, pleasure-seeking, pain-avoidant part of our personality. This part of us is critical for survival and drives us to create something outside ourselves—be it children, art, or a legacy.

The lizard reminds us that while the King of Wands manages the fires of passion, passion itself is rooted in our most basic instincts. Outside of language, logic, or love, the spark of life is something that can only be felt, not fully understood or categorized.

The Shadow Side: The Hedonic Ruler

Like all tarot cards, the King of Wands has a shadow side, which I call the Hedonic Ruler. The figure lurking in the shadows of this king represents chaos, unadulterated pleasure, and predatory behavior. The Hedonic Ruler emerges when men have neglected self-management, yearning for the days of the Ace of Wands. Their masturbatory habits consume them. They neglect their responsibilities in favor of cheap thrills. They revel in their potential instead of actualizing it. They burn through their lives without direction or purpose, rather than using their fire to light the way for others.

By "masturbation," I refer to a range of behaviors—yes, it includes sexual masturbation, but it extends to excessive video gaming, gambling, narcissistic projects, or self-aggrandizement. The King of Wands doesn’t avoid solo sexual gratification, but he never uses it as a means of escaping reality.

The Hedonic Ruler is a man with the potential to become the King of Wands but lacks the discipline, drive, and purpose to cultivate his fire and inspire others.

A Word of Caution

When we speak of managing or facilitating the fire within ourselves, this is not about micromanagement. There's a history of men who believe that the fire they carry is inherently violent, sinful, or bad and, as a result, create arbitrary rules for themselves. They hollow out the richness of their lives, fearing that embracing this aspect will unleash the Hedonic Ruler. Yet, by extinguishing their own flame, they backtrack to the Ace of Wands, stuck in potential but lacking creation or purpose. Ironically, they become that which they feared.

Emotions

The first domain ruled by the element of fire is our rich inner emotional life. Contrary to popular belief, our emotions represent the core of who we are, and everything else revolves around them. You may not consider yourself emotional, but the emotions you do have dictate your thoughts and actions. In the James-Lange theory of emotion, we first experience an event that causes us to direct our attention to something in our environment, this is followed by a physical response, and only then do we assign it an emotion. After we identify the emotion, we develop a cognitive justification to explain to ourselves why we feel that way and adjust our behavior accordingly. The interesting aspect of this theory is that our metacognitive experience of emotions are at the end of the process, not the beginning; we don't get to choose how we feel, only the justification for our interpretation of how we feel. Thus, emotional intelligence can be helpful because it provides a vocabulary to match our emotional states with the context we are in.

If you consider the trope that men are supposed to be nonchalant and stoic within the context of this theory, you can anticipate some critical errors some might experience. Without a variety of emotional experiences and signifiers to attach to them, the emotional life becomes a dark and mysterious place that feels rich, but doesn't bring out nuanced emotional states. For example, any time a man following this archetype feel "heated" or upset, a limited emotional vocabulary might result in rage being the only way that the physiological feeling can express itself. This man may always respond with rage, despite the environmental demands. He is then perceived as a hotheaded and undisciplined, which undermines his goal of being stoic.

The King of Wands encourages us to experience the full spectrum of emotions, categorize them, and use them appropriately. For the King of Wands, nonchalance comes with expertise of his emotional life. He urges us to experience all of our emotional states, categorize them, and then deploy them in the appropriate situations. Because he has experienced annoyance, irritation, aggravation, anger, rage, and wrath, he can match those emotional labels onto the appropriate context. He will never respond to a barista giving him the wrong coffee with wrath, because he knows that is reserved for far more serious situations.

However, this is much easier said than done. As you have probably experienced first hand, the emotions of men are not a priority, unless they result in violent behavior towards others. Expressions of the experiences of saddness, anxiety, fear, jealousy, or joy are not encouraged (and depending on how you were raised, outright discouraged). And to rub salt in the wound, there is a trend right now where, primarily women or sinsere but annoying liberal men, try to remedy this issue by treating men like children who need a kindergarden lesson in emotional vocabulary words and sharing feelings with complete strangers on a zoom call. However, they fundementally misunderstand the point of masculinity and their workshop/mindfulness/amatuer therapy sessions serve to further alienate and emasculate men.

There is not an easy solution to this problem, and I applaud those who sincerely work toward findings solutions and outlets for men to learn how to develop. Thinking on the wands, art is often associated with this suit. I think there truly is something to be said about embracing the masculine writers of the past to orient us toward who we want to be in the present. I am thinking of J. R. R. Tolkein, Earnest Hemmingway, Leo Tolstoy, Charles Bucowski, Oscar Wilde, Mark Twain, or Louis L'Amour. Stories about great men, emotional men, men who experience a full range of emotion and still hold onto a secure sense of self and do not fall to the ever changing whims of society. While this wont fix an acute problem; perhaps it will set the tone for a long-term transformation.

Sexuality

Sexuality is also a major aspect of the fire element. The drive to feel good, connect with others, and embrace the primal forces within us is governed by the King of Wands. He encourages us to explore what turns us on and find a place for it in our lives.

However, men face two major hurdles: other men and women.

Other men can foster bizarre neuroses about sexuality, turning healthy desires into sources of shame. Neuroses, such as pornography addiction, masturbation, sexual conquest, or being perceived as something you aren't, limits the sexual experience of men significantly. By holding anxiety that your sexuality is somehow sinful, different, pathological, or perverted, you ironically create the conditions for the repression of what was a healthy desire to take on those characteristics. While it does sound like I am specifically talking about people who want to be freaky, but are scared to be, I am also talking about the men who prefer vanilla and romantic sexuality, but are worried that they are "boring" or "weak."

Women, on the other hand, can sometimes act as overt agents of sexual policing, enforcing restrictive norms. Women will weaponize their relationships with men to enforce normative sexual conduct. With their partners, they will turn pornography viewership into adultery; masturbation into pathology; and sexual fantasies into predictions of the future. Women will echo the judgmental voice in a man's head and confirm his deepest, illogical fears about himself. His fears about how other men will perceive him are confirmed by the sharp tongue of the women in his life.

I will probably write more about this issue in a seperate blog post; but, I do want to explore the idea that due to this hyper-policing of men's sexuality (especially in our new sex-negative age), it becomes much safer for men to experience gratification online with fictional others either synchronously (via camrooms, streamers, or AI agents) or asynchronously (via "movies"). The result of this relationship between in-real-life sex negativity and the infinite affirmations one can get online, is that it transformes men's sexuality into a natural resource for profit generation. The divine spark is extracted like minerals from the earth or fruit from the trees to line the pockets of some of the most psychotic forces on the planet. Truly, this is the playground of the Hedonistic Ruler.

Creativity

Perhaps the most significant domain of the King of Wands is creativity. The core trait of humanity is our drive to create and be productive, which elevates us above the animals. This "species-essence" is our biological inheritance, which we must foster and express in order to become fully human. However, much of our energy we spend day-to-day is used to earn a paycheck and the things we create belong to other people. We will spend 8-12 hours a day laboring for someone else and when we get to go home, that time is only to eat, rest, and get off. For this reason, when we finally get to make decisions for ourselves and experience a taste of freedom, we spend that time in recovery, reduced to our animal state.

Similar to the value extraction that we see in sexuality, when we are reduced to our primitive state after work, there has emerged a whole host of "cheap leisure" industries to continue to make money off of us while we are off the clock. From social media to streaming providerd, these company harvest our freetime and remaining, precious, energy at the end of the day to harvest our data and extra resource value from us. As you have probably noticed, the algorythms deployed are designed to ensnare us into hyper-real fantasy worlds, which take a lot of discipline to escape from once you enter their dominion. Similar to the resource extration of sexuality, these apps will continue to sap your creative energies and keep you glued to the screen. I am not above this; sometimes I get trapped in Instagram reels, or Youtube shorts, and I can feel my body becoming numb and my anxiety starting to spike. Like the sirens in Greek mythology, avoid these tempresses for they will take everything your job hasn't already harvested from you.

The King of Wands understands that work is necessary, and he also recognizes the dignity of man and his labor. He encourages us to look for opportunities to claim freedom and autonomy within our current environment of work and leisure. While we don't live in a communist utopia, it is important to set boundaries with your work to salavage as much time and energy as you can for yourself and those close to you. Additionally, when you aren't at work, you must maintain constant discipline so the remaining energy you have doesn't get harvested by cheap leisure.

Conclusion

Well damn, y'all; we have been on quite the journey with this blog post. Thank you for sticking through it and I hope you were able to pull out some ideas or tropes that can help you guide your process of tending to your inner flame. The King of Wands is an important figure for us, because he encourages men to create a channel between their inner life and the outer world, igniting active participation. The building blogs to make this possible lay in our internal life and our ability to feel, name, and manage our emotional states; building sincere and authentic relationship with our sexuality; and find ways to reconnect to our species-essence by actively engaging in our creative processes outside of a work context. If you take nothing else from this blog post, please remember: what you do not actualize in the real world is subject to harvesting from corperations. The emotions you do not control will be drawn to rage-bait content and social media companies will profit off your engagement. The sexuality you do not embrase will make money for pornography companies and creators. The time you do not create for yourself will be consumed by apps and streaming services. The world around us will hollow you out until there is nothing left.

The lessons of the King of Fire are difficult to learn; he expects a lot from us because we are capable. In order to facilitate your own journey through fire, consider the spread below.

Until next time, thank you for reading.

New Spread: The Crown of Fire

For the spread this week, you'll be going deeper into the ways your can support your inner fire, which will fuel you toward action in the world around you. The first three cards in this spread represent the fuel of your fire; these cards should help you identify where you are drawing energy from and if there are any blocks present. The next three cards represent the way you are expressing your emotions, sexuality, and creativity. From these last three cards, you should get a reflection of how your current behavior and feelings are actualizing, which will help you determine which areas you need to start working on.