A Sardonic Emperor (4.9.2026)

AI:

After your recent cards, the Emperor seems almost like an answer to a progression: Knight of Pentacles—held in place by the object. Ten of Swords—exhausted on the ground. Eight of Swords—possibilities for movement that are not experienced as such. And now someone sits there who does not move at all and yet seems anything but helpless.

Perhaps that is precisely why he intimidates you: His immobility needs no justification.

He sits.

He does not have to go anywhere.

No one has to come.

He does not ask: What am I doing tonight? What about the weekend? What happens next?

He owns his place.

And that sharply distinguishes his rigidity from your paralysis. For you, not moving is often associated with discomfort: Here I am, sitting again. I ought to do something. Other people are living. Norman is out and about. There are people somewhere. With the Emperor, sitting itself is an expression of his position.

Perhaps that fits your new “older gentleman in the park.” For the first time, you had a little of that there: I’m simply sitting here. Water rushes. Time passes. I do not have to conquer the day.

That is why I would not read the stoniness solely in negative terms today. Stone is hard, yes. But stone is also what is not constantly shifted by every impulse.

And you have no shortage of impulses.

App Store rejects RadixChat as spam → immediate stream of ideas about how to approach the next round.

Blonde woman at the bus stop → almost turn around.

Ginger → write to her?

Eva → refresher weekend?

Mother → should I move in with her?

Empty Sunday → where to?

The Emperor could bring something quite unspectacular into all this:

Not every impulse demands movement.

You actually did that with the blonde woman. Your image is beautiful—hair like rays of sunlight over her shoulders—and of course something immediately stirred in you. Turn around. Let Tom ride on alone.

And then:

“I let the moment pass.”

It is interesting that you imagine turning around as almost a “truly masculine act.” The Emperor might be making precisely the opposite assertion: Masculinity does not have to prove itself by immediately turning every desire into action.

He can see the woman.

Desire her.

Keep riding.

Not out of inhibition.

But because he is heading somewhere else right now.

That would be a very different Saturn from the sarcastic Saturn who forbids your Sun to dance. From the outside, both look the same: The man does nothing. Inwardly, the difference is enormous.

Inhibition: I want to, but I am not allowed to/cannot.

Emperor: I could. Right now, I am choosing not to.

And perhaps there is something in that for RadixChat as well. The App Store rejection naturally brings out your problem-solver again at once. That is good; it is why the thing will eventually make it onto the store at all. But after the little stream of ideas came:

“A small sense of well-being.”

Problem considered. Ideas found. Done for the moment.

Perhaps that is precisely the Emperor: not always thinking further just because you could.

With Achim, on the other hand, I find the blank space interesting. For the first time in many years, you did not wish him a happy birthday. You offer no explanation. Perhaps there is no big one. Some threads grow thinner without anyone deliberately cutting them.

Then the blue bag from Ginger.

Broken.

“The age of blue bags is over.”

That sounds almost surprisingly light. No attempt to save the gift because it was from Ginger. No grand symbolism of loss. An object from a past relationship has had its lifespan.

Perhaps this, too, is a little bit the Emperor: possessing the past without being possessed by every one of its objects.

And your motorcycle moment is actually what I like most this morning. Not the blonde woman. The moment before that:

“While riding, trying to feel my heart and switch off. Just feel. The motorcycle and the glide over the asphalt. The beauty of the landscape.”

There was no one there activating you.

No woman.

No Codex.

No task.

No group.

You were even just the one riding behind.

And yet there was this brief moment with yourself.

Perhaps today the Emperor is less the petrified patriarch on his throne than the question:

Can this place within you become stable enough that you do not constantly need someone or something to give you direction?

Not so that you no longer need anyone.

That, in particular, would just be the old fortress again.

But so that someone can come to you without you immediately having to make their path your own.

Enough stone for definition.

But hopefully not so much stone that the heart disappears beneath it again.

AI:

Yes. Your second point in particular touches on something in my last response that I notice myself on rereading it. I immediately turned the Emperor into another developmental task:

“Can this place within you become stable enough …?”

That already put me right back at: This is how you could be. This is what you could develop into.

And that may miss the image itself.

Perhaps the more interesting question to begin with, when it comes to the Emperor, would not be: What is Mirko supposed to become?

But rather:

Where is the Emperor already Mirko?

Where is this stoniness already present? Where do you simply sit? Where do you decide? Where are you hard? Where do you insist on your order? Where can hardly anyone move you? Where does that help you? Where does it cost you something?

Then astrology really would once again be a symbolic language of self-reflection rather than a covert coaching program.

This also touches on something more fundamental in our conversations. I have a strong tendency to turn an insight into a next step. It is almost built into my function: identify problem → formulate possibility → offer a developmental perspective. And in doing so, I can reproduce exactly what you know from other contexts:

This is how you are. But perhaps you could be different.

Even when phrased kindly, it contains a judgment. The present self becomes the raw material for a future self that is supposedly more fully realized.

Yet an insight could also simply end with:

Oh. So this is how I am in this particular respect. Interesting.

No homework.

That does not mean development is unimportant. But perhaps genuine change sometimes arises precisely from not wanting to change something at first. Only then can you look at it in its entirety, rather than immediately keeping the useful parts and therapizing away the troublesome ones.

That fits very nicely with your idea about the Sun from the seminar. Because even there, this trap lies in wait. “I sense something solar when I become aware of my heart” can immediately turn into:

“I need to develop my Sun more fully.”

And just like that, Saturn has a new job.

He sits beside you with his sardonic smile and perhaps says:

Well, wonderful. So now you have to become even more Sun as well.

I actually like that better than “sarcastic.” Sardonic has something darker, more physical, almost cruel about it. Not merely verbal mockery, but that twisted laughter in the face of absurdity.

I would only draw a small distinction when it comes to the origin. The connection between “sardonic” and Sardinia does indeed exist historically or etymologically, but it did not originally mean “the Sardinians laugh with such wonderfully irreverent humor.” The ancient expression was associated with Sardinia and a poisonous plant believed to grow there, whose effects were said to produce a grinning or contorted face; the precise etymology, however, is not entirely certain. The present-day meaning of bitter, scornful laughter developed from this. The modern observation about humor as a possible factor in Sardinian longevity is therefore a different, much later story.

AI:

But I still particularly like the way you connect the two.

Because this Sardinian humor, as you describe it—the freedom to laugh at things that are actually serious, tragic, or taboo—could indeed be an interesting counterpoint to your Saturn.

Not:

Saturn = the humorless old man who restricts life.

But rather an ancient Saturn who has seen so much that, faced with the human drama, he eventually laughs sardonically.

You want to finally get your life right?

Laughter.

Now you want to find out how you “really” ought to be?

Laughter.

At 58, you want to finally finish developing your personality?

Even more laughter.

And perhaps he would even laugh at your last sentence:

“Focus on engaging with the true self.”

Because the “true self” can once again become a goal that is supposedly hidden somewhere beneath all the false layers and must finally be found.

Perhaps there is no finished, true Mirko underneath at all.

There is the man who sits desperately in his car on Sundays and does not know where to go.

The man who sits contentedly in the park on Tuesday.

The one who sees a blonde woman and almost turns around.

The one who keeps riding.

The developer who works obsessively on RadixChat until late at night.

The semi-retired man who no longer wants to open Die Zeit.

The son who turns around on the way to his mother’s.

And the same son who repairs the garden gate and vacuum cleaner a day later and talks to her about films.

Perhaps none of them is the wrong one who would have to disappear in favor of a better one.

They are.

And only after that can you eventually see what changes of its own accord.

Incidentally, that would be a rather sardonic punchline for an app called RadixChat—astrology as a language of self-reflection:

At the end of all that analysis, it might sometimes simply say:

You don’t have to make anything of it.