This month’s blog discusses gender essentialism within tarot. I’ve talked about some of the issues with gender essentialism in a previous blog and my experience with tarot cards in a recent blog too.
Tarot decks can be contradictory when it comes to gender essentialism which is why the topic is so interesting but does make it difficult to put thoughts about it into words.
As previously discussed, the design on a tarot card affects the meanings of that card. A good tarot reader has a direct relationship with their deck and, overtime, the deck becomes imbued with their energy and intent. This will also affect card meanings. So to what extent gender essentialism is perpetuated in tarot can vary between tarot decks and between tarot readers' personal interpretations of those decks. There are tarot decks that have designs which are less likely to perpetuate gender essentialism. Some decks disregard gender and some portray transgender and nonbinary figures. Some decks use abstract imagery and avoid portraying people at all.
It may seem a fair assumption that older decks perpetuate gender essentialism far more than newer decks but some older decks, that are still in use, play with how gender is presented in their designs and several cards are typically said to depict ambiguously gendered people. There are certainly modern tarot decks that depict more rigidly gendered designs.
The typical interpretations of some tarot cards are steeped in gender essentialism. Many cards specifically depict male or female figures and are described as having either masculine or feminine energy. Many descriptions of these cards say that, when referring to a person, they refer to people of the same gender.
Tarot is divided into the major arcana and the minor arcana. The major arcana is numbered from 0 to 21 and includes death, the tower, the sun, the empress and the chariot to name just a few. The minor arcana is divided into four suits; cups, wands, swords and pentacles. In each of the four suits there are number cards, from ace to ten, and four court cards — the king, queen, knight and page.
Kings and knights are almost always considered masculine and queens considered feminine. There are some disagreements about certain tarot cards and their gender association. The page is often said to represent youth in which case it would be a card with no gendered associations despite typically representing a person. This would leave us with two court cards that are considered masculine for each suit and only one court card that’s considered feminine so many people consider the page to be a feminine card and some tarot decks even have a princess court card rather than a page.
I discussed the tarot deck I use in my own readings, Shaperatarot, in one of the previous blogs. In the Shaperatarot deck two of the four king cards depict women, as do two of the four knight cards, with a third knight focusing on a group of characters rather than just one. It’s clear that, for this whole deck, the genders of characters were not a factor in deciding what to depict on each card. The meanings of the cards are still clear though and, while there’s no mention of cards being masculine or feminine in the booklet that comes with the deck, the meanings are not otherwise altered.
Tarot suits have their own associations. Cups are associated with emotions, pentacles are associated with the material, wands are associated with growth and swords are associated with logic. Pentacles and cups are considered feminine suits and swords and wands are considered masculine suits. Of course, gendering these associations this way is rooted in gender essentialism. A justification given is that swords and wands are phallic while cups and pentacles symbolise the womb.
There are cards considered masculine in suits considered feminine and cards considered feminine in suits considered masculine. The king of cups is a so called masculine card in a suit considered feminine and the queen of swords is a so called feminine card in a suit considered masculine. This is because gender associations for suits are weaker than other gendered associations for tarot cards.
Several major arcana cards are also often said to have feminine or masculine energy. I’m discussing two of these here, the magician and strength (shown above), and comparing their usual meanings with their Shaperatarot meanings:
The magician, usually considered a masculine card, represents creation and success. This is, no doubt, rooted in the idea that women create life while men create ‘things’. The magician in Shaperatarot is a woman performing necromancy. The Shaperatarot not adhering to the usual gendered depictions removes the potential interpretation of ‘an important man may enter your life’ instead indicating that someone important may enter your life. And the card can also still represent success and creation. Something interesting, although not pertaining to gender essentialism, is that the additional context provided by the design being of her bringing someone she knew back to life means this card is far more likely to refer to someone returning to your life in Shaperatarot than it is to be referring to someone new entering it.
Strength is a card that represents emotional resilience and compassion. Strength almost always depicts a woman using gentle care to tame a lion and so it’s described as having feminine energy. The lion is said to represent raw masculine energy. In the Shaperatarot deck, the strength card depicts a scene where a character protects her partner. While this card still focuses on a woman, and still focuses on emotional strength, the context and her strong stance avoids any implication that gentleness can be used to tame raw masculine energy. It depicts emotional strength being drawn upon but taming anything at all doesn’t enter into it. She’s protecting someone she loves. Strength is still a highly emotional card about bravery and courage but the context allows the card’s meaning to shift away from interpretations rooted in gender essentialism. This card does not perpetuate gender essentialism as the character was not chosen because she is a woman but because the scene presented shows a character displaying bravery and fortitude and, ultimately, she triumphs. Strength is intended to be a positive card but if the scene used in the deck was one preceding loss or heartbreak, even if it showed a character in an otherwise similar circumstance, it would affect the interpretation of the card's meaning. There is a great deal of tragedy and heartbreak even in the most uplifting of Paul Shapera’s stories and there are many scenes of bravery that would have worked for strength if not for the suffering that follows after them. The scene chosen for strength in Shaperatarot precedes what was the most hopeful and joyous ending in the entirety of Shapera’s connected works at the time this deck was illustrated. If any other scene was depicted then strength in Shaperatarot would not be as triumphant as it is. As triumphant as strength should be.
In writing this series of blogs on tarot and gender essentialism, I’ve had time to reflect on why I love the tarot deck I use. There are two main reasons; the art style Fayzart136 used is stunning and the cards are based on Paul Shapera’s sensational musicals, books and podcast:
Paul Shapera is an American composer, writer and producer (bandcamp | spotify | Instagram | Discord). He is also the voice of many of the characters in his musicals. His often tragic stories are beautifully heart wrenching and his worldbuilding is compelling. His discography spans a variety of genres, styles and eras and the places he takes us to with his storytelling are magical. Some of Paul Shapera’s stories are short, told in a single song and only featuring a handful of characters, and may or may not contribute to the overarching storylines which take place over generations. Others are built upon in almost every story, with recurring characters. There are also characters who we may not have spent much time with but their actions reverberate. There are compelling characters in even the shortest stories. Characters explored are nuanced, they have dreams and they have flaws, they’re easy to love. Many of these characters are women and queer people and other minorities including many of the protagonists. We live in a world where seeing characters like these centre stage is important because it’s so rare.
Dutch artist Fayz (Fayzart136), the creator of Shaperatarot, has a distinct, expressive and lively artstyle. I found, and became a fan of, his art through the character lineups he drew of the main characters in most of Paul Shapera’s albums. He’s the official artist for Paul Shapera’s most recent live show, The Posthuman Cabaret. For the tarot deck he used hatching to great effect in his black and white illustrations. It’s a striking deck. Before writing these blogs I hadn’t quite grasped the extent to which Shaperatarot disregards gender. It’s no wonder it’s my absolute favourite tarot deck.
If an artist designing a tarot deck is mindful, they can make choices with their designs which avoid the gender essentialism present in many tarot decks and so mitigate how much these harmful ideas influence tarot readings. It’s then important for tarot readers to also be mindful in our interpretations.
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