Gender in the Tarot

Let’s start with this. Gender is a construct. Gender is and has always been a way to describe energy. The yin and yang of it all.

Tarot is a way to feel into and understand energy visually and metaphysically. And I would like to take a bit of your time to discuss how we see this in our decks.

In our major arcana we see The Fool as the first card, the seed of our experiences, the beginning, before we start to make choices. We are safe and cocooned-free and unencumbered by societies expectations and domestications. As our soul sets off on its journey we start to understand the difference in the internal and external, we find the yin and yang of it all movement and passivity’s male and female vibes.

And we see this illustrated in our rider Waite deck which was developed in 1908 when that made sense clearly to the people who were creating and using these decks, now there are more decks that use more gender fluid and inclusive images.

So as The Fool jumps into the world, as we blossom into our experience we see that we need to understand and influence our external world, we need our caretakers to come care for us. To feed us, teach us and cuddle us. This is seen in The Magician as we learn to influence and create in this active way. We learn that we can get other’s attention, we learn we can grasp for things we want and our feelings and needs are valid and met (in a healthy environment).

As we do that, and we flourish and grow we can start to look inward to see what we need to grow our souls, our intuition etc…to turn inward in a quiet yin fashion. This is The High Priestess.

See how we spilt into these 2 gendered ideas? As we progress through our majors we see The Empress-this beautiful woman, who is? In fact the combination of those two previous energies. This yin energy flows to create that “male” stability in the emperor and on it goes ….

We start to see some hints of non gendered or hermaphroditism as we approach The Temperance card. The angel is seen as the balance of all - male and female and bound by the laws of nature (that triangle on their chest is a symbol of that).

The card that follows, The Devil card’s image is based on Baphoment which is also usually seen as hermaphroditic-a symbol of balance and inclusion. Although the Devil in the Rider-Waite deck seems to be more of the devil seen in Christianity.

In the world we see this completion, the return to the non gendered image of The Fool, but in this case including all the things we have learned and mastered. The figure is balanced between heaven and earth (remember the magician is also connected to heaven and heart), and is often seen as the magician and high priestess coming together. Check out Rachel Pollak’s books for more on that.

Throughout history there has been gender fluidity and the tarot is no different. The tarot embraces all of life’s experience, ups, downs, active times and quiet times and through that we find balance, variety and beauty.