Masculine tarot decks out there?

Aeric

Are there other decks besides Sol Invictus and Gods & Titans where male gods are the focus of the cards?
 

The Happy Squirrel

Have you seen the Fountain deck?
 

x-man

Superb For Gay Men

The Gay Tarot, which despite its name doesn't exclude straight males - it's more a masculine look at the world. It would have to be the best.

The Gay Tarot may not exclude straight males, but it speaks most eloquently and deeply to gay men. I give you one example: Consider XVI The Tower. In The Gay Tarot it becomes Revelation. A straight person looking at the card sees a young man standing in front of a seated older man and woman who look disapprovingly at him. A gay man looking at the card sees the archetypal "coming out to parents" scene, which if he didn't personally go through, he recognizes from talks with friends, from movies, literature, etc. For a gay man it is an extremely powerful image, one which I fear would completely go passed a straight person. Even if the straight person is told about the Gay Tarot interpretation of the card it will not have the power it does to us. Consider how perfectly the gay interpretation captures the basic meaning of The Tower.
 

Aeric

A deck may speak eloquently for its intended audience but that doesn't mean people not of its intended audience are incapable of attuning it to their perspective.

The "revelation" could be that the young man is confessing something negative. It could be an addiction, a crime he committed, a different (opposite-sex) person than who his parents preferred. There are many angles you could read the card concerning "coming out" about earth-shattering secrets that have nothing to do with same-sex attraction or identity. There is an intended interpretation but it's not necessarily "perfect."

The "Self-Hatred" card could just as easily be about some straight men who are constantly pressured by their parents to marry and start a family, when the ideal of the 2.4 children in the house with the white picket fence is the single image they're bombarded by.

The only cards in the deck that deal explicitly with same-sex attraction are the ones that depict two men engaged in romantic activities, and those are comparably few. Yet evn those could have "perfect" maning to a heterosexual man.

I frequently study Goddess decks intended for use by women exploring their uniqueness and power alone or in groups. I'm not female and I don't have many of women's experiences, yet the cards speak to me on a certain level as I seek to understand them, and to better understand women's experiences.
 

x-man

A deck may speak eloquently for its intended audience but that doesn't mean people not of its intended audience are incapable of attuning it to their perspective.

The "revelation" could be that the young man is confessing something negative. It could be an addiction, a crime he committed, a different (opposite-sex) person than who his parents preferred. There are many angles you could read the card concerning "coming out" about earth-shattering secrets that have nothing to do with same-sex attraction or identity. There is an intended interpretation but it's not necessarily "perfect."

The "Self-Hatred" card could just as easily be about some straight men who are constantly pressured by their parents to marry and start a family, when the ideal of the 2.4 children in the house with the white picket fence is the single image they're bombarded by.

The only cards in the deck that deal explicitly with same-sex attraction are the ones that depict two men engaged in romantic activities, and those are comparably few. Yet evn those could have "perfect" maning to a heterosexual man.

I frequently study Goddess decks intended for use by women exploring their uniqueness and power alone or in groups. I'm not female and I don't have many of women's experiences, yet the cards speak to me on a certain level as I seek to understand them, and to better understand women's experiences.

Thank you for replying. You are a fellow Torontonian.
You were, I suspect, in your comment about Self-Hatred, pointing to yet another powerful image that gay men are all-too familiar with--internalized homophobia--the man contemplating the life-style that will never be his but he is supposed to adopt. It struck me as powerfully as did Revelation.
I take your point that readers outside the intended group can have access to the particular deck's meaning. My point is only that the deck will never have the power it does to a gay reader. Basically I wonder why an outsider (if I can put it that way) would even be interested in using a deck using imagery so foreign to their psyche. I would think that a reader would want to harness as much of their unconscious as possible for a reading. I say this as someone who only recently discovered The Gay Tarot, having happily used the R-W deck for years. At first I avoided getting The Gay Tarot because I wondered how much of life could be covered by the fact of being gay. Anyway, for me The Gay Tarot has been a real Revelation.
Thanks for your comments; I do appreciate them.
 

wrenkincaid

Although I hadn't realized it until considering the op's question, I find the Haindl Tarot deck to be very masculine. It is beautiful, full of vivid color, yet (to me) feels edgy and assertive. It is one of my favorite decks to work with, because of these masculine overtones. Something about the deck feels very serious and fatherly to me. Most of my other decks could be considered very, very feminine (I like unicorns and glitter...lol).
 

Zephyros

Has the Hermetic been suggested? I suppose it falls more or less in the Thoth category.

But still, what exactly is a masculine deck? Say a "girly" deck and everyone knows what you're talking about, although this says more about society's treatment of women more than anything else. The last thing anyone could say about either the Thoth or the Hermetic is that they are "no frills" decks; they're practically nothing but frills.

I wonder if there is also such a thing as a masculine reading style. Someone suggested here that Tarot is in itself something that defies masculinity, since it is all about intuition. But that seems a generalization, as there are styles of reading other than than. This would seem to be that style of reading that is heavy on attributions, occult ideas, astrology, kabbalah, magick, etc. I myself certainly have no use for hearts and fairies, or really any excessively intuitive deck.

Besides, there's more to masculinity than being macho.
 

x-man

Intuition Is Not Gushy Sentimentality

I wonder if there is also such a thing as a masculine reading style. Someone suggested here that Tarot is in itself something that defies masculinity, since it is all about intuition. But that seems a generalization, as there are styles of reading other than than. This would seem to be that style of reading that is heavy on attributions, occult ideas, astrology, kabbalah, magick, etc. I myself certainly have no use for hearts and fairies, or really any excessively intuitive deck.

Besides, there's more to masculinity than being macho.

To suggest that men lack intuition (and therefore are less capable at Tarot) is sexist and silly. It certainly counters my own experience; I have lived much of my life in all-male environments--aboard ships, in northern bush camps, my own social preferences in cities--and I know this suggestion is ridiculous. Do not confuse intuition with gushy sentimentality which we can see in romance novels and, sad to say, on a lot of Tarot reading sites on line--ones not usually tended by men. We can be "faulted" for lacking this latter quality, but not for lacking intuition.