The fool's journey -- men only??

jumptothemoonyea said:

Motherhood is one of the purest manifestation of the Fool's journey - blindly choosing path of pain, uncertainty, struggle w/o breaks to bring up new life, new beginning

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I completely agree. Since the Fool's journey is repeated over and over in our lifetimes in small ways as well as momentous ways, there are many Fool's Journeys that we take in our lives. Any act of creation involves all the cards of the Major Arcana.

~Mercy

Hi all,
I think there are ways to make each card apply to either gender. Why not use the image of the football coach for the Empress? Doesn't the coach nurture his team, give them direction, see to it that they are healthy for the game, etc., etc.? Sounds like an Empress to me. However, I wouldn't want to be the one that told the coach he was an Empress! Ha, ha, ha! I can just see the face on some big, tough, coach when he hears that!

raeanne said:

Hi all,
I think there are ways to make each card apply to either gender. Why not use the image of the football coach for the Empress? Doesn't the coach nurture his team, give them direction, see to it that they are healthy for the game, etc., etc.? Sounds like an Empress to me. However, I wouldn't want to be the one that told the coach he was an Empress! Ha, ha, ha! I can just see the face on some big, tough, coach when he hears that!

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Some of us are trying to be serious here ...

Merely putting a penis on a female character or female breasts on a male one does not make that image meaningful. If someone took the ol' Rider deck and made all the characters Negro, Chinese, or Amerindians it still wouldn't work. People need images they can accept and understand or relate to. Why would an African respond to the Rider Heirophant just because someone painted him up in blackface? They would be insulted by it and see it as derisive instead of inclusive.

You can say 'energy is not male and female yada-yada-yada blahblahblah' all you want. People don't care about what you say; they want to see images that support them and give credence to them.

tarotbear said:

Some of us are trying to be serious here ...

Merely putting a penis on a female character or female breasts on a male one does not make that image meaningful.

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Tarotbear,
I think you have misunderstood me. I am also being serious and I am NOT suggesting putting a penis on a female or breasts on a male. I am saying that there are times when males demonstrate female emergy. Most people in our society see a coach as the big macho man with lots of male energy. But in reality it is very much an Empress type role. A coach nurtures his team. You don't have to put breasts on a man if you already have a good example of a male demonstrating the type of energy you are trying to express. I never suggested just putting black face on the RW deck. I did say that it is possible to express the energy of a card from either a male or female perspective.

A Masonic Perspective

I'm a Freemason, so I definitely follow the line of thought that there are some spiritual paths better suited to men than women. Not better or superior in a value laden sense, just different and "a better fit", as it were.

I think the fool's journey does translate well to either gender, especially when given the example of motherhood. However, the particulars differ, just as with physical gender. People are basically the same physically, but the particulars of certain structures are different.

How the particulars in the story differ, I'm not really sure. Perhaps it is a community vs. individual sort of difference.

For novels with a strong female on the fool's journey, you could do worse than the Secret Texts trilogy by Holly Lisle. Diplomacy of wolves is the first, and I find it to be an amazing series.

tarotbear said:

Merely reversing the genders on the deck - having a female Heirophant or a male Empress is just a schtick - it doesn't prove anything and might be seen as frivilous or silly. There has to be a 'reason' and it has to be well thought and incorporated into the design. If not - it is just an exercise. In the Motherpeace tarot - an anti-male tarot if I ever saw one - the artist put female breasts on everything - including the male Heirophant. It looks stupid.

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I don't see anywhere in this thread anybody suggesting this - or indeed doing it. Do you think we have been saying people should do this? Do you feel that decks that 'reverse gender' are always a 'schtick'?

Edited to add - I second what Raeanne just said!

TheoMo said:

Thanks all for your responses. Moongold, you mentioned female role models -- I would love to read some stories with female central characters, if you could name some that would be awesome.

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Dear TheoMo ~

You and I both share a Catholic background I think? My greatest role models as a child were the female saints, but the one that had the most influence was Teresa of Avila. She was the most intelligent, witty and amazing woman. She was mystic as well.

Therese of Lisieux was my confirmation saint but I really preferred the Great Teresa. Catherine of Siena was another one I admired.

As a teenager Simone de Beauvoir was a tremendous influence. I read all her biographies and novels and followed her in the press. Vera Brittain and Winifred Holtby I also admired. Brittain's Testimony ...... biographies, I gobbled up. Radclyffe Hall and women of her ilk also were important to me.

Henry Handel Richardson is an Australian author I loved as a teenager. She had to pretend she was a man to get published though.

For me today, the greatest poets are still women. They have a unique voice but I have always loved the poetic voices of women. I've discovered another American one recently called Joy Harjo.

Gender is important because it exists and power is intrinsically bound up with gender. If you seek, you find, however, and I never found any difficulty in discovering the voice of women.

Gender in the Tarot does not bother me very much because I came to Tarot relatively late in life, and other things assume more importance. I can see how it would bother some though. As a younger woman it might well have concerned me.

Many blessings ~

Moongold

Kiama said:

I don't see anywhere in this thread anybody suggesting this - or indeed doing it. Do you think we have been saying people should do this? Do you feel that decks that 'reverse gender' are always a 'schtick'?

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No, Kiama, I am saying that there is another thread that asks 'where are the brown people?' - obviously that person needs the validation (more power to them!) to want to see images that they can relate to.

All too often, someone comes up with a 'great' idea for another new Tarot deck and rushes something into print that is lousy, amatuerish, or is - can I say the word - pure crap. These are the same people that say 'You know - that person is right - where are the brown people? Brown people need validation.' Yet, these are the same people who say 'What do men need validation for?' Men need their myths and mythos just as much as anyone else, but sticking female breasts on a male image (a la the Motherpeace tarot) is inadequate. Saying 'I have this great idea! Let's reverse all the genders in the deck!' - yep -- pure schtick. Saying ' I want to create a tarot deck free of male domineering imagery and create a deck for women where they can feel safe,' - hey -- that's a terriffic idea! But saying 'Men! I Hate Men! Men have destroyed the world and make war! I want a women's deck that shows women make peace!' - then you go out and create an anti-male deck as opposed to a deck devoid of male images - quite a different thing.

tarotbear said:

No, Kiama, I am saying that there is another thread that asks 'where are the brown people?' - obviously that person needs the validation (more power to them!) to want to see images that they can relate to.

All too often, someone comes up with a 'great' idea for another new Tarot deck and rushes something into print that is lousy, amatuerish, or is - can I say the word - pure crap. These are the same people that say 'You know - that person is right - where are the brown people? Brown people need validation.' Yet, these are the same people who say 'What do men need validation for?' Men need their myths and mythos just as much as anyone else, but sticking female breasts on a male image (a la the Motherpeace tarot) is inadequate. Saying 'I have this great idea! Let's reverse all the genders in the deck!' - yep -- pure schtick. Saying ' I want to create a tarot deck free of male domineering imagery and create a deck for women where they can feel safe,' - hey -- that's a terriffic idea! But saying 'Men! I Hate Men! Men have destroyed the world and make war! I want a women's deck that shows women make peace!' - then you go out and create an anti-male deck as opposed to a deck devoid of male images - quite a different thing.

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I have not seen every card in the Motherpeace Tarot but I have heard others here say that they experience the deck as "man hating". I understand it was conceptualised in the late 1970's (but published in the early 1980's) which was the tale end of the the huge Womens' Liberation movement of the early 70's. It would be fairly natural to expect to see at least one "radical" deck from that time, and as you commented also Tarot needs to reach a wide variety interests and needs. I used to think the Marseille was white, patriarchal and class centred until I got to know it a lot better.

I think tarot decks need to be first understood in the context of their times. One of the reasons why I loved the Morgan Greer deck so much initially was that it evoked images and style reminiscent of the 1970's, which was the time of my young womanhood.

Good luck with your male oriented Tarot, but it will always reflect your own values, experience and perceptions and you may not be the typical American male . I think I am really lucky that there are so many decks to choose from. I cannot fail to find one at least that I can identify with, that reflects my changing interests and needs, and that caters for at least some aspects of my psyche.


Moongold

I understand what you're saying about some decks out there, Tarotbear (and it's decks such as that which made me want to create the God Tarot in the first place. I'll mention no deck names, but you've probably seen me ranting about it in the Tarot Decks forum about a year ago...) And there are many issues you raise in your last post... So many 'female' decks have become man-hating decks, which to me is like cutting your nose off to spite your face: after all, many women who use these decks live lives in tandem with men. Not all of us live in all-women communities! (And I don't think I'd want to either! UGH!)

But I'm not sure where this leaves us in the discussion about the Fool's journey and gender...?

Surely a deck that doesn't JUST stick a penis on the 'women' cards and breasts on the 'men' cards - a deck that really thinks about how to represent the meanings of that card within the non-traditional gender image - does go some way to proving that each Major Arcana can not only be experienced fully by, but also represented by, all genders?

And isn't it slightly assuming the conclusion to say in the first place that there are such things as 'male' and 'female' cards...?

Blessings,

Kiama