Motherpeace---do you use it?

[Aeric]

I appreciate your opinions, Aeric. And that touche' was one of my tongue-in-cheek moments. I couldn't resist, but I wasn't putting you down. Just good-natured ribbing. I couldn't help myself.

Haha I know, no worries.

snip

But that brings up an interesting question about the Medicine Woman deck specifically. I've always thought that Carol Bridges didn't really do her homework when incorporating Native American culture and lore into the deck. Any relation to actual NA traditions, like matrilineage, seems coincidental at best. The vast majority of the book's lessons are New Age: chakra meditations, colour therapy, vegetarianism, etc. It feels like what she was produced was a New Age woman's Tarot deck that has a slight Native American flavour. The women wear buckskins, are archers, wear feathered headdresses, and have spirit guides. There's an awful lot of your usual Plains Indians stereotypes in there. That, and not the women's empowerment stuff, is why I gave the deck up. It felt like she was just layering it on there because it's cool to non-Natives. Did you ever get that feeling?

I didn't get to keep Daughters of the Moon long enough to really be able to comment about it other than that I loved the deck's art work. I'm not familiar with the angel deck and the Sacred Feminine.

I think the Motherpeace is considered to be militantly feminist because of the state of society at the time and the state of women within society when it was created. It was a time when women were standing up and being heard that they wanted to be something besides secondary citizens and the property of their spouse. I guess it had to get militant or it wouldn't have been heard.

Daughters really is amazing artwork. It feels so welcoming, warm, and friendly. And I give it props for attempting a new Court card structures based on MMC. Shining Angels and Sacred Feminine are less important to this discussion. I mention them only because they're examples of decks with majority women characters but no ideology attached. Both are Italian decks written by women and drawn by men, so they aren't a collaboration of women's movement advocates.

You know, here's my position personally. Women had so much more going for them in some ways when they weren't "liberated". Once they liberated themselves, men behaved like "Okay, there ya go, Sweets. Have at it." and things got really difficult for women. Maybe especially for women who hadn't even been one of the feminists in the first place. A woman being a woman is a very powerful being in the world. They don't have to compete with men or be like men to have power. We never got any equality of wages and things that were supposedly pushed for. We got on the wrong side of men in a man's world in many ways. Granted, there was some ground gained, but not all that much.

Oh there was and still is definitely a lot of bone-tossing. Many men don't want to get involved with women's rights issues for that reason. Seeing the spontaneous uproar generated, they dust their hands and say "All right, you say you're capable, go on then" condescendingly, mockingly. This is one of the main problems I have with men and feminism; many men just begrudge women the opportunity of equality, because it's the "thing to do these days," without actually offering to help them through it. The people who were already at the top ought to help those below, if only out of a tiny bit of altruism, not condescension. I've often thought that really aggressive "Sisters are doing it for themselves" solidarity, forcefully excluding male assistance or participation, was influenced by men mocking their abilities, putting absolutely no faith in them even when they finally got the chance. "We don't need men because they were never help to begin with."

That really injures the efforts of men who are actively trying to help women who are undercut get themselves up to the same level. That's the perspective I come from, because of my stature I was placed in the "girls' domain." I was a boy raised by and aurrounded by women with almost no male friends. I was different, but exposed to many (not all, obviously) of the same prejudices. And maybe that's why I prefer women-centered Tarot decks with more gender balance. For me, the Motherpeace is both women-empowering and man-hating, where Daughters of the Moon is women-empowering but not man-hating, and Sacred Feminine is women-powering with love for both sexes, the exclusionist ideology gone. That's my best explanation for this spectrum of decks related to my life and the 90s feminism I grew up with. Women have been this man's superiors, partners, peers, and guides more than men have. I've been loved and embraced despite the differences for which I was outcast. So I've always been of the mindset that we boys ought to exercise our male privilege to help those ladies who ask for help. In my ideal world there is no such thing as privilege based on sex, feminism and masculism blur into peopleism or equalism, people helping people.

Naturally, that's put me at odds with women who reject male assistance outright no matter how good-natured. You can't please everybody. I remember one year there was a women's movement parade, and there was controversy from pockts of women who didn't want men to walk alongside the women in support of their friends, co-workers, family, women in general. It happens, and no one can dismiss the notion that a man can't understand certain things a woman experiences. It's a point of pride and accomplishment to achieve goals without even loving male assistance. So I'm always at odds with certain women's groups, but we all soldier on in our own way until one day every single lady gets up there where she deserves to be.

 

[chimera68]

Thanks, chimera. lol I'm sure the mods can put your post into the study group where you thought you were posting. I thought only I did stuff like this!

deleted.

 

[avalonian]

I had the Motherpeace, sold it a few years ago, and then recently bought it again. I'm not using it yet, I've just been shuffling and looking at it. It feels like a very gentle deck, there is a real softness about it.

I do seem to be drawn towards the more feminine decks at the moment, maybe it's because I need more of that energy in my life.

Some people complain that the deck, and others like it, are unbalanced. As I see it, the world I live in is unbalanced, and I need to try and rebalance my world a bit. I'm seeing it as a set of scales where there is more energy on the masculine side than the feminine side. That situation will remain the same if an equal amount is added to both sides. I need to add more feminine energy to my life to get my scales balanced and I think this may be the deck to help me to achieve that.

 

[chimera68]

I had the Motherpeace, sold it a few years ago, and then recently bought it again. I'm not using it yet, I've just been shuffling and looking at it. It feels like a very gentle deck, there is a real softness about it.

I do seem to be drawn towards the more feminine decks at the moment, maybe it's because I need more of that energy in my life.

Some people complain that the deck, and others like it, are unbalanced. As I see it, the world I live in is unbalanced, and I need to try and rebalance my world a bit. I'm seeing it as a set of scales where there is more energy on the masculine side than the feminine side. That situation will remain the same if an equal amount is added to both sides. I need to add more feminine energy to my life to get my scales balanced and I think this may be the deck to help me to achieve that.

That's wonderful!....see, you get it, right? That's what the deck represents. Just like you said. That's why we need to study it more.

 

[Grizabella]

But that brings up an interesting question about the Medicine Woman deck specifically. I've always thought that Carol Bridges didn't really do her homework when incorporating Native American culture and lore into the deck. Any relation to actual NA traditions, like matrilineage, seems coincidental at best. The vast majority of the book's lessons are New Age: chakra meditations, colour therapy, vegetarianism, etc. It feels like what she was produced was a New Age woman's Tarot deck that has a slight Native American flavour. The women wear buckskins, are archers, wear feathered headdresses, and have spirit guides. There's an awful lot of your usual Plains Indians stereotypes in there. That, and not the women's empowerment stuff, is why I gave the deck up. It felt like she was just layering it on there because it's cool to non-Natives. Did you ever get that feeling?

I really hate to criticize anyone's deck. The artists go to great lengths to produce their decks, often working on them for years at a time just to do the basic art work. But yes, New Age is what the deck seems to be. There have been a lot of people who have jumped on the tribal bandwagon because it became more cool to be Indian than it was for many years. I bought the deck when I first started with Tarot and it was sealed up. I couldn't take it out and look at the cards. At that time, I was pretty in the dark about Tarot and what it is. I just wanted to learn it. I couldn't find the Ancestral Path, which is the one I really wanted, so I chose Medicine Woman.

The thing is, even the Gonzalez deck has limitations in trying to make a "Native American" deck because there were thousands of tribes and clans and there still are a great many. Add into it that Tarot has zilch to do with anything Native American. But I thought she did a good job of it with her book, Star Spider Speaks. I like that one better than the Medicine Woman.

 

[FLizarraga]

Some people complain that the deck, and others like it, are unbalanced. As I see it, the world I live in is unbalanced, and I need to try and rebalance my world a bit. I'm seeing it as a set of scales where there is more energy on the masculine side than the feminine side. That situation will remain the same if an equal amount is added to both sides. I need to add more feminine energy to my life to get my scales balanced and I think this may be the deck to help me to achieve that.

That's VERY interesting. See, I have always felt that most big traditional Tarot decks (Marseille, RWS and Thoth, and especially RWS for some reason) are either very masculine in energy or tipped toward the masculine side of things. At this point in my life, I also feel drawn toward the feminine energy, and to decks that are either feminine or that I feel are at least better balanced (the Mary-El comes to mind). What you just said has sort of make the whole thing much clearer for me.

 

[UrbanBramble]

Just my 2 cents - the motherpeace deck does not take an anti male stance. It does take a stance against the patriarchy. These are two very different things. All of the son cards and some of the shaman cards are men and displayed in a positive empowered way - aside from the son of swords who is portrayed rather traditionally, I would say in the rws style. The devil tower and emporer all depict "men" in a negative way but they are actually addressing the patriarchical institution as that which is damaging or violent, not men as individuals.

I use the deck but I recognize the time period it comes from. Sometimes I disagree with the readings it gives me and other times it feels very pertinent. It kind of feels like my second wave feminist aunt is giving me advice - her politics are right on, I love listening to her stories, and she is super awesome... but she hasn't caught on that there is a third wave happening. Her views on gender are outdated and I actually don't want to live on a lesbian seperative commune but thanks auntie. I find this deck is really useful when I want to see my place in a group because it is so collectivist. So I use it for readings about family, friends, or workplace situations. I really love the world created by the authors, its very comforting and warm to me.

I could write so much more but I'm on my tablet so I'm keeping it brief. Very interesting conversation.

 

[Aeric]

Some people complain that the deck, and others like it, are unbalanced. As I see it, the world I live in is unbalanced, and I need to try and rebalance my world a bit. I'm seeing it as a set of scales where there is more energy on the masculine side than the feminine side. That situation will remain the same if an equal amount is added to both sides. I need to add more feminine energy to my life to get my scales balanced and I think this may be the deck to help me to achieve that.

Ahh, there I'm afraid we'll have to disagree.

I've never believed that the amount of male characters or female characters in Tarot images affects the level of "masculine" or "feminine" energy. In fact I have trouble with that entire concept. And the fact remains that such decks whether depicting all women like Daughters of the Moon, or having men on a selection of cards (Sacred Feminine as well as Motherpeace, I might add), the female, the woman, the "feminine" elements of Water and Earth, the Goddess is elevated above both sexes. Even if a man is depicted, the lessons in a women-centered deck are how he relates to the Divine Feminine, not how the Divine Feminine is affected by him. It is whole unto itself and both women and men are its vessels.

The God is de-emphasized or ignored completely, and the human women are the teachers, guides, and superiors. The highest status that a male carries in the vast majority of these decks is as a consort to the Goddess, and She is the prime mover. That's also how the God is venerated in some Dianic Wiccan circles, if he is venerated at all. The Goddess is always the superior.

So even a women-centered deck that has balanced gender representation is unarguably overwhelmingly feminine in influence, energy, power, and focus. That's what decks want both women and men to understand. The balance will always be tipped in favour of the female, no matter what deck you choose, because the focus is purposely not on the masculine.

My contention is where the images of the male are condescended to, patronized, or demonized in that representation while teaching about the feminine. I don't feel that's necessary, and we've already covered ground where people disagree with me. The man cannot learn about or learn from the goodness of the woman if he is mocked as a caricature of his potential, any more than a caricatured, debased woman learns about herself. This is the philosophy of equalism that I carry forward to set examples in a world that is not equal, and which certain women-centered decks provide.

 

[Aeric]

I use the deck but I recognize the time period it comes from. Sometimes I disagree with the readings it gives me and other times it feels very pertinent. It kind of feels like my second wave feminist aunt is giving me advice - her politics are right on, I love listening to her stories, and she is super awesome... but she hasn't caught on that there is a third wave happening. Her views on gender are outdated and I actually don't want to live on a lesbian seperative commune but thanks auntie. I find this deck is really useful when I want to see my place in a group because it is so collectivist. So I use it for readings about family, friends, or workplace situations. I really love the world created by the authors, its very comforting and warm to me.

I could write so much more but I'm on my tablet so I'm keeping it brief. Very interesting conversation.

Thank you for enjoying the conversation. I always love discussing these decks, they're all very poignant!

And I agree that no matter what our sex us we're often at odds with the perspectives of our elders, that's human nature. There was a discussion in the past feminist decks thread about utilizing and interpreting a Tarot deck contrary to the nature of its creation, and whether this does it and its authors a disservice. This certainly branches into all Tarot at large, as many of the popular interpretations of RWS today are not based on Arthur Waite's explanations, but were reclaimed by the gen. pop. and catapulted to recognition by later authors like Eden Gray.

Just my 2 cents - the motherpeace deck does not take an anti male stance. It does take a stance against the patriarchy. These are two very different things. All of the son cards and some of the shaman cards are men and displayed in a positive empowered way - aside from the son of swords who is portrayed rather traditionally, I would say in the rws style. The devil tower and emporer all depict "men" in a negative way but they are actually addressing the patriarchical institution as that which is damaging or violent, not men as individuals.

This is an excellent point, unfortunately Vicki and Karen don't espouse the same view. Their book Motherpeace: A Way to the Goddess... generalizes to the contrary where if you are a man, you're an implicit member of the patriarchy. The individual is not separate from the institution until he has been gentled, reworked, and tempered by the Goddess. I liken this rather to the silly concept of Eve and original sin, except Adam is the sinner: the male is inherently at fault and only by being exposed to the woman's truth later can he understand. If he doesn't, he is lost to bondage of his own making, because he is neither peacemaker nor stabilizer.

The book also contains generalizations of myths and warping of history to serve the context of the card images. The Son of Swords, for example, represents a classical Greek hero. But to paraphrase the text, not every Greek hero was a rapist who disrespected women and "slew the Goddess in some form or another." What of Ulysses, the hero of the Odyssey who braved male gods, monsters, and witches, assisted by the goddess Hera, in order to see his homeland and his wife Penelope? Theseus, who braved the labyrinth to rescue Ariadne from the Minotaur? Not to mention many times that heroes were assisted by women in order to achieve their goals, but the text ignores this and encompasses them all in this image and explanation.

The Shaman of Wands, arguably the most positive male image, depicts their idea of an ancient Egyptian ruler, but one from predynastic Egypt, before pyramids, mummification, and tombs came into fashion. They claim that he follows a Mother Goddess-worshipping tradition, but while evidence was found in prehistoric Egypt of worship of goddesses, they weren't the prime deities nor was one elevated as the Creatrix. This scant evidence is stretched very far in order for them to claim that all prehistoric Egyptians venerated a Mother Goddess. Well, no, they didn't. But the Shaman of Wands is a man who is created to fit the image of one who did, and he is the positive male role model. Worse, the pharaonic Egyptians who came after the Shaman became the Devil card's overseers. I find it difficult to believe that this speaks entirely on a social group level of patriarchy, but rather on individuals who have lost contact with the Divine Feminine have devolved, become monstrous, misogynistic, and the cards appeal to return to a time that never was.

However, one polarizing difference I notice with Motherpeace is that the people who did not read the guidebook did not detect the same negativity because it was never presented to them, only the images. And this circles back to the larger idea of using decks without books and divorcing creators' intentions from the interpretations. Is this the ideal way to us a second-wave feminist deck in a post third-wave feminist world? Should we? I feel that it's a question of ethics more than anything.

 

[Grizabella]

So, how about if women are always relegated to being the consorts of men, then? How do you feel about those decks? And has the historical information written by male-centered decks always been extremely accurate to a T with every single fact proven to be 100%?

The fact is, like with statistics, you can use history's bits and pieces to construe almost anything you want to make people believe. So what if these women didn't quote the facts exactly right according to men? So what if men are portrayed as consorts? We women have been facing and enduring these things almost since time began, but it's okay as long as it's us women on the short end of the stick. It's not okay if anyone even slightly seeks to portray men there. That's what it sounds like to me.

I think more women use Tarot than men because women don't get so stuck up to their neck in nitpicky stuff. I'm a woman, I'm not a feminist or lesbian but some of my most loved and favorite people are either or both. I don't care who worshiped women and who worshiped men or who was who's consort down through history in whatever century eons ago. I like this deck, I enjoy reading the book, and I'm not political and nit-picky about it. I find that it can be, depending on who uses it, a very warm, loving kind of deck that brings a lot of wisdom and that spritz of estrogen I was talking about to the world of Tarot. I'm finding it extremely useful in 2014 in connecting with the people I'm reading for and whom I care a lot about. I really, seriously do not care for the picking apart of it. It doesn't have any relevance to me, right here and now, using the deck.

Other threads are supposed to stay on topic. I wish this one could. The question I posed was in hopes that others could join in who do use Motherpeace but if nobody does, then off this thread could go into the archives somewhere and it would please me quite well.

I must say, though, I've learned two things that surprised the heck out of me even though I've been around here ten years or so. One is that the Thoth is sacred and only Crowley, Snuffin and Dummit or whoever are allowed to give any information on it and how to use it, and now it seems like I've found another taboo----using and liking Motherpeace. No matter what other decks are discussed around here, it's "oh never mind the books" or if someone finds an interesting book not written by Waite, it's "oh that's interesting and let's check it out." Nobody jumps in and has problems with that. And now I guess I've learned why the Motherpeace study group never got off the ground. Whack-a-mole has become Whack-a- Motherpeace user.

Anyway, I lost a long-time, dear extended family member unexpectedly today, so I'm just going to read a book and go to bed early, I think. Thanks to everyone who has been civil and carried on an interesting discussion. Keep it going if you want to, but I'm just going to leave the thread to carry on. I'm not a very good participant right now.