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The Tarot Tradition
Tarot: Gender As Symbol (continued)
From this point on in the Major Arcana this theme of male/female, yin/yang, active/passive pairs is less obvious. The Lovers would seem to bring it too conclusion. We would be wrong, however, in assuming that the guy-girl action completely disappears. In illustrating its subsequent playing out, I will not go into each individual card in as much depth as before.
The Chariot in the next card (number 7) is pulled by two horses or sphinxes, one white, one black. Through force of will, the charioteer is keeping the two from pulling in conflicting directions. Effort must be expended to keep the Lovers from divorce after the honeymoon is over. Neither beast is explicitly depicted as being masculine or feminine; just the idea that opposites don't automatically live in harmony.
Number 8, Strength, shows a woman either taming a lion or tapping into it's energy. There is much depth of symbolism in this picture that will be saved for another article. For our purposes here, the lion could represent the woman's powerful energy, sexual and otherwise. With this comes the problematic aspect of femininity: manipulation, PMS, sluttiness. I'll stop now before I get into trouble. The card itself doesn't look that turbulent, but a wild, man-eating animal could not have been chosen randomly. When Aleister Crowley had this card named Lust in his Thoth deck he was on to something. It should be mentioned that very early examples of Strength show a male figure beating the holy crap out of the poor lion. This portrayal, with its message of id repression, was abandoned for good in favor of the more nuanced one we are now familiar with. Not that it matters for the present discussion, but Strength was number 11 for a long time. The occultists of a century ago made the switch with Justice (formerly number 8) because it created a nice sequential correspondence of trumps with zodiac signs (Leo comes before Libra). Sounds good to me. Either way, it's not worth arguing about. The Major Arcana cards of the late Middle Ages and Renaissance don't even have numerical designations.
Number 15, the Devil, depicts the dark side of masculinity in an obvious way. As in Strength, we have an animal, this time the goat. The connection with the orgiastic Greek god Pan is there, of course. Neo-pagans often argue that, if not for Christendom's influence, the demonic aspect of this card would be absent. Nice try. The hermetic tradition from which the Tarot springs walked a middle course between the Pagan and the Catholic, never allowing either to dominate. In any case, we need cards like the Devil. The earlier male figures are dignified, but the Devil evokes a real dark undercurrent in masculinity. If the Magician is Steve Jobs, and the Emperor is Winston Churchill, then the Devil is Jim Jones or Hitler.
The Devil also serves double duty as the Lovers on the rocks, temporarily at least. In more recent centuries, the picture depicts a man and woman ignominiously chained to the demon's throne. Romeo and Juliet have descended into the abyss of a marriage made in hell. By extension, the card depicts all unholy alliances that bring the worst out of the parties involved. So many ways for the two genders two interact with ulterior motives. Tarot portrays this unflinchingly.
© René Aceves, 2005