Women's Empowerment and The Tarot
When someone reaches out for a Tarot reading, rune cast or any other form of psychic reading, they are usually looking for a prediction about their future. Often, especially in love and relationship readings, the predictions being requested involve other people’s behaviour.
The vast majority of people who seek Tarot or other types of readings are women, and I don’t think this is an accident. Many of us had grandmothers or great-grandmothers who lived in an era when women were considered to be little more than the property of men. Even in my own lifetime, it hasn’t been that long since if a man decided to pack up and move to Timbuktu (or away from Timbuktu if they already lived there) his wife was expected to leave her family, friends and basically her entire emotional support network and go with him. Women often had little if any input; it was his decision and she had to go along, whether she liked it or not.
The feminist movement did a lot of great work as far as gaining equal rights for women under the law, but the culture hasn’t quite caught up. We are still treated as “less than” in a thousand little ways and a few big ones. I won’t list them all here because most of you probably experience them on a daily basis already.
We think of ourselves as “less than” because we have been taught that we are. Because women have historically had little power in making decisions that can profoundly affect our own lives, and there is a strong thread in our culture that teaches us that that’s the way it should be, many women feel that we have very little agency in our lives. We see life as something that happens to us rather than something we take an active role in.
This is particularly noticeable in love and relationship readings, since we are taught that our worth stems from being able to attract a man and keep him happy. And so many questions tarot readers receive are a variation on “What will he do?”
“Will the cute bloke in the next cubicle at work ask me out?” I like to respond to this one by asking “Why don’t you ask him out? It is the twenty-first century, you know.” It usually startles the client, but I hope that woman has taken one tiny step toward becoming more self-confident.
“Will he ask me to marry him?” Are we still waiting around for men to do that?
“Will I meet someone?” Even questions that don’t directly revolve around male behaviour seem to reflect a certain passivity.
Before the pandemic, we all met people every day (some of us still do) and there are still opportunities online if you know where to look. Really, the problem is, we’re trying to get men to come over and chat us up, while simultaneously fending off guys we don’t want to be chatted up by. It puts us in a double bind. It’s exhausting but our cultural conditioning has taught us that we’re being “too forward” or “unladylike” if we take the initiative and go chat up a man we find attractive.
“Will I meet someone who I will be with long-term?” And now things get sticky. To properly answer this question, we might need to look at your past and your own psychology to see if you have a pattern of attracting men who don’t make for successful long-term partners, as well as the sort of pitfalls that might be avoidable in future relationships.
“Do you see me and my partner getting married?” Often asked as though getting married is something that just happens and not something the two people decide to do together.
“Do you see me getting back together with my ex?” Another sticky one, as it may involve looking at why he’s an ex in the first place and whether getting back with him is even a good idea. During a tarot read I get the “scary cards” with this question more than any other inquiry.
But the thread that runs through all these questions is a sense that women have limited power over our lives and relationships and so want to know what is going to happen in the future so we can prepare and respond as best we can.
I’m not here to make those predictions.
I’m here to help you reclaim your power.
Over the past few decades, there has been a shift in Tarot reading from using the cards as a tool of prediction to using them to analyze the influences around the client and even their own mindset. This is appropriate because as readers we can really only predict what is most likely to happen if you continue on your present path.
There is a lot in life that we can’t control: things like the weather, traffic, other people’s behaviour, global pandemics. But we can control the way we respond to these uncontrollables.
However, in most of our lives, we do have the power. What we do in the present affects what happens in the future. If the road we’re on leads to a place we don’t want to go, we can change course. We create our future s by the actions we take, and if what we’re doing isn’t serving our highest good, then we can bloody well go and do something else!
My goal as a tarot reader is to look at the energies both surrounding you and within you so that I can provide advice and guidance. I’m not living in your head, so I can give you more of an objective view. I try and help you to see which course of action is likely to bring about the best possible outcome in your life. The choice of whether to take that action is up to you.
So, are you ready to put on your big girl pants and take back the power that is rightfully yours?
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