Women and Tarot
+O+ Traditional Tarot such as are usually created frustrate me incredibly. What incentive is there to bring out that latent nature in the way of strong feminine archetypes for young women to adopt when they are depicted as weak, passive, saccharine, sexual objects -fairies, angels, impractically clad warrior-esses with exposed breasts and glaring omissions of armour, as succubi, vampires, monsters? And therefore encourage women to see themselves as the same? The FEAR to change what stands is obviously immense or we might have seen some departure from this.
Women are depicted again and again in the same stale vein and from a male point of view - There are No modern examples I can think of that archetypally represent a strong female. Those that do depict the sinister feminine are hundreds and even thousands of years old [such as Kali], Morrigan, Cybele, Hecate. Where is there divination into the soul without any deeper thought into the symbolism being used - where is the impetus for Change, Gnosis, Empowerment that Tarot should have if they are so representative and all-encompassing? Are we really that shallow, superficial, broken down that we let forms thousands of years old lead us? How to inspire a different model for women to emulate, to reflect them, that is not either ancient, or flawed? Criticism levelled by myself and others at the traditional Sephiroth and depictions of the Tarot is that it is patriarchal, commercial and yet archaic in essence, especially when depicting women - and shallow, especially when depicting Forces underlying Forms.
We give more detail here in the following essay where we compare artist Moreau and visionary Dali.
Misogyniste: And The Eternal Feminine
[ +O+ The following Exhibition of Gustave Moreau (1826 - 1898) promised to show to us the Eternal Feminine. What is shown to us, is that Moreau typified ignorance by depicting the Eternal Feminine in two masculine veins. For Moreau, whose paintings extend from Cybele to Sappho - Woman is either powerful, independant, virginal, and faceless, or she is a sexual creature and therefore a dangerous Succubi. There is no powerful woman whose features are clear, and no sexual women who are not shown enslaving men and draining them of life.
Nowhere in this exhibition is the Eternal Feminine correctly understood and the sheltered ignorance of mans arrogance prevails. To state that this exhibition relates the "Eternal Feminine" is typical of the half-half world we live in where the male side of the coin predominates in deciding what not only the masculine is, but the feminine too. Below, the presenter describes Moreau as "radical" - and perhaps his paint strokes are in some way distinct from the hundreds of thousands of painters of his day, enough to qualify as a "Genius" or prodigy of the art world at the time - but his notions of the Eternal Feminine, of Women, are as they have always been - archaic and insulting. As if inspired directly from the antiquated chauvanism of the Bible or Koran; the artist we have termed Misogyniste rehashes the identical sickening archetypes that continue to portray Women through a mans eyes as something to blame when she is depicted sexually, or something to be ignored when she is depicted powerfully. In describing the exhibition the presenter says this: ...Powerful and beautiful women like the legendary Cleopatra and the vampiric Messalina, the deadly but fascinating Salomé and Lady Macbeth, and luscious, hapless victims of male lust such as Helen of Troy.
Seems to 'possess' a modern sensibility? Absolutely. Understands the Eternal Feminine? Not on your life. +O+]
http://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/whats-on/exhibitions/exhibitions/gustave-moreau
Gustave Moreau and the Eternal Feminine
“History has bequeathed us a great repertoire of femmes fatales who are not Scarlet Johanssen or Sharon Stone – but had Gustave Moreau been alive today he probably would have painted them too, as kin to the endless number of heroines who captivated him in the late nineteenth century. Powerful and beautiful women like the legendary Cleopatra and the vampiric Messalina, the deadly but fascinating Salomé and Lady Macbeth, and luscious, hapless victims of male lust such as Helen of Troy – beauties whose names are the stuff of legend. Moreau brings them alive for us, as well as men like Oedipus whose lives were bound by tragic destiny.
Gustave Moreau is one of the radical artists of the nineteenth century whose imagination seems to anticipate the cinematic. His art is one of spectacle and alive with fabulous stories. Unique in his own time, especially for painting the great mythological and exotic stories of the ancient world, erotic and often violent, Moreau’s painterly bravura is vivid, his colour dazzling and jewel-like. At times he applies paint and uses mixed media with a freedom verging on the abstract – so that he seems to possess a modern sensibility.
His is an intriguing tale in itself – alternately ignored and fêted in his own time he remains an enigmatic figure whose relationships with the female sex are elusive. Visitors will be seduced by this exhibition of 117 ravishing paintings drawings and watercolours, which explores the artist’s obsession with the “Eternal Feminine” and provides a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see these works in Australia, direct from the acclaimed Musée Gustave Moreau in Paris.”
[+O+ In a separate exhibition by Salvador Dali - his painting, unlike anything by Moreau, does capture the sinister mystery of the eternal feminine, wherein he painted lithe bodies with bouquets of flowers in place of their heads, moving away from the two-tone characteristics of Moreau, Dali did in fact understand this complex relationship of the Eternal Feminine by recognizing what kept it Eternal and by escaping the traditional etiquette. Perhaps his advantage was his enamourment with the Atomic bomb and nuclear power, wherein atomization of his subject matter may have encouraged him to abandon the superficial exegesis that prevailed of the Feminine and pushed him to search deeper for the nuclear truths. He did not abandon womans sexuality, far from it, he pronounced and revelled in it - but he did not see woman as succubi or their sexuality as destructive and he enjoyed creating awe by expressing their innate powers and form. One could conclude that the major difference between Moreau and Dali, was that Dali, liked women, whilst Moreau and his ilk are terrified of them. Dali's approach with the atomic would become an obsession for him leading to some of the most spectacular images of the Art World. What is beautiful, unique and Genius about Dali - is that while there are presumably endless ways to depict the womanly body and the eternal feminine - he found one that wasn't masculine and wasn't traditional. His neutrality was a giant leap forward. +O+]
+O+ We also hope - there are artists out there who are brave enough to accept, can perhaps see the sense in what we have written and begin using the Tarot as a platform to empower people of both genders with modern, evolved, energies and forms not remain stuck in the dark ages into which consciousness has been plunged - to restore to the Tarot what it has lost - autonomy. +O+