Help! Gender Flips?

Blackash

So, I'm very new to Tarot (about a week) and while everything is going pretty well, I've run into confusion with one particular aspect of my deck.

I have the Manga Tarot, a beautiful deck that has been incredibly helpful and insightful. One curious aspect of my deck is that it flips the tradition gender roles. All traditionally female cards depict males and vice versa.

The court cards are like so:

Page -> Prince
Knight -> Princess
Queen -> King
King -> Queen

I've got the Prince and Princess down since nothing much changes with the gender flip, but I'm not sure about the Queen/King and King/Queen and how I should interpret that.

Also, The Major arcana gets pretty confusing:

II The High Priestess -> The Priest
III The Empress -> The Emperor
IV The Emperor -> The Empress
V The Hierophant -> The Priestess

I'm not sure if I should stick to the traditional descriptions for each number, swap the meanings or reinterpret the cards altogether.

Any advice? Please?
 

rwcarter

Welcome to Aeclectic, Blackash!

The Manga is a deck I hope to work with in more depth one of these days. There is a Study Group for the deck. It looks like most of the Majors have been covered.

I don't have the deck in front of me right now, but I probably wouldn't flip the interpretations to match the genders of the cards. An Emperor rules. There are both masculine and feminine aspects to being a ruler. Most decks tend to look at the masculine aspects. The Manga explores the feminine aspects. So the deck would also explore the masculine aspects of being an Empress.

By putting a man in the place of the archetypal feminine (Arcanum III), the deck gets to explore how the feminine affects the man's actions. Similarly, but putting a woman in the place of the archetypal masculine (Arcanum IV), the deck explores how the masculine affects the woman's actions.

Hopefully that makes sense.

Rodney
 

Blackash

Thank you both so much! I looked to see if there was a study group; I must have missed it. I'll definitely check out those links. And rwcarter, I figured it might be something like that. Thank you again!
 

SunChariot

The cards are, in reality, genderless. They represent energies not males and females. For the Courts, it shouldn't make any difference.

The Emperor is just as likely to reoresent a female as a male. And The Empress is just as likely to represent a male as a female. One of me male friend's soul card is The Empress and it suit him perfectly.

As for The Empress and The Emperor being reversed, just use them normally no matter what number they're called in the deck.

Hope that helps,

Bans
 
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