Transgender decks!

[LauraSeabrook]

That is very considerate but keep in mind that someone could really take offence....it is like reading a tarot deck for black people full of stereotypes. Really be carefull with that. I would be offended.

As I stated a couple of times, my Trans Tarot deck's not a reading deck, but a meditation one. There's no Minor Arcana. In any case reading for a transgender person is exactly the same as for reading for a cis person, only knowledge of them being trans would help put it into context. I remember I reading I did over ten years ago at Katoomba using a version of teh Waite deck. It became clear to me that the person I was reading for was gay but also in the closet. I kept getting wands cards, but the clincher was getting the 9 of Wands in a certain position- it was clear he was going to come out very soon!

The best deck I own for reading was The Granny Jones Australian Tarot Deck by Rebecca Jones. There's a card in that deck I identify with, the Queen of Wands. It represented the qualities I aspired with, and even showed a version of my dog Pegasus. In fact, I incorporated a version of it into my deck on The critic in the mirror card.

 

[nisaba]

Hi, Laura! It's good to see you've found this place. Welcome! I can't imagine why I wouldn't have pointed you this way ages ago!

The best deck I own for reading was The Granny Jones Australian Tarot Deck by Rebecca Jones.

Great deck, isn't it. Sadly, a lot of people don't look past the naïve artwork to the depths of the deck. Small, simply-drawn details carry a lot of message. It's been a personal favourite of mine since the year of its publication: in fact, I "accidentally" bought it one day, and on a long train trip back home played with it, uncovering quickly just how wonderful it was. So I went back the very next day, and bought every copy on the shelves! Half a dozen on my Tarot-friends back then each got one as a gift. I'm only still in touch with two of them today, but both of them love it and use it regularly.

When I see the prices it goes for on eBay these days, my heart bleeds. I should have gone back and got them to order in and freight to me a dozen dozen of them. Now I have just my working copy, and a sealed copy in case of fire or flood - although my handbag did get flooded one day, by a 600ml bottle of drinking water, and the deck stayed miraculously dry! It really, really wanted to be with me.

There's a card in that deck I identify with, the Queen of Wands. It represented the qualities I aspired with, and even showed a version of my dog Pegasus. In fact, I incorporated a version of it into my deck on The critic in the mirror card.

<grin> A cousin of Rebecca's, one Yvonne Xxxxxx, emailed me earlier this year. She reckons she posed for the Queen Wands and the Queen Swords. But I've met you and Peggy, and I can see the likeness.

The deck is versatile enough and gentle enough that it can work successfully for gay, straight, trans, cis and non-gendered people (and yes, there are a few of the latter, and Australia has only recently brought in legislation allowing a person to identify as non-gendered. (Never going down that route, but hooray for those who do!)

 

[LauraSeabrook]

in fact, I "accidentally" bought it one day, and on a long train trip back home played with it, uncovering quickly just how wonderful it was. So I went back the very next day, and bought every copy on the shelves!

The curious thing about that is that I also bought the deck "by accident". I went down to Dymocks to buy a "four seasons" deck but it was out of stock. The Granny Jones deck was in the "discount bin" and I bought a copy on a whim. When I checked them out on the train home I loved what I saw - they really appealed to the cartoonist in me.

A few years later I was reading at an event at the Newcastle town hall, but staying at a friend's in Blacktown. I'd taken the Queen of Wands out to make a quick poster which I photocopied at a nearby copy shop. I then put it back in the bag my deck was kept in. I got all the way back to my friend's and I reset the deck by "counting the cards" (dealing the deck into seven piles while counting them), something I also did between readings to keep them fresh. I was one card short!

I immediately had an overwhelming feeling to go look for it, even though the chances of finding it were slim. I drove all the way back to Newtown, and found the Queen of Wands lying face up near the copy shop. Amazingly no one had stepped on it and though slightly damaged, it was still serviceable. I was so glad I went back to look.

 

[nisaba]

That deck really does look after itself.

 

[MissChiff]

Damn....

 

[Alta]

Damn....

??? Just curious.

 

[FLizarraga]

I have been lurking in this thread for a long time now, but now I feel compelled to participate.

Rachel Pollack is a transgender person, so it might be interesting to look at the decks she made, the Shining Woman and the Shining Tribe.

A bunch of us are working with the secret/renaissance tarot--which is close to gender-less.

The archetypes of tarot are pretty heavily "gendered," traditionally, which I think is why we (at least I) thought of "less gendered" images in response to Brammetje's original question. It's true that "transgendering" doesn't equate to transcending or denying gender.

It's sort of hard for me to really nail what a transgender Tarot deck would be, for precisely these reasons.

Pollack did something interesting here: she created the Shining Woman Tarot during her transition in the same way that you created your beautiful Trans Tarot, Laura . Years later, though, she revisited the deck and made it into something even MORE rare: a truly genderless deck. Which is of course the Shining Tribe. I ended up giving my Shining Tribe deck away because the art just didn't do it for me, but kept the (truly excellent) book.

To me almost every tarot deck is a transgender deck...
but still I am wondering...

Beyond the wider genderless and genderqueer labels, it would be hard to say what a transgender Tarot would look like, I think. Hermetic traditions interpreted the female figure in the World as a hermaphrodite, since we can't really see her genitals, but she could just as easily be a ciswoman or a transwoman --either pre or post op. (Which of course makes one realize that there's no real visible difference between a ciswoman and a post-op transwoman.)

And in the end, in real life, we don't really know what's under our neighbor's clothes (among other things, because it's simply none of our business). There are many accounts of "non-op" transmen who lived their lives as men, and even married women, without anyone having a clue unless something major happened, or until their bodies went to the morgue. So all those Pages, Knights and Kings could just as easily be transmen.

Hence reinforcing Mina's initial statement: in a way, almost every Tarot deck is a transgender deck.

 

[Metafizzypop]

A couple of decks I found relevant....

One is the Settanni Tarot by Pino Settanni from 1995. It's a photographic deck, and the creator used only female models. All the Majors and the Courts are women in costume, dressed as men where appropriate.

http://www.albideuter.de/html/settanni.html

Looks pretty transgender to me. It's also a nice deck. Probably OOP with my luck.

The other deck is the International Icon Tarot, where every character is stripped down to its artistic minimum, and where sex does not even seem to exist. Everyone is neutral. It's easy to envision the people in the deck as being any gender one wants them to be....even though it appears that no one is wearing any clothes.

http://www.aeclectic.net/tarot/cards/international-icon/

 

[LauraSeabrook]

The other deck is the International Icon Tarot, where every character is stripped down to its artistic minimum, and where sex does not even seem to exist. Everyone is neutral. It's easy to envision the people in the deck as being any gender one wants them to be....even though it appears that no one is wearing any clothes.

http://www.aeclectic.net/tarot/cards/international-icon/

That deck looks like it's an adaptation of the Waite deck, and really it looks vague rather than genderless. But even if it were genderless, wouldn't that make more a Genderqueer rather than a Transgender deck? I know that a lot of people consider genderqueer to be a subset of transgender but I don't think that's entirely the case. I've met genderqueer folk at queer student conferences (and elsewhere) and the aspirations and political agendas - such as they are, but these get highlighted at student conferences - are different.

If anything I think this deck is "racial free", in that everyone is a different colour, whereas in the original Waite deck they were all Caucasian.

 

[Metafizzypop]

That deck looks like it's an adaptation of the Waite deck

Yes, that's just what it is.

and really it looks vague rather than genderless. But even if it were genderless, wouldn't that make more a Genderqueer rather than a Transgender deck?

Good question. But I don't know the answer.

I know that a lot of people consider genderqueer to be a subset of transgender but I don't think that's entirely the case. I've met genderqueer folk at queer student conferences (and elsewhere) and the aspirations and political agendas - such as they are, but these get highlighted at student conferences - are different.

If anything I think this deck is "racial free", in that everyone is a different colour, whereas in the original Waite deck they were all Caucasian.

I agree the deck is rather racially liberated. But the reason it struck me as trans was because the Knights appear female. The plumes that are on a Knight's helmet - in this deck they look like ponytails. Like feminine Barbie ponytails. It struck me as trans, because it seemed the sex had been switched.