Royalty in the Tarot!
by Mo Abdelbaki
I was recently asked a question that caught me by surprise; what did I think of people removing the royalty cards from tarot decks? I asked why anyone would do such a thing. The response was that they were a holdover from a negative time in history and were designed by a patriarchal society, implying that Tarot didn't honor the feminine principle.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
If there is to be controversy in tarot, it usually has to do with the royalty. Understanding these anthropomorphic images is one of the most difficult tasks that any student of tarot faces. When teaching this art, I always save the royalty for last. This irks some students but because of hidden natures of the royalty cards, it's important to know the rest of the deck before taking them on.
In truth, I don't blame the casual user of tarot for being frustrated. Actually, I don't blame the more seasoned user of tarot for feeling that way. The royalty are perhaps the most difficult cards in the deck to understand. However, excluding them from the deck is like trying to take a Sunday ride in a car without an engine; it's possible but the pushing detracts from the scenery.
More to the point, a tarot deck without the royalty isn't a tarot deck at all. Tarot consists of 78 cards, not 76 cards, not 79 cards but 78 cards. That number is vital. I won't go into the reasons here, but suffice to say that it's important. If you want to remove cards, do so. Feel free to call the remaining cards a divination deck but please don't call it tarot.
Perhaps the dislike of the royalty cards is a result of negative stories about human royalty in the news. Many royals have their share of bizarre scandals. This is nothing new, but making the mistake of thinking that the royalty in tarot has anything to do with their human counterparts is counterproductive. The royalty in tarot represent elemental forces, those kinds of powers that rule everything we know. I'm speaking of Fire, Water, Air and Earth in alchemical terms and not in the terms that you and I see in our everyday lives.
Our ancestors attempted to personify these energies and give them personalities, thereby hoping to understand them better and perhaps gain their sympathies, aid, trust or blessings. The most familiar of these were ancient god forms. Although the civilizations that created most of these images are long gone, their mythologies still live on and are loved by us to this day. In movies, operas, novels, plays, or even cartoons, the myths/god forms/Elemental forces/royalty are with us.
Each royal card represents a different modality of the element they rule over. For example, the Knight of wands is the fiery part of fire. The Queen of wands is the watery part of fire. The Prince of wands is that airy part of fire, while the Princess of wands is the earthy part of fire. This isn't the place to go into what all of this means, but rest assured that it is in no way patriarchal, nor is it matriarchal. It's natural.
By the way, did you notice that there's no King mentioned? In a correctly designed tarot deck, the royalty consists of a Knight, Queen, Prince and Princess. The Queen is the highest-ranking member of the Elemental kingdom ruled. Yes, she's the stable one, as is her daughter, the Princess. How can this be in any way seen as a condemnation of the feminine spirit? Quite the contrary, it fully acknowledges the power of the feminine principle found in the Yin energy, Isis, Athena, Neith, Freya, Sekhmet and Ishtar to name just a few.
Even though the societies that conceived and created the tarot were predominantly patriarchal, it doesn't mean that the tool is. In fact, the occultists who encoded their entire belief system into the tarot deck fully understood the necessity for women to be equal partners in the Great Work and in life in general. Remember, they were persecuted for their beliefs because they were radical. They would never have embraced a doctrine of misogyny because such a state doesn't exist in nature.
Great secrets lie with the royalty, secrets that once discovered, change lives. It takes work, diligence and a wee bit of obsession to be open to their wisdom, but they want you to know them as much as you do. Stay with it. Study. Think. Use them, and for goodness sake, keep them in your deck.
Home
Membership
Shopping
Sagittarius
Dog