Exploring Gender Representations in Tarot

By Robin Gow

I turn the card over slowly. It’s New Year’s Eve, and I’m pulling cards with my friends, as we do each year. This is the last card I’m pulling, and it’s for me. The King of Swords.

For myself, I tend to not read the booklet that comes with the deck. But, for my friends, I enjoy the little descriptions written in the guidebook. I’ve used the same Tarot deck, The Raven’s Prophecy, for years, and I somehow don’t think I’ve ever pulled the King of Swords until now.

Front cover of The Raven’s Prophecy Tarot Deck by Maggie Stiefvater alongside the King of Swords from the deck.

I’m taken aback for a moment when the author refers to the king with she / her pronouns. Immediately, I feel a deeper connection to the card. I’m not someone who uses she / her pronouns, but I find the concept of a woman embodying this king of intellectual power and truth so much more empowering than if it were presented to me as a man.

Society already views men as powerful and intellectual, as a default. And too often, I see the work of mediocre white men heralded as ground-breaking, while the intellectually rigorous ideas of women are often overlooked, downplayed, or coopted. Seeing this “feminized” King of Swords makes me more trustworthy of the archetype as an emblem of truth and powerful thought.

As a nonbinary person, and just a person fascinated by the concept of gender, I realized after pulling that King that I had never really considered how I interpreted gender in the Tarot archetypes. Moving forward, I started to think about the figures of the Tarot differently.

Looking at more traditional views of gender and Tarot, kings and queens usually represent a duality or balancing of forces. To some degree, I find value in the idea of balancing energies. At the same time, I think this idea can play into “oppositional sexism,” the idea that men and women are opposites. We know from our own lives this isn’t true. The reality of our genders is different than the stereotypes we’re presented.

Of course, there are the more overt gender stereotypes evoked by the traditional Tarot. Figures commonly depicted as men, like The Emperor and Magician, are associated with discovery, authority, action, and commanding power, while cards that portray women, like The High Priestess and The Empress, are associated with qualities stereotypically attributed to women, like mothering, creation, receptivity, and emotionality.

The way the Tarot is designed — consistently positioning men and women as opposites — only reifies the stereotypes were commonly given by society. Outside of our practice, and in the world, this contributes to pressure for all women to perform femininity and all men to perform masculinity.

This is something I’ve even experienced personally in witchcraft spaces. One of the first witchcraft events I attended was a workshop on exploring the divine feminine. As a passionate feminist and lover of feminine power, I thought this event would be fun for me.

When I arrived, I realized I was the only person in the group who was not a cis woman, and the organizer soon let me know that the workshop was intended for cis women. I explained I was a trans nonbinary person, and she didn’t kick me out per se, but told me, “I don’t know if there’s much I can offer you.” Luckily, I have a teacher now who told me the opposite — that she celebrates me for exploring both masculine and feminine energies.

Out in the world as a gender non-conforming person, I often have to check my surroundings for my safety. Sometimes people stare or point at me, and it has a way of making spaces I love, like a restaurant or bookstore, feel unsafe. It may seem like the gender assignments we see in Tarot cards don’t mean much, but what they signify connects back to so many larger issues like how our society discriminates and oppresses people who do not conform to how we’re expected to inhabit external definitions of gender.

I’ve noticed that some recent decks have come out with court cards that don’t invoke gendered terms, like king and queen. For example, the Trinity Tarot calls the queen and king “The Keeper” and “The Crown,” respectively. Those feel like fresh and creative metaphors for exploring these figures.

For me, interpreting the queen as The Keeper draws on the queen’s qualities of protection and guarding others as opposed to the traditional symbolism that draws on gender essentialism. The Crown does something similar for the king figure, moving qualities like boldness and ambition into a gender-neutral territory. Without such gendered terminology, I find myself able to see the values or attributes of the kings and queens more clearly under this framing, without the baggage of gender norms.

Front cover of the Trinity Tarot by Ari Wisner alongside Crown of Swords and Keeper of Swords from the deck.

There’s great value in exploring how to approach the kings and queens, and even cards like The Lovers, with a critical eye towards depictions that play into the gender binary. Whenever we position man and woman, particularly cis-gendered man and woman, as complimentary sides of a binary, there will inevitably be some degree of stereotyping built into that representation.

One approach I practice is imagining the kings and queens less as real genders and more like drag performers. Drag, at its core, is gender performance art. Drag artists explore, parody, and critique gender and gender roles in their work.

Through this lens, I see the King of Swords as a drag persona of a dark academic type. He’s a brooding mentor and a little dramatic about it. I also see a nonbinary masculine performer who purposefully wears his gender so it’s difficult to pin him down. He might wear a button-down shirt along with a pleated skirt, or makeup along with a well-manicured beard.

I see this interpretation as destabilizing the gender binary by directly calling attention to gender as a performance. A drag artist is a person beneath their drag, so seeing the card as a drag persona acknowledges the way cards often represent exaggerated qualities or states of being, different ways of inhabiting and expressing ourselves.

None of us fully embody the energy and archetypes of just one card. That’s why there’s a whole deck we can use to explore the ways we experience our lives and the world around us. Interpreting the figures of Tarot as performers yields even more questions for me: For who, or under what circumstances, do I perform these traits or qualities? And is that a conscious choice on my part?

Another approach could be to actively think about the gender stereotypes these cards invoke and try to scramble them. I think it can be as simple as starting to shift pronouns, just as The Raven’s Prophecy guidebook did, by referring to the King of Swords as a she or they or a neopronoun.

Knight of Pentacles, Two of Cups, and King of Swords from The Queer Tarot by Ashley Molesso and Chess Needham.

Beyond just he and she, we can include nonbinary pronouns in many of our interpretations and explore the nuance that emerges when we do away with gendered associations in our readings. For me, adding different gender perspectives feels like adding backstory. When I’m invited to see the King of Swords as a female or femme, I find myself wondering how she grew into this leadership role, and how does she bring a different perspective to our commonplace ideas about leadership.

From there, I begin to imagine a leader who honors and seeks the input of her people instead of one who might enforce his power with domination and wrath. Her position is not one she seized, but one she came to naturally as she moved with her people and embraced her strengths. While these imaginings have nothing to do with the image on the card, they can create new pathways of interpretation when you pull a card and let yourself get deeply curious.

Another example could be a knight who uses fae / faer pronouns, or a queen who uses they / he pronouns. These seem like simple adjustments, but I’ve noticed in my practice that these revisions of perspective help me dig deeper into what the cards are saying. I return to the curiosity of how these figures came into being, asking questions like: how does the world interpret these traits differently depending on the gender and gender expression of the person exhibiting them?

Through this kind of inquiry, the figures of the Tarot open up for me, becoming as dynamic in character as I see myself. Through this, I can find more parallels in terms of how the qualities suggested by the cards show up in my life.

The Lovers from The Raven’s Prophecy Tarot Deck by Maggie Stiefvater.

Following the moment I had during the New Year’s pull, I pulled The Lovers. I love how the art in my deck shows two deer pressing their heads together. I feel a deep connection to the forest and so does my partner, so I immediately thought of the two of us. We are both nonbinary people, and this depiction prompted me to reflect on how the card is much less about a heterosexual union and more about falling into rhythm with someone else or yourself. It’s not about gender at all.

Everyone will have their own approach to working with Tarot’s archetypes, but I think it’s important for every Tarot practitioner, regardless of your gender identity, to reflect on the gender associations we invoke in our readings and where those associations come from. Are they culturally defined by “traditional” standards? Or do they reflect our own evolving ideas about femininity, masculinity, and everything in between? And do they foster inclusivity for others who may express their gender identity differently?

The deck I’ve used for the last ten years uses king and queen designations, so I’m working to find an approach that satisfies my ideologies and my love of Tarot. I want to help others do the same, so I offer fellow readers out there a handful of questions to bring to our readings and our decks. I’m hoping these can help us dig deeper into how we approach our readings:

What are the stereotypes I associate with men and women? Where did I learn them?
Do the meanings of the cards change for me if I change the genders or pronouns of the figures?
What is my relationship to gender as a concept? To my gender?
How has gender shaped my journey as a Tarot practitioner?
How do I understand the gender binary’s presence in the traditional Tarot? What does this mean for how I use tools of divination?
Choose a “gendered” card in your deck and work with it for a while: How is gender presented? How are gender stereotypes reinforced or destabilized in this card? How can I be creative in terms of how I see and think about the gender of this figure, and what possibilities open up for me when I do?

Returning to my lovely King of Swords for guidance, I find power and comfort in my own shifting answers to these questions. I find trust in my authority as a reader and diviner of my futures. Now, I almost always see the King of Swords as a nonbinary character. This version of the card gives me the courage to hold the contradictions and complexities that result from exploring our own genders and what gender means in society.

Instead of associating the card with harmful versions authority and “intellect,” which are often used as tools of patriarchy, I find pathways towards the more equitable and flexible ways I could embody these concepts.

I hope your reflections will lead you to similar points of kinship with the diverse cast of characters our decks have to offer.

SUPPORT OUR BOOKSHOP

If you’d like to purchase any of the decks featured in this post, we invite you to do so via the links here — The Raven’s Prophecy Tarot, The Trinity Tarot, and The Queer Tarot — or elsewhere in the post, which are hosted through our Bookshop.org affiliate page. This is our online bookshop, featuring decks and books to support your growth, inspiration, creativity, and magic — hosted through Bookshop.org, a company that directs revenue and other support to independent bookstores across the United States. When you purchase from our Bookshop.org affiliate shop, a portion of your purchase supports Typewriter Tarot as well, helping us continue and expand our work. In our bookshop, you’ll find curated collections on Tarot, creativity, psychology, social justice, ecology, and more — hundreds of books (and decks!) to bring more magic to your life and your library. If you choose to purchase from our shop, we thank you!

CREATIVE SUPPORT IN YOUR INBOX

If you’re a Creative Spirit — as we suspect you might be since you’re here! — we have a lovely gift for you when you sign up for our newsletter (an almost weekly love letter featuring creative rituals, inspiration, and personal essays on magic, Tarot, and creativity). This free gift is a fun, magical, reflective workbook that will guide you into new facets of your relationship with creativity. To receive yours, simply sign up for our newsletter down at the bottom of this page.

about Robin Gow

Robin Gow (it / fae / he) is a trans witch from rural Pennsylvania. It is the author of YA and middle-grade books, several poetry collections, and an essay collection. Fae works as a community educator on topics of queer and disability justice. Gow also teaches a class on poetry and witchcraft with The Magickal Path School of Witchcraft called Tarot & Personal Transformation. Learn more at RobinGow.com or on Instagram at @gow_robin_poet and on TikTok at @transdemontologist.