feminism – Just the Tarot

The Emperor, The Empress, and Kamala Harris as Feminine Archetype

The re-emergence of the Divine Feminine Archetype in American society.

Carl Jung was always a bit vague about exactly what an archetype is. The basic definition is, “universal symbols or patterns that exist in the collective unconscious of all humans.”

Okey dokey. That’s one of those phrases that sounds like it must mean something really important and leaves us feeling a little dumb because we can’t figure out what it is.

One way of cognizing archetypes is to think of them as sort of Super Energy Forms. They are the essence of a particular idea or feeling, writ large. In Tarot cards, for instance, the card Justice might stand for all legal matters, court proceedings, judges, and lawyers. The Lovers might symbolize all forms of human bonding between couples. The Moon could be seen as all forms of craziness, delusions, and projection.

Now, one of the fascinating things about archetypes is that we can invoke them, which is to say that we can draw their energy into our lives. For instance, if it’s been a very, very long time since we had a romantic relationship, we might meditate on The Lovers and that will serve to create that romantic energy in our existence. Or, if we’re feeling scattered and restless, we can meditate on a statue of the Buddha and that will pull in peacefulness and serenity. If it feels like our lives are full of obstructions, we can invoke the energy of Ganesh to dissolve them.

It’s very much like there are all of these specific energy sources that we can tap into when we need them. Pretty neat, huh?

Although he only hinted at it Jung seemed to warn us that there is also a dark side to archetypes. He seemed to feel that they can actually possess us and take over our lives.

By way of an example, he was doing psychotherapy in Vienna when many of his male clients began having the same dreams. They involved white, Germanic males riding horses in a nighttime parade and carrying torches. This, of course, became a standard practice in Nazi Germany, but their dreams occurred several years before Hitler came to power. He theorized that the collective German unconscious was being slowly possessed by the archetype which would manifest as the Nazi movement.

In another example, Bill Wilson, who was one of the founders of Alcoholics Anonymous, once asked Jung what caused alcoholism. Jung replied that alcoholics were, “possessed by the Devil.” Jung was NOT, of course, a fundamentalist christian, and he meant that in a very specific way. He meant that their unconscious minds were being taken over by the archetype of addiction which, in its essence, is evil.

It is perhaps illuminating to view current American politics as a demonstration of the power of archetypes. In that scenario, Trump might be seen as a sort of a dark magician (The Magician reversed) who has been invoking an archetype in the unconscious minds of his followers. It has a huge amount of negative energy in it – hatred, anger, xenophobia, misogyny, racism, fear.

Many of us have been puzzled by it for several years. We have friends, relatives, neighbors, even lovers, who appear to be normal, rational humans in all of the other areas of their lives. Still, they support a politician whose, “values,” are the antithesis of everything they claim to believe in. How is that possible?

In Jungian terms, we might say that Trump has managed to summon their Shadow selves and form them into a collective archetype. And, at a certain point, that archetype has possessed them and they’re no longer in command of their own faculties. They are no longer individuals, they’re parts of a collective energy form.

One of the most intriguing aspects is that this dark, shadow archetype seems to be summoning yet another archetype in the minds of the people who aren’t Trumpsters.

The Trump movement has become increasingly focused on a particularly malevolent form of misogyny. Under their model, females, even children, will be forced to carry and deliver the babies of the men who raped them. Project 25 documents reveal that there are even plans to eliminate free access to birth control. J.D. Vance, Trump’s running mate has stated that women who don’t procreate are essentially wasting their lives and should be treated as second class citizens.

In a phrase, women are to be reduced to breeding stock.

Obviously, this is one of the most anti-feminist, anti-female political movements we’ve ever seen in the United States. The good news, though, is that it seems to be giving birth to a new wave of feminism. Suddenly, as if by magic, the male Democratic nominee has been whisked off of center stage and replaced by a very energetic, very feisty female candidate. There is a palpable, almost electrifying energy in our electoral process that hasn’t been there for years.

If we were to cast it in archetypal terms, Trump might be seen as The Emperor Tarot card, the embodiment of toxic male energy. Harris, on the other hand, could be seen as The Empress, the archetype of sensual, relaxed but very, very strong feminine energy. Toxic masculinity versus the divine feminine.

A Battle of the Archetypes. Wow!

It’s going to be a very interesting election.

The Empress, Fucking a Trumpster, and White Feminism

A look at sleeping with the enemy and the politics of sex.

I have an online friend who’s fucking a MAGA Trumpster.

Now, I lived in Texas for many years so I actually have quite a few friends who are fucking Trumpsters, but this one feels different to me. This is a woman who claims to be a liberal and a feminist.

I read recently that we now have 15 different states in our Grand Old Union where, if a 12 year old girl is raped and impregnated, she’ll be forced to bear that baby to term. In some states, the rapist is even allowed to sue anyone who assists the little girl in getting an abortion.

We can draw a direct line from that barbaric state of affairs to the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade. And we can draw a direct line from the court doing that to Donald Trump’s appointments to that court.

So how, I asked my friend, can you – as a feminist – be on intimate terms with someone who supports the politician who has caused so much harm to the women’s movement and so much pain to individual women? Her answers were telling.

You don’t understand.

We keep politics out of our relationship.

He’s really a decent, nice guy.

He comes from a different background.

We don’t talk about that stuff.

Put another way, she chooses to not discuss the issues that she claims are important to her because they might be inconvenient to her romantic relationship. Put another way, those issues really aren’t very important to her, after all.

There’s been an interesting development in the feminist movement in the last few years, which is the rejection of, “white feminism,” by women of color. Among a myriad of disagreements, one that stands out is the accusation that white feminists tend to be more concerned with, “board room feminism,” than with the grittier women’s issues.

For instance, a white, middle class feminist might be much more concerned about equality in the workplace and getting that promotion to CEO than she would be about issues like rape, domestic abuse and abortion rights. And, of course, the reality is that women of color are far more likely to be raped, abused, and need reproductive choices than white, middle class women and much less likely to get that promotion.

Unfortunately, that view is born out rather powerfully by the voting records in the United States. In the 2016 election, 42% of female voters cast their ballots for Trump. That’s well, well past the time that every single adult in the country was aware of the pussy-grabbing tape and aware of the fact that Trump is a misogynistic swine who views women as mere life-support systems for vaginas.

As shocking as that is, here’s the more interesting breakdown on that: 55% of white women voted for Trump. 70% of Hispanic women voted for Biden. And 91% of black women voted for Biden.

You really can’t get much more definitive evidence of the racial differences in today’s women’s movements and how this is impacting some women much more powerfully than others.

Under that scenario, white, middle class feminists have gotten . . . comfortable. Like The Empress, they’re securely ensconced on their luxurious couches, wearing their prom queen tiaras and languidly waving their scepters at the women who are still down in the trenches getting raped. And it may be true.

I still care about my friend and respect her in many other ways, but I recognize that on this topic she’s talking the talk and not walking the walk.

You can’t share a bed with a Nazi and claim that you’re concerned about anti-semitism. If your boyfriend has a KKK robe hanging in his closet, you can’t claim that you’re upset about racism. And if you’re fucking a Trumpster, you can’t claim you’re a feminist.

Toxic Masculinity, The Inner Marriage, and Percolating Testicles

On the exterior level, the Two of Cups obviously represents two people who are falling in love. On a deeper level, though, it represents the Inner Marriage, the harmonious joining of the Divine Feminine and the Sacred Masculine in one person’s Soul. In a sense, it represents learning to fall in love with yourself. Or maybe your Self.

I was watching an interview about that the other day and I got plumb confused. The speaker was discussing the way that her Tantric Tradition deals with the Yin/Feminine and Yang/Masculine energies that we all contain. I followed the beginning of it with no great problem. Obviously, every human being incorporates both Yin and Yang and we give greater or lesser expressions to those energies at different times in our lives.

Then she got off into some territory where I felt like I needed to make a chart to keep track of it all. She said that every person has a Yin and a Yang, but women’s Yin have a Yang within the Yin and men’s Yang have a Yin within the Yang. The Yang in women’s Yin is apparently centered at the birth canal, because that’s where they project their being into the world. The Yin in men’s Yang is located in their testicles because that’s where they hold life and sort of . . . . um . . . percolate it.

It all just seemed really complicated.

Now, I want to be clear that I’m not in any way making fun of that tradition or denigrating it. In fact, I was really impressed that someone had invested that much time and effort thinking about testicles because most of us are perfectly happy to let them just hang around without analyzing them too much. Men, in particular, consider their testicles as really good buddies, despite the fact that they seem to cause a lot of problems in the world.

What came through to me, though, is how much more women have advanced than men in thinking about all of this. Despite the recent legal set-backs in reproductive rights, the women’s movement remains relatively robust. Women continue to question and examine their roles in society and try to sort out their emotional energies. The men’s movement on the other hand . . . um . . . oh, that’s right . . . there IS no men’s movement.

Well, there IS a sort of a men’s movement, but it’s pretty horrifying. It seems to be based on the idea that men have a divine right to be belching, farting, weight lifting, muscle car driving, gun toting swine and that anyone who questions that is a bitch or a fairy. If you type, “Toxic Masculinity,” into the YouTube search bar, here are a few of the videos that come up:

THE WAR ON MEN

START INCREASING TOXIC MASCULINITY LIKE A REAL MAN

THE RISE OF WEAK MEN: BREAKING DOWN TOXIC MASCULINITY IN AMERICA TODAY

THE INSIDIOUS TOXIC MASCULINITY MYTH IS HARMING HUMANITY

Here’s a screen shot from one of them that kind of says it all:

Ironically, there’s a female side to that story, as well. Under the same topic we find vids (by women) with titles like:

DON’T BE A SIMP: WOMEN LIKE BAD BOYS

WOMEN HATE MEN WHO ARE IN TOUCH WITH THEIR, “FEMININE

SIDE”

WHY WOMEN CRAVE DOMINANCE

and my personal favorite: MEN TRY TO GUILT US BY BEING,

“NICE.”

So there seem to be a fair number of women who don’t want any Yin in their Yangs. Men, of course, take note of that and process it as, “Yeah, I know they SAY they want sensitive men but I’ll never get laid by being evolved.” And, really, we even see quite a few, “feminists,” who are still dating knuckle draggers because it, “just feels right.”

Despite all of that, I still see a fair amount of hope on the sexual horizon. For one thing, we virtually never see a debate over what it means to be a REAL woman. Women seem to be pretty accepting of each other’s life choices now days and career women and lesbians are just as welcome in the tribe as homemakers and mommies.

Kansas City Chiefs football player Harrison Butker recently got into some serious trouble by suggesting that women are much more fulfilled by having babies than they are by having careers. A lot of Yins suggested cutting his Yang off, but it really hasn’t been that long since that would have been considered normal speech.

Up until the late 1960s, it was commonly accepted that the only, “natural,” role for women was producing babies until their uteruses fell out. A corollary to that was the widely held stereotype that only women who had large breasts were truly sexy, a belief that must have made most women feel fairly uncomfortable.

Thankfully, a huge amount of the sexual stereotyping around women has fallen away. Unfortunately, men seem to still be stuck at first base, he said, using a very masculine, butch sports metaphor. So what is it going to take for men to dribble their balls down the court and kick one over the goal posts for a home run?

Well, first and foremost, it’s going to involve men actually claiming that Yin side of their nature and saying, “Yes, REAL men have sensitivities and emotions and needs and men who don’t have them aren’t real in any human sense of the word.”

And, second, it going to involve more women letting go of that toxic stereotype, as well. As long as women continue to have sex with emotionally primitive men, men will continue to be emotionally primitive.

I mean, why wouldn’t they?