Melissa Cynova There are a lot of us!
I’ve talked with friends about why women seem to be the overwhelming majority in divination. Our best guesses are:
- It’s the whole ‘women’s intuition’ thing that makes it align more with women – and more accepted by society.
- It’s tradition left over from the days of hedgewitches and ‘women who have the ways and the knowing’. Women were the midwives, men were allowed to become doctors, and that split of the scientific and the sacred fell upon gender lines.
- The stereotype of the fortune teller is mostly female, and since we learn through stereotypes and advertised gender roles that are put in front of us, this informs our choices in life
The thing is, one of the first people to have clients come to his home was Frank Andrews in New York back in the 1950’s – and he’s still doing readings today. He arguably started the modern tradition of a fortune teller.
James Well, Major Tom Schick, James Wanless, Dan Pelletier – seriously just a handful of male tarot readers that I know that are doing good work today – and yet are still in the minority.
I’m looking forward to more male colleagues in the field, because I think that our histories inform our work and our influence – and diversity in any form can only make our tradition stronger. Just as the tarot has strong masculine and feminine influences, so do we. Whether a person is masculine, feminine, genderfluid or non-binary – their individual influences and interpretations of the cards can only enrich our understanding of our tools and our field.
I’ve got a 12 year old girl and a 10 year old boy. I’ve offered them both tarot lessons, and Girl Child has declined “until I’m older”. Boy Child has his own deck and a pretty strong grasp on most of the Major Arcana already. The future is shifting…
xo LFT
