Motherhood in the Tarot

I've been mothering for over seven years now, and one of my favourite conversations to have with fellow parents is about the deeper, inner levels of change that becoming a parent brings. Parenting comes with a giant bag of societal expectations, inner expectations, assumptions, plenty of emotional baggage to get your teeth into. Being me, I look to the tarot to help me with this, and so lately I've been prompted to look at the mother archetype in the tarot.

Of course, the archetypal mother is easy to find, there close to the beginning of the major arcana, the Empress, earth mother figure par excellence. Often depicted as heavily pregnant, deeply connected to the earth, fruitful and creative, She is the principle of new life gushing forth. And she is beautiful, and often my favourite card in the deck.

L-R Druidcraft, Greenwood, RWS

These images show the principle of generativity, the three that is born from the one and two, an abstract archetype of the Mother. Pregnancy, motherhood, any process of creating new life from scratch is hard work, physically and emotionally demanding. Anyone who has even birthed a child, or a book, or a business, knows that there is very little sitting around smiling beatifically involved. From my position at the coalface of motherhood, I seek a less idealistic version of the archetype. For me, the Queen of Pentacles is closer to an actual mother figure. I especially love the bear mothers of the Greenwood and Wildwood tarots - one curled around her sleeping cubs, the other poised on the threshold of the home cave, ready to defend the cubs within from the wild landscape at her feet.

L Wildwood, R Greenwood

Many mothers these days are uncomfortable with the archetype of the earth mother. For decades, if not centuries, social convention kept mothers, indeed women, confined to those home caves, looking longingly out at that wide open landscape, unable to partake fully in its many riches. In the last few decades we have stepped out of the cave, and many mothers are now able to find a sense of identity and fulfilment outside of the day to day work of mothering. The earth mother is not enough - we seek an identity which is not purely defined by our ability to nurture and care for others, which does not involve giving up our own growth for the sake of the growth of others.

Enter the creative rainbow mother, fully present for her children but also committed to her own creative path. Explored by authors such as Lucy Pearce in her amazing book The Rainbow Way. 21st century mothers seek fulfilment for themselves as well as for their children. This is a powerful new version of the mothering archetype, and one which resonates for many women, myself included. But it can lead to a negative take on the earth mother, that she simply maintains a home, cares for her children, is entirely fulfilled by giving to others. But I believe that the act of maintaining a family, a household (whether we have children or not), is to re-create and co-create it on a daily basis. Creation is a constant process. If the earth mother is she who puts her family before her "work" (by which I mean that which she feels called to contribute to the wider world), then I am an earth mother. If a creative rainbow mother is she who needs creative self expression and a deep connection to spirit in order to thrive, then I am creative rainbow mother. Perhaps the whole question simply shows that women still somehow feel the need to justify wanting an existence that goes beyond producing children and caring for the needs of others. Astrology tells me that everyone has a realm of creative self expression, and everyone has a realm of serving others. There is an earth / rainbow balance in every mother.

So where in the tarot is this balance to be found? Perhaps in Temperance, balancing the nurturing flow of emotions with creative soul-fire. In many tarot decks, especially those following the Smith-Waite tradition as so many do these days, none of the cards fully encompass the experience of mothering for me. Hardly surprising perhaps, given that so many of the tarot meanings we use have come down to us from the Western occult tradition, which is essentially patriarchal. Thankfully, in the last few decades, many tarotists have moved on from those meanings, re-forming the tarot in their own image as society changes. For the last year of so I've been working with the Motherpeace tarot, which firmly rejects the patriarchy (too firmly perhaps for some, but that's a whole other post). Some of my favourite Motherpeace cards are the ones which show mothers with their children.

Here is the Two of Discs (at the bottom), showing a mother breastfeeding twins. The Ten of Discs (at the top), showing a birthing mother surrounded by a community of women. On the right is the Priestess of Discs, that Queen of Pentacles again. She practises yoga whilst her baby watches - although as any mother who has ever tried to practise yoga with a toddler around knows that this image would be more true to life if it showed said toddler climbing on top of the mother, or perhaps executing the pose perfectly with their annoyingly flexible young limbs. The Three of Wands shows a mother cave painting with her children - we love a good family painting session in our house, and my paintings grace our hallway walls alongside those of my children. These are "my" mothers - creating with their children, following their own spiritual practice alongside their children. Rooted in the nourishing earth, following their rainbows - and in doing so, giving their children the strength and courage to find their own, unique, rainbows.