The last six cards of our sequence are the Hierophant, the Emperor, the Empress, the High Priestess, the Magician and the Fool. This sequence has some interesting properties in terms of the concept of Gender coding. For the sake of this consideration, we will call the Hierophant Grandfather, the Emperor Father, the Empress Mother, High Priestess Grandmother, The Magician a child in the active mode, the Fool a child in the receptive mode.
Both the Magician and the Fool are gender fluid. The pattern is thus: Elder Male, Younger Male, Younger Female, Elder Female, then active and receptive "Children", gender nonspecific.
While this is by no mean the only way to read these cards, it does bring an enlightening perspective to bear on the ascent from the world to the absolute spirit, which is its final stages attains to a genderless essentiality.
The Great Mother, the Empress is the last card to indicate a purely manifest world. Everything above her is related to transcendence - and this includes the High Priestess, the grandmother, who represents the elder mysteries of wisdom.
Featured here is the Empress in Ithell Colquhoun's Taro as Color - a deck which through the magick of pure color manages to transcend the symbolism of the Tarot entirely and present us with a picture of pure energy. Ithell herself may be considered akin to both the Empress AND the High Priestess - the immanent and transcendent Sophia.
This is the field out of which the Demiurgic powers of the Emperor and the Hierophant emerge, and to which they will eventually return.
In general, the process is about going from the wholly determined (The World) to the less determined to the wholly undetermined (Fool). Gradually we lose specifications from the actual until it becomes pure potential. This is why, at the final stages, even the gender polarities vanish.
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