Tarot Symbolism

In The Power of Women's Hair in the Victorian Imagination Elisabeth Gitter writes:

"When the powerful woman of the Victorian imagination was an angel, her shining hair was her aureole or bower; when she was demonic, it became a glittering snare, web, or noose."

While Gitter is speaking here of Victorian imagery of the Golden haired woman in painting and literature; the Victorians themselves were drawing upon "a well established literary tradition with roots in ballads, fairy tales, and Teutonic and classical myths."(Gitter) So it is too possibly a reference that might be found in tarot produced in an earlier period, to the upright Justice may be seen as a protective or sheltering angel, to the wicked a demon; whose power it is to weave together the fabric of peaceful social existence.

The Golden haired woman "used her hair to weave her discourse: immobile, she used her hair at times to shelter her lovers, at times to strangle them. But always…the grand woman achieved her transcendent vitality partly through her magic hair, which was invested with independent energy: enchanting - and enchanted - her gleaming tresses both expressed her mythic power and were its source…"

"…Gold hair is a motif in many ballads and fairy tales, in which it is not merely a synonym for blond hair but a symbol of something precious and powerful or sacred. Belonging to the gold-hair tradition…are the folktales about the tangle haired Frau Holda, the benign witch who oversees spinning and who rewards virtuous girls with the gift of combing pearls and precious stones from their hair.

"Through Frau Holda, who tangles both hair and flax, the female arts of hair combing and spinning or weaving are connected: her association with both suggests that just as the comb untangles the woman's hair, so the heckle smooths the flax; the strokes of the comb mirror the movement of the shuttle of the loom. The sister arts of spinning and combing are also linguistically connected:kteis and pecten, the Greek and Latin words for 'comb', mean the heckle for combing wool and reed for weaving. Both meanings, considered with the third meaning of…female pudenda, evoke the ultimately sexual and female power to weave the family web, to create the fabric of peaceful family and social existence."


Kwaw
Quote from:
Elisabeth Gitter The Power of Women's Hair in the Victorian Imagination PMLA, Vol. 99, No. 5 (Oct., 1984), pp. 936-954.

Originally posted Tarot Study Forum thread,

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