Archetypal Reduction: The Empress, Beyoncé, and Capitalism

A photo of Beyoncé and Jay-Z wearing sunglasses on a cloudy background

What is Archetypal Reduction?

Archetypal reduction is when people and events get pigeonholed into a single archetype. This isn't ideal, because almost all of us embody more than one archetype.

It's a way of neglecting human complexity. It can be a path to celebrity worship. More than anything, it's rarely accurate.

How does capitalism make archetypal reduction possible and prevalent?

Capitalism is in the selling business.

What capitalism can label, it can sell. Capitalism devalues whatever it can not profit from, including human beings.

This is one of the impetuses for archetypal reduction.

If you're reading this you, like me, likely live beneath capitalism's heel. That oppression changes the way we process information.

Complexity can sometimes be too much to take in. However, holding complexity is an essential part of any tarot practice.

You may be saying, as many have before you, "Cyree, what the fuck are you talking about??!"

Let me give you an example.

Most people, places, and things do not fit neatly inside a single archetype

It's pretty easy to see the ways that Beyoncé (whose work I very much enjoy and respect, so don't come for me.) embodies the Empress archetype.

Her work is full of naturalist imagery. Her lyrics center her heterosexual marriage and the role of motherhood in her life. She's not shy about celebrating her relationship to consumer capitalism. She somehow manages this while remaining mysterious.

This makes it easy to reduce her work entirely into the Empress archetype. To do so means that one must neglect how she also operates in the traditionally masculine space of the Emperor.

It's very important to see and reckon with the way that Beyoncé operates as the Emperor. After all, we don't call her “King B” for nothing.

Her work with the Tiffany Company invokes the Emperor. The fact that Ivy Park is made by Sri Lankan workers in sweatshops for pennies on the dollar is also Emperor coded along with being Empress coded. This was, of course, true about Jay-Z's Roc-A-Wear line as well, but in Honduras. The focus on being a billionaire is the provenance of the Emperor and the Empress.

This is true of other celebrities as well, and these are but two examples, but the facts remain.

The Empress and Emperor are the foundations of capitalism in the cards. They are the first step beyond the mystical, pre-modern, Arcadian reality of The Fool, The Magician, and The High Priestess, into the world as we know it.

They literally deal in the realities that keep life on earth going in good and bad ways. So why is it so hard to hold that everyone, including the people some of us idolize, are as complex as we are--with legacies as complex as our own?

Appreciating Complexity

When we appreciate complexity, we can see a celebrity like Beyoncé as the capable, artistic, and oft benevolent Empress, and the Emperor that upholds the will of the state. Neither archetype cancels out the other. To reduce anyone to only one is not the truth.

I identify with the magic making energy of Temperance. I also understand how performance tires me out, and makes me occupy The Hermit. I've had at least two relationships that were The Lover and The Devil at the same damn time.

Life is complex, and although we may identify with an archetype that feels dominant for us, it can never be the whole story. That's because life also changes things.

The Emperor's work may exhaust the fertile ground The Empress sits upon, ushering in a Five of Pentacles period. The Empress may find themselves receiving attention for the fruits of their labor and lean into The Chariot.

Being made up of multiple things is a normal part of being human.

As tarot readers, part of our job is holding and appreciating the complexity of each person's lives. It helps us to understand and empathize with the situation at hand. It also prevents us from passing harsh judgement on even the most errant of clients.

The ability to hold complexity isn't acceptance of bad behavior. One must acknowledge when someone is doing something harmful or fucked up. That's part of the reason people see tarot readers.

Yet holding the multiplicity of someone's character and their life is what makes tarot a practice and an art. There's no one way to assure your able to do that. It takes constant practice.

It takes an even hand. It takes an acceptance of the inherent imperfection that is being human. It means resisting archetypal reduction.