Wheel Of Change Review

by Yvonne Rathbone
©1998

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There is something to be said for delayed gratification.  When I first met Alexandra Genetti at a Bay Area Tarot Symposium 3 years ago, her deck was called the "Color Wheel and all I knew was that I wanted it!  The pictures were detailed watercolor renderings that showed a beautiful range of people types, image sources and a welcomed grounding in Pagan sensibility.  The images were a mix of from all ages and cultures, including modern images of things such as baseballs and oil refineries.  I felt as I looked at the unpublished cards that here was a deck that spoke to me in the here and now without needing to be translated through some other time period. And yet, for all it's modern touches, it still retains the power of tradition - it is a real tarot deck.  Alas, I had to wait 3 years to get to touch my own copy of this deck, but it has been worth the wait.

In the Wheel of Change Tarot (WOC), Alexandra Genetti offers a deck that is at once a radical retooling of the traditional tarot, and a return to those traditions.  It is a self-proclaimed Pagan deck and it shows this in a number of ways.  The most obvious way is in its arrangement of the Major Arcana.  The organization of the Major Arcana does not describe a linear progression such as the Fool's journey.  Instead it offers a flowering of the concepts of the major Arcana into levels of increasing complexity which exist at the same time.

These levels start with the one, unity, represented by the Magician, the agent through which we begin to consciously grasp the whole.  From this we have the level of 2 represented by the Lovers and Temperance as two aspects of duality.  The progression goes through the levels of 3, 4, and 5 (more on these later), and concludes with the 6, the most complex and manifest level.  Here we find 6 cards which describe the choices we make about living in the world.  All six levels exist, not as a progression from simple to complex, not as a journey up or down some path, but as concurrent expressions of existence and divinity.  They are best understood as expressions of divine immanence, the simultaneous existence of the divine everywhere.

The 3 middle levels of the Tarot Tree are to my mind the biggest source of Pagan symbolism.  The level of 3 is represented by the Star, the World and the Moon representing in order: Maiden, Mother, Crone - the 3 faces of the Goddess.  Level 4 shows the stations of the Sun or the 4 stages of Man: Sun, Emperor, Hanged Man and Devil.  This represents the solar year of Yule, Spring Equinox, Midsummer and Autumn Equinox.  And level 5 shows the five phases of Woman: Judgment (Birth), Strength (Menarche), Empress (Motherhood), High Priestess (Menopause) and Death (playing itself in one of the most beautiful renderings I,ve ever seen.)  What is so nice about this arrangement is that Genetti does not stray from the traditional meanings of these cards. Their meanings in this arrangement come directly from traditional tarot.  Yet, because of the new arrangement, meanings of the cards that speak directly to a Pagan perspective are highlighted and enhanced.

Genetti has reworked the meanings of the Minors from the ground up.  Coming from a goddess perspective, she gives some very divergent interpretations of the cards.  For instance, the Fives which appear as uniformly unfortunate in most traditional decks, are reinterpreted as being manifestations of the goddess.  5 is often seen as a number of feminine divine because it is linked to the 5 stages of a woman,s life; birth, menarche, motherhood, menopause and death.  It is the 6 in WOC that is the uniform number of misfortune.  As I quickly went through the deck separating "positive response from "negative, I found that I had put all four 6,s in the "negative pile.  This is in contrast to say the Waite-Smith which shows the 6,s as being pretty good.

The Minors are ordered: Pentacles (Mineral Intelligence), Wands (Plant Intelligence), Cups (Animal Intelligence) and Swords (Human Intelligence.)  Each suit has a colored bordered that makes it easy to order and find cards.  Pentacles are colored green to represent the fecundity of the Earth.  Wands are yellow to represent Fire and reflect the Sun energy that brings growth.  Cups are red to represent blood, the Water of the heart.  Swords are blue, representing the clear Air of thought.  (The Majors have a purplish grey border that represents the wisdom of those cards.) Pentacles symbolize by the Mineral world or rocks and other inanimate objects and the intelligence of form and silence.  Wands symbolize by plants and the intelligence of growth and change.  The suit of Cups shows us Animal Intelligence, the ability to make family connections and feel emotions.  And finally, the suit of Swords represents the human world of abstract thought and problem solving. 

Unlike other decks, the Swords in WOC are not any more negative than the other suits.  The Nine of Swords shows three 3-bladed windmills.  The Ten of Swords shows a garden shed stepping surreally out onto a close-up view of Uranus.  In fact, all four suits show a majority of cards that I would label as positive or neutral.  This isn,t to say that WOC "nicefies the cards.  It doesn,t try to escape the bad things that happen in life and can give good readings about troubles.  It just doesn,t glorify the negative.  The downside is there in every card along with the key to growth.  This is another part of the Pagan perspective - things are not evil in and of themselves.  They become evil through our creation of an evil context.

An important part of the minors that I really like is that they are actually pip cards.  Each card shows a scene involving the requisite number of pips for that suit, but there are no people.  The Nine of Wands shows a very detailed scene of the Australian outback including 9 kangaroos in the distance and a close-up of 9 didjeridus.  The Eight of Disks shows 8 spider,s webs and a weaving with 8 flowers.  I find that this lack of people gives a certain stillness to my readings.  It,s as if the action has been halted while I ponder the images.

The Court Cards have also been reworked.  Here is the only place you will find people.  The human forms on the Majors are archetypes and the minors are people free.  So these 16 people become the players in your reading.  One thing about the Courts in WOC that I must applaud enthusiastically is that not only do they show a wide range of ethinicities, those ethinicities are not forced into four simplistic packages and then separated by suit.  Here you will not only find an traditional African tribeswoman, but also a contemporary African-American saxophone player.  Native Americans are represented by Mayans, Eskimos, Plains and Algonquins.  Each suit is represented by all 4 "races and so is each Court type.

One of the things I,ve found fascinating working with Wheel of Change is the kind of synchronicity that occurs now in my readings.  For instance, I was journalling about how I had been weaving together different experiences I,d had.  I pulled a card afterwards and received the 8 of Disks, which in the WOC shows an old winter tree covered in spider webs with a human made weaving on a backstrap loom.  I was immediately struck by the directness with which the image in the card echoed what I had just written.  At another time, I was doing a reading for a friend about to go in for extensive medical intervention.  The card she got in the future position was the Knight of Swords, showing an image of a man in a lab coat and setting.

I believe part of this kind of direct synchronicity has to do with the way modern images are presented as extensions of older symbols.  Modern images of baseballs crashing through windows, electric guitars and oil refineries sit along side ammonite shells, ancient Egyptian mirrors and nature scenes.  The modern images allow the reader to connect this Tarot with their everyday lives.  They are also infused with the same magical, symbolic meaning of the older symbols they appear with.  The everyday is made symbolic and the symbolic is rendered familiar and accessible.  A difficult feat to say the least.

I recommend this deck for all collectors as it is a new system and promises to become ever more important in the family of tarot.  I also recommend this deck for Pagans and Pagan types as it is so infused with the basic tenets of this spiritual path.  Finally, I recommend it for anyone who is searching for a deck that truly represents the diversity of human experience.  Wheel of Change is a remarkable, beautiful deck.