Feng Shui Tarot Deck

Review by Nathalie Wigmore for Feng Shui Tarot Deck
Rating:
This review is for the “Feng Shui Tarot” deck and book set. Mother and son duo Eileen and Peter Paul Connolly have teamed up to produce an elegant Tarot that combines elements of Form School Feng Shui and traditional tarot. The cards measure 3 1/16″ by 5 1/4″. These dimensions are slightly larger than standard, a fact that does credit to the beautiful artwork. The title of each card is written in a vertical sidebar along the right edge of the card, with the card number in Roman numerals in the upper right-hand corner and a corresponding tri gram in the lower right-hand corner.

The deck follows the standard division of 22 Major Arcana and 56 Minor Arcana, with Strength as card VIII and Justice as card XI. Two Majors have been renamed in this deck: Death is called Transition, and The Devil is called Materialism. The Minor Arcana designations have also been changed: Wands are the Black Tortoise suit, Cups are Red Phoenix, Swords are White Tiger and Pentacles are Green Dragon. The court cards in all suits retain the traditional Page, Knight, Queen and King titles.

The good:

– beautiful Oriental-style artwork that appears to incorporate a blend of Chinese symbolism and watercolour landscape with a Japanese flavour reminiscent of ukiyo-e and the Edo period.

– excellent quality cardstock, with a smooth and glossy finish that allows for hassle-free shuffling and easy maintenance.

– the cardback design is symmetrical and thus reversible for readers who like to use reversed cards in their spreads.

– the companion book provides interpretations from both the Feng Shui and traditional Tarot perspectives, leaving it up to the reader to use either or both.

The not-so-good:

– this is not a deck for newcomers to Tarot, and the main reason is the Minor Arcana. Not only have the suit designations been changed (a relatively inconsequential matter in and of itself), but the suits’ elemental attributes and corresponding meanings seem to clash with traditional elemental attributes and meanings as found in contemporary classic Tarot. The most obvious example would be the Black Tortoise suit, which the Connollys equate to the suit of Wands. In traditional Tarot, Wands are equated with the element Fire and stand for such things as vision, creative force, courage, drive, passion, working towards a dream or a goal.

In the Feng Shui tarot, the Black Tortoise is assigned the element of Water. To make matters more confusing, the traditional suit of Cups, typically symbolized by Water in traditional Tarot, is here represented by the Red Phoenix – a creature made of fire. To readers who are used to the traditional elemental associations of Wands = Fire and Cups = Water, the Feng Shui Tarot’s suit names and imagery will likely cause a bit of a head spin at first.

– the imagery of the Minor cards is not all based on Rider-Waite interpretation, which makes the transition from an RW-based deck to this deck not a smooth and seamless enterprise.

To be fair, the Black Tortoise and Red Phoenix suits are really the only big challenge in using this deck. The White Tiger suit for Swords and Green Dragon suit for Pentacles makes sense on an intuitive level when one reads their description, so an early jump to those two suits should pose no problem. Once the reader takes the time to examine each suit on its own, laying the cards side by side in numerical sequence, one clearly sees a story evolving from Ace to ten, and the companion book describes this story as it grows from card to card. This storytelling aspect makes it less daunting to wrap one’s head around the Minor Arcana. The Black Tortoise suit especially benefits greatly from this approach, and one can eventually see how the choice of Red Phoenix for Cups makes sense in light of the fact that in Feng Shui, fire stands for love, emotion and inspiration.

Overall, the Feng Shui Tarot is a beautiful deck with clear, clean images and simple imagery, but it is not a deck for novices. Readers who choose to give this deck a shot should be prepared to invest a bit of time in “digesting” the meaning of the suits and deliberately distancing their minds from traditional Tarot suit and element associations – at least as pertains to the Minor Arcana. The Major Arcana pretty much follows standard Tarot imagery and interpretation and should pose no real trouble. The companion book is, in my opinion, an absolute necessity to get the most out of this deck.