Deck Review: Queer Revolution Tarot

The Queer Revolution Tarot is a Kickstarter deck I recently backed by Utah-based artist Kate Wilhite. Salt Lake City (and its inhabitants), which we see throughout this deck, is the real star of the show. Wilhite writes about her art: “because the state is religiously oppressive, queer and trans people tend to collect in the city, creating a queer bubble where we can live authentically and safely. I paint people in my community who live between binaries as a way to explore my own identity and to show the world how beautiful queer radical authenticity is.” What shines through in this deck is the love and kinship the artist feels for the figures she paints into the theme of each card. There is a real warmth and intimacy to the deck that feels like someone introducing you to their close-knit group of friends at one of those amazing house parties you just kind of randomly end up at around 1am in your early twenties. It’s very gentle to work with, and manages to be both playful and profound.

While it loosely follows the RWS themes for each card, the artist’s friends and community are really front and centre, so it helps to trust your intuition, look into the face of each character, and go with the message they are trying to convey to you. I also love Wilhite’s take on queerness, as someone who writes a lot about what queerness means/looks like in my own academic work. Her philosophy for the deck reminds me of the amazing Carol Queen on her desire to go beyond the binary concept of allyship/membership: “[I want to create] an army of lovers, for an army of lovers cannot fail.  I do not want this community to be an alliance; alliances can be broken.  I want it to be a deep, dizzying, expectation-defying love affair” (Queen, 1987).

“Everybody has parts of themselves that can’t be defined or labelled in the current languages we have, and all identities are too complex to be explained by a binary. My goal for this series is to create a deck of tarot cards that all people – cis, trans, gay, straight, agender, asexual… – can use to meditate on queerness within their own identities.”

Kate Wilhite

The deck comes in a simple card box – I can’t comment much more on it because mine got absolutely mangled at some point in its journey across the ocean to me :-(. When it arrived it was a mushy mess so goodness knows what misadventures befell it in transit (maybe it actually swam? Idk). Thankfully/miraculously the cards remained pristine, but I’ve had to bodge the box back together with copious amounts of sellotape, so it’s a bit of a fright.

There is a small guidebook that gives a brief introduction to the deck, and a few lines about each card’s general meaning (plenty to guide a beginner). I personally like it when a creator comments in more depth on what their own art choices mean to them, but I appreciate this is not always possible when space is at a premium and/or not how some artists choose to work!

The card stock is quite thin, but not flimsy (so it doesn’t feel like it will bow), and reasonably slippery – but still shuffles fine. The artwork is lush – bright, luminous, a mix of in-your-face colours and subtle brushwork. The palette and style give the whole deck a really distinct look. I’m not wild about borders in Tarot decks in a general sense, but the black borders and white titles work fine.

The back design is really striking; a kind of dreamy torn chain link fence motif which is echoed in many of the cards themselves. As you’d expect from a deck that focuses on the concept of queerness, representation in this deck is great – I especially appreciate the range of body types included and the fact everyone isn’t conventionally ‘hot’ or super archetypal (i.e. the typical wise old wrinkly faced Hierophant).

The Emperor is a card I struggle with (I just don’t like the general sentiment of the card – f**k the patriarchy, man!), but Wilhite’s Emperor just oozes ‘cool dad’ vibes, and looks like a guy I’d enjoy spending time with and learning from. He is beautifully complimented by the dreamy, almost wistful Empress, enjoying her verdant surroundings. The artist writes, “maternal nurturing can come from anywhere; if you can’t find it around you, nurture yourself”. Both these cards (and the theme of the whole deck) do a great job of emphasising the idea of found families, and the kinship which can exist between members of loving communities – which is such a key part of queerness, for me. And The Magician is basically the guy who used to be the in-house drug dealer at the nightclub I worked at in Shoreditch back in the day (ah, T Bar – so many memories!). Loving his whole look.

The chain link fence features prominently in both the determined (slightly moody?) vibe of the Chariot card, and the Hanged Man, which is an intriguing take to me. The pose and colour choice are playful and carefree, but if you look at the figure’s face, they have a bit of a thousand yard stare going on. This juxtaposition speaks to some of the ambivalence inherent in the card (necessary sacrifice, slightly painful but valuable sense of waiting, disconcerting but world-expanding change of perspective), and works really well.

I might be wrong, but I’m pretty sure the World card is a self-portrait of the artist, and I am really here for this as a concept! The Fool’s Journey we all go through in our own lives is such a unique and personal voyage, and the use of a self portrait here adds to this aspect.

I am always a big fan of depictions of the Hierophant as Tarot reader; and the 2 of Wands as a chess player is really clever. Wilhite writes “you already know what you want, now you need to figure out how to get there” – thinking several moves ahead, just like in chess, is a way we can bring into actuality the plans we are making in this card. I love all the RWS easter eggs in the Queen of Wands, from the sunflower print jacket to the cheeky kitty popping its head out from behind a tree :-).

Aw, the Knight of Cups is just too cute! Really embodies the charm and playfulness of the card. In the 9 of Swords we see the chainlink fencing that is a recurring motif throughout the deck take centre stage. I really like how sometimes the fence is a positive feature of the landscape (e.g. when the Hanged Man is messing around hanging upside down off it), and sometimes it instead feels oppressive and sinister, like in this card. And I LOVE the 3 of Cups as a badass girl group!

This is a great deck, so bright and quirky – I definitely recommend it. I can’t see any copies in the artist’s online shop, but it might be worth reaching out if you’re particularly taken with it as they may well have some copies left :-).

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