I procured the Gilded Tarot on the basis of its many rave reviews, despite the fact that I didn’t particularly like the card featured on the cover of the packaging (Strength).The Woman in the card’s illustration seemed a bit malformed around the chest area, and seemed to be lurching forward slightly, no doubt carried by the impetus of her big boobs.

Still, how dare I trust my initial impression in the face of such proclamations as “every card is masterpiece”.

Yeah, every card is a masterpiece if you like your masterpiece airbrushed onto t-shirts, because thats precisely the kind of “art” this deck entails. Its the kind of stuff that would appeal to stoners awash in blacklight. Groovy, dude.

Now the deck isn’t entirely bad. Much of the minor arcana is quite lovely, its images reminiscent of Rider-Waite yet lushly rendered in brilliant hues and fine detail. Some cards are completely unique in concept - and I love the Sun and Moon cards, which picture these heavenly bodies as part of some grand and complex mechanical contraption. But other cards definitely belong on the side of a stoner’s van.

Take the Lovers card. There’s no excuse for this abomination of art. It pictures a muscle-bound (really muscle-bound) helmeted guy thigh-deep in sunlit water, lifting up a well-endowed woman clad in a gold bikini. Okay, this is the kind of crap that would send my clients packing if this came up in a tarot reading.

The Fool looks a little long in the tooth for that innocent youth that is meant to represent the carefree embracing of new beginnings. The Magician looks like… like… you know that guy that shows up at every pagan festival trying to look menacing but just looks like the aging hippie he really is? Yeah, him.

The gold borders against the black background remind me of 80s dance-clubs, and those fake looking jewels on every card just look kind of cheap.

But the worst thing about this deck is the obvious artistic talent that has gone to waste creating something half-assed. Some of the cards are magnificent, but its the ones that aren’t - to a comical degree - that will prevent me from ever using this deck in a reading.

The cards are flexible, easy to shuffle, and are a nice size for handling.

The packaging of the Gilded Tarot is a bit flimsy - mine was slightly crushed in transit. The deck comes with a full-sized book, though the information therein is somewhat limited.