The name of this tarot deck sounded refreshingly new to me. At least I could not immediately recall any other tarot deck based upon what I, due to the use of the Hindi word "Sutra" in the title first, but wrongly, associated with Tantric philosophy.

When the parcel arrived, I was pleasantly surprised. While I am in general not very fond of book/deck products with their wobbly plastic or cardboard interiors and empty space, under which the cards slip around, this proved to me to be a unique presentation, and one of the very few large tarot book/deck boxes which deserve an award for its design. The inner box, with two compartments, one for the book and one for the deck, made of a hard black plastic material is mounted inside a cover, which completely wraps around the plastic base. Even if there is not an inner extra box for the deck, the cards stay in their compartment, because the cover is closed firmly with a magnet running along the entire right side of the box. The choice of illustration and font type used, added to the feeling, that what was inside must be an exclusive tarot deck. The book is 128 pages, well designed also, generously illustrated with all 78 cards in color and perfectly printed on quality paper stock.

That said, the praising words are over. Starting with looking at the concept of this product, the disappointment began to creep in. This is nothingness in a delicious wrapper. The subtitle of this work is "An Intimate Guide to Exploring Sex Through the Tarot". That could still be OK and also still come under the expected Tantra headline. But it doesn't. What we have here is nothing more than what could be called a modem equivalent of Theodor Laurence's shady "The Sexual Key to the Tarot" (1971), whose subtitle is "Let the secrets of the Tarot reveal your sexual future". This future is here now, and we can talk more freely; Laurence could probably not get away with such advice as we read in Tarot Sutra: "Trade off who gets to be on top over the course of the weekend" or "Slip under any table and let the tongue do the talking". I tend to revaluate Laurence positively, when I compare his book with Tarot Sutra. Another detail, "Tarot Sutra" and Laurence have in common is, that they both use the Waite/Smith deck for illustrations, and neither of them give credit to the creators of that deck.

The deck accompanying "Tarot Sutra" is another of the superfluous remakings, redrawings, recolorings, improvements - whatever they are called - of Pamela Colman's Smith's illustrations for the Waite/ Smith deck. In this case the line art is the original, even if PCS' signatures are carefully removed, but the coloring is digitally changed. The colors are rather pale with a grayish tint, the backgrounds and other selected parts of the images are faded out, like when the sky becomes slowly lighter down towards the horizon line. Several of the characters have an added halo effect, the Hermit and Death for example, and bright soft-focus spots are added here and there. Each card has a sentence printed at the bottom, and the majors additionally give advice, like "The door to the lover's hearth is opened by enchantment" (The Magician) or "Become a willing participant on the road to mutual satisfaction" (The Hanged Man). I seriously doubt, that Waite and Smith would have felt happy with this use of their work.

How to use this deck? That's very simple. Add your birth year, -month, -day and reduce. The number you reach, you look up. If you are born, for example August 13th, 1949, your cards are 17 and 8, and you will learn that since you are a free spirit, you may like to be on top in bed and also, that you like sex in any way that it shows up. Well, a bit more than that, but that is the essence. With frequently changing sex partners, you may by and by work yourself through all the cards. Another method to use the deck, recommended in the book, is simply to draw one card and read the text that goes with it and, I suppose, do as it says. If that card, for example, happens to be Eight of Pentacles, you are advised, to "watch a tendency to focus on technique". If you are so lucky as to draw "The Sun", you will learn, that "you were born to delight in physical pleasures and earthly amusements". You can also draw 5 cards and chose between them.

No mention of card spreads at all. The author of all this good advice is Patricia Canova (MSC), and the editor and excellent designer is Mary Tiegreen (could she at least have given credit to PCS!?) The publisher is Dorling Kindersley. The publishing year is 2000 and the ISBN is 0-78945966-3. The price is $30.- Buy it just for the box. Why this deck is called Tarot Sutra is still a riddle to me. A simple, "Tarot Sex Game" would have been a more suitable title to describe, what it actually is. We are still waiting for a tarot deck based on Tantric philosophy.