Miss Cleo's Tarot Power Deck

This deck totally exceeded my expectations. I bought it because it had on it's promos, "AS SEEN ON TV;" it had Miss Cleo (and all the candles from Sting's "Wrapped Around Your Finger" video on the box), and at 6.47 before shipping it is the cheapest Tarot deck that you can buy, undercutting even the knockoff Chinese decks. While Miss Cleo (born Youree Dell Harris in Los Angeles in 1962) is sadly no longer with us, and the Psychic Readers Network were sued into oblivion by the Attorney Generals of many, many states; the cards linger on. (I suspect somewhere in New Jersey there is an entire warehouse of these cards.) You will see this in the book--haha DON't DO IT BAYBEE:

(At one point the Psychic Readers Network was estimated to have 1 billion dollars in cash from these phone calls..at 3.99 a minute. Miss Cleo eventually settled for around 100 million .)

The backs are pretty... and don't reveal when a card is reversed!

Yes, J.F. Lambert is responsible for the delights to come....first of all, it's an Egyptian-themed deck, and the pip cards are all illustrated (yay!) and mostly follow the Rider Waite cards for symbolism-- though some of the female cards are flipped to be male cards. The Star is male, and so is the Nine of Pentacles. It's a good deck for a guy who wants to learn the cards but not have a "girly" deck. The cards themselves have a great feel, smooth plastic with a good snap, a good size to handle and are flexible enough to shuffle like normal cards. It's also a g-rated deck, possibly because it needed to be shown on TV. So I went through all the pip cards, all quite normal (though the Queen of Pentacles has her eye on your man:)

  And then here come the Major Arcana cards, and this is your first hint that Lambert decided to just do what he/she wanted.

The dog, who is supposed to be helping, is just sitting there judging while the Fool is about to have an accident. Apparently alcohol is involved.

Here Horus is sitting in for Maat, he has her feather and some poor person's heart, and he is so over this job. It's not looking good for the deceased here.

At least Anubis, as Death, was sympathetic.

Up to this point, everything was in control..and then the wheel came off, and the other sphinx booked.

At this point, I can't even, and neither can the artist. I think the lobster is right side up-- though it took me a moment to figure out that his antenna were pointed up.

The Sun is really exuberant too, and correctly shows Ra with his multiple hands:

But the Wheel of Fortune has the best image of many of the decks I have seen--it has a nice 19th century feel to it along with carrying on the theme:

Overall, this is a fab deck--as a collector, I kept the advertising cards, though if you are just going to use the deck as a deck you can toss these:

It even has a really nice, heavy box with enough of a clay coating to slide open smoothly and not pinch the cards like the side-opening boxes do:

I'd have to say it's one of the more satisfactory decks I own!