The Sacred Rose Tarot by Johanna Gargiulo Sherman (1982, Cards)

This is a marvelous tarot deck. It has very vivid,coloful drawings to express deep meaning. It balances playfulness and solomn sincerity. It comes with a small booklet which is very informative. This is a great deck for any level of tarot practitioner.

I have had it 2 months and am quite blown away by it. Sacred Rose is not strictly RWS or Thoth based .....it's in its own category completely imo. The images are so forceful and full of cosmic vibration. Very intense and darkly mysterious. I have been doing daily draws with SRT and I keep getting these very profound "revelations". This deck seems to have an ancient personality, whispering secrets from the primal deep Night. The book the author wrote is one of the best companion books for deck I have read. Very unusual, in-depth and with a poetic turn to her words and interpertations. This deck is a classic, around since 1982, and you can clearly see the artist's deep and lifelong involvement with the Tarot shine through in her original and inspired images, colours and symbols.

The intense and captivating colours in this deck deserve special mention. Each suit has it's own set of colour swirls and they are completely stunning. Swords are all kinds of blues, purples, dark mauve, violet.....very menacholy. The Wands are a exquisite palette of oranges and reds. Pentacles are so evocative of the Earth, Autumn and harvest....citrines, golds, russets, yelllows and on and on. The majors are extremely powerful, you get a sense of partaking of wisdom from the Cosmos. Lots of nature infuses and makes this pack feel alive with much personality.

As far as these controversial "blank eyes" that get so much mention. I love them! They are evocative of the Otherworld/Underworld energy that this deck is so strongly infused with. I am starting to feel this deck really does transport you into the Otherworld deeper and deeper the longer you focus and work on it. You can travel to all levels with this deck.

It is a very Autumnal Tarot....the ambience and strong pull is so entwined with my love for Fall. It's a Tarot that doesn't hide the darker aspects of life, it embraces them, and turns them into something hauntingly beautiful. The backs are like a mandala and stand out as an image that can import some deep insights if meditated upon.

I have around 65 decks.....this is always the deck I return too, I feel it is my signature deck, the one that feels like home, I connect with it on a very profound soul level. I recommend it for someone looking for immense power in their readings and for exceptional self-growth and development of their intuitivr/psychic powers.