The Bohemian Animal Tarot

While we're not crazy about the guidebook's introduction, which parrots a few of the now well debunked tarot origin stories, we have no problem with the cards of The Bohemian Animals Tarot themselves. A perfectly acceptable RWS variant, featuring anthropomorphic animals, the deck also offers up a couple of extra cards in the major arcana, following The World: card 22, titled The Universe, and card 23, labeled The Afterlife. The suits are designated by their elemental correspondences -- i.e., "Water" for Cups; "Earth" for Pentacles, etc. Oh, and did we mention that the cards are decorated with gold gilt edging that makes them initially bind together like bare skin on leather seats during a heat wave? Once you get them out of the box and get them all separated, however, they're fine. Just don't assume you're missing a card until you've double-checked to make sure a couple of those suckers aren't mashed so tightly that you originally mistook them for a single card.