The Sirian Starseed Tarot by author Patricia Cori and illustrator/designer Alysa Bartha is premised on the esoteric (some would say New Age) belief that walking among us humans are a handful of aliens, or aliens-that-look-just-like-humans, or ancient aliens (?), and I think it’s different from what Scientologists believe but I can’t be sure because to an ignoramus like me, they sound the same. Both indigenous Native American and esoteric Buddhist belief systems include an idea similar to starseed people, so maybe there’s a grain of truth in it all somewhere.

The Sirian Starseed Tarot was channeled to Patricia Cori and there is a fascinating workshop she did, hosted by North Atlantic Books, the deck’s publisher, that you can watch here on YouTube. I highly recommend that you check out the webinar, especially if you will be working with the Sirian Starseed Tarot.

The Major Arcana in this deck is breathtaking to view and eerily accurate to work with. Check out Keys 0 through XIII above (Death becomes Transition…I know some old school tarot readers aren’t too fond of the “Death becomes Transition” interpretation of Key XIII…). However, what you need to do when working with this particular deck, especially if you’re a seasoned tarot reader, is to check your tarot knowledge at the door and work with this deck within its own universe of a system. You’re going to have a much more enriching experience with the Sirian Starseed if you do just that. Otherwise, you’ll have a lot of hang-ups, biases, and cognitive dissonance.

I’m quite drawn to the Majors in this deck and only work with the Majors. Using just the 22 Keys from the Sirian Starseed, you can scan and diagnose energies for any person or situation with remarkable accuracy. So despite the deck superficially ticking off many of the points I normally dislike in a tarot deck, the Majors here function wonderfully on a practical level.

Okay, what do I mean by superficially ticking off many of the points I normally dislike. Generally I don’t love digitally manipulated photographic art decks and I don’t love cards that feel like plastic, that are super glossy to the point where I can literally see my own reflection when I look directly into the cards (yes, these are that glossy), and I prefer a deck style that feels timeless rather than dated. The deck art style here feels distinct and dated to the 21st century. It was published in 2012 and it feels very, very 2012.

Then there is the factual matter of warping cards. The cards warp on their own. See above. They won’t sit flat on a table-top. So oddly enough, for a “very 2012” tarot deck, it’s not exactly Instagram-friendly. I speculate that the high-gloss coating applied to the cards cause them to warp and the warping only gets more prominent with time and use.

So. Many of the superficial features of the deck and deck production are not my cup of tea. However, like I said, the cards are eerily accurate. They read well. They transmit intuitive and divinatory information with remarkable power. And ultimately, isn’t that what a tarot deck is for? Who cares about the warping, or gloss, or Instagram-friendly level of the deck if it works! This deck works.

Okay, sorry, another photo of the warping. Not captured in picture is how the warping of the cards cause them to spin on the tabletop. Yep, that’s right. They kind of spin around and don’t stay in place when you try to lay them out into a spread. Perhaps a way to explain that is to remark on how potent the spirit energies are laced into the deck.

You’ll have noted earlier with Key 8 being Strength and Key 11 being Divine Justice that the Sirian Starseed follows a Rider-Waite-Smith based system. In the Minors, the four suits are the Flames, Chalices, Crystals, and Orbs. For the courts, you’ve got Seeker, Adept, Sage, and Master. I like the titles for the courts.

“From the hands of the Lady of the Lake emerges not Excalibur, Arthur’s sword, but a chalice. Is it the Holy Grail?” starts the entry in the guidebook for the Ace of Cups. Many of the cards here express the common experiences of the Starseed people, according to the guidebook. The Four of Chalices, for example, illustrates the pining to return home to their other-world that Starseeds often feel. The Seven of Chalices depicts the spiral staircase toward Infinite White Light.

The suit of Crystals corresponds with the element Earth, or the suit of Pentacles. This confused me for a moment, since there’s also a suit of Orbs. However, in this deck, the suit of Orbs corresponds with Air, or Swords.

Intended imagery of the cards collect impressions from various features of New Age thought. For example, the Five of Crystals here depicts a landscape in Atlantis.

My impression is the Sirian Starseed Tarot is either going to resonate so strongly with you that it’s an emotional, cathartic experience with the deck or it will not resonate at all. The vibrational frequency this deck seems to be tuned in to is rather specific and if you’re not tuned in to that same frequency, then there’s probably a lot of static when you try to work with this deck. All that is positive, by the way, because if the Starseed world is your world, I sense that this deck will open a floodgate of connections, familiarity, and just unleash your intuitive abilities as a Starseed. If the Starseed world is not your world, then something about this deck may simply fall flat.

I’ve been doing many of my personal readings with the Majors only from the Sirian Starseed Tarot. While my inner jury is still out for deliberation on the whole starseed intergalactic ancient aliens theory, I’m pretty well convinced that Cori has channeled something incredible to create this deck. It’s packed with a power you can feel beneath your fingertips and is overall an intriguing deck to work with.

Although I was not given this deck with specific purposes of a review, it was gifted to me by the publisher.