One of the more recent offerings from US Games and AGM AGMuller, the Master Tarot is an artistic representation of episodes and characters from the life of Christ as told in various stories in the Bible.  Those familiar with Biblical passages will recognize a great many people pictured in the cards.  The designer of this tarot approaches Jesus as an ascended Master rather than the traditional Christian way of looking at Him, which makes for a very interesting and refreshing kind of oracle.

The setup of the deck is somewhat nontraditional.  There is a different type of breakdown from the usual Major/Minor Arcana split.  First, there are 16 unnumbered cards.  These are called "People Cards."  They correspond roughly to the Court Cards in standard tarot decks, but are read differently.  They are meant to express psychological, cultural, spiritual, or physical types of people, some in Jesus' life, some in the querent's life.

There are 22 "Major Cards."  While these are not titled in any way like a traditional tarot, those familiar with tarot will see the rough correlation.  They bear Roman numerals.  They are supposed to represent archetypes of human experience.  They were inspired by the life of Christ but are meant to be universally understood.  I found an interesting digression from this theme with one card entitled "The Scream," which is this artist's rendition of the famous painting by the same title!

The largest subsection of the deck are the "Minor Cards."  There are 40 of them, roughly corresponding to the numbered cards in the suits.  They are numbered 1 through 40 in Arabic numerals.  They are based on 40 short sayings of Jesus.  They offer direct advice and insight on given situations in a reading.  There is an interesting take-off of the famous "American Gothic" painting in this group of cards.  I'm sure there are possibly other cards which are inspired by famous works, but these are the two I recognize.

The cards themselves are standard in size and shuffle and handle easily.  The titles on all cards are in German and English.  The backs have a pretty constellation design.  The little white booklet which accompanies the deck is fairly substantial.  There doesn't seem to be a regular book available for this tarot but the booklet gives enough information to use the deck as is.

This is a very interesting deck for anyone who is exploring the alternatives from a Christian standpoint.  It is not traditional mainstream Christian, so has a broader appeal to it.  It is probably a nice deck for beginners because there are so many "different" things about the way it works that having no prior experience would make learning it easier.  Collectors will also enjoy it as the artwork is quite nice.

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Review Copyright 1998 by Gina M. Pace

Master Tarot by Mario Montano, 1996
published by AGM AGMuller, ISBN 3-905219-02-6