Fairy Ring: An Oracle of the Fairy Folk [Englisch] [Spielkarten]

This set containing a quality 248 page soft-cover book and a colorful deck of 60 oracle cards plus 4 spread cards is very unusual and that says a lot in a market as swamped as the current Tarot card market is. From the creators of the Sacred Circle Tarot, The Fairy Ring uses the same type of computer enhanced photographic images of human beings. They occur in collage-like surroundings featuring fairy mounds and standing stones, forests glades and moonlit moors wearing fairy garb, altered sometimes to give them the oddly shaped bodies and features of the fairies they represent. The set is unusual, in my opinion, because it provides a much better than usual atmosphere and even some written suggestions for using these beautiful cards for deep meditation. It unfolds like guided meditation does, the images on the cards being wonderful catalysts. One's imagination melds so readily with the details on the cards that it is very easy to step into the land of the fey and to discover the teachings waiting there. The settings and the fairies are so evocative in this deck that you get a quantum leap into your meditation if you are only willing. You can meditate with any Tarot deck but with this deck it seems almost effortless.
The cards are divided into four seasonal suits depending on the time of year when a particular fairy is most likely to appear. There are thirteen cards in each suit that are numbered one to nine plus four court cards. Each card has a different fairy for a total of 52 fairies. There are also eight festival cards that mark the cheif fairy feasts. These closely correspond with Wiccan sabbats except Herfest is substituted for Mabon. The cards have both upright and reversed meanings. The fairies depicted are of all different sorts, fair and ugly. The quality cards are glossy with green backs featuring Celtic knotwork in the shape of the vesica pisces. The book contains delineations for each card that first describes the imagery of the card, then gives the detailed lore of the fairy, the divinatory meanings, reversed meanings, and finally, information and tips on working with the particular fairy including tree and herbal lore or other pertinent habitat lore.
These cards are very beautiful. The fairy lore is so excellent that I would recommend this set just for the book alone. It is packed with scholarly information and shows a deep understanding of fey beings. It has a select bibliography and has been well-researched.
This deck is not for everyone. You are either a fairy friend or you are not. If you are willing to enter into this realm with an open mind and heart in can be very illuminating. The deck is accessible and the visual images are definite portals. It is an excellent value in that the book is a wonderful resource alone and the cards are a miniature art gallery if nothing else. If used as the creators intend it is a remarkably useful tool for self-awareness. I highly recommend it.

Anna Franklin and Paul Mason's first oracle deck, the Sacred Circle Tarot, was quite good. This one, the Fairy Ring, is stunning. Working again with computer-manipulated photographs, these creative British Wiccans have designed a deck that captures the wildness, beauty, and sometimes horror of the faery folk of Britain.

The deck is divided into four suits: Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter, with the faeries assigned to whichever season is the closest match for their energies. There are also eight additional cards representing the major holidays of Wicca. Every last one of the cards is a visual spectacle, and none of them have that telltale blah-ness that indicates that the artist is out of ideas. I suspect that the deck will be a little difficult to learn, since it's not based on tarot, but I've never minded reading up on faeries.

Each of the cards represents one of the traditional faeries of folklore. Other faery decks concentrate on the authors' personal vision of faeries (Brian Froud), or on pop psychology (Doreen Virtue), but with this deck we're in "Katherine Briggs Land". The book gives a sort of capsule bio of each faery, so that we know what its nature is and what it means in a reading. The faeries range from ethereally beautiful to earthy to creepy to "I sure hope I don't meet THAT in a dark alley". It is a credit to Franklin and Mason that they absolutely do not "sugarcoat" any of the darker faeries. They are SCARY as portrayed in the art, and the book advises not trying to contact them in meditation.

My personal favorite is the "Lhiannan Shee" card. Mason portrays the traditional vampire-muse as a green sprite hovering above a bottle on the writer's desk. I love the double meaning. For the faery depicted might be the Lhiannan Shee--or she might be the "green faery" absinthe, which led 19th century artists into a more mundane sort of danger.

The only gripe I can think of about this deck is that Franklin and Mason have only a handful of models for their cards. This can get a little distracting when I start recognizing the models from one card to the next, or even between the two decks. "Hey wait a second, Morgan le Fay, didn't I just see you on the BeFind card?" It is sometimes necessary to suspend disbelief a little.

When I first became interested in Paganism, I had visions of entering a beautiful and enchanted world of magic and mystery. The realities of social interaction quickly soured that vision, but just as quickly, the Fairy Ring re-awakened much of the "fun" I had forgotten. This new divination deck from Anna Franklin and Paul Mason, perhaps best known for their Sacred Circle Tarot, uses many of the same techniques of combining photographic and computer imagery to produce a beautiful look at the Little People of ancient folklore. Focusing on the myth and culture of the Celtic lands, the Fairy Ring brings to life the mysterious, whimsical and occasionally fearsome creatures of ancient beliefs, fairy tales and nursery rhymes. Other fairy decks I have seen are too serious -- they miss the feeling of enchantment and familiarity that the Fairy Ring so cleverly captures.

The Fairy Ring comes as a deck and book kit, like the Sacred Circle Tarot. The book has a brief introduction to the Oracle, several suggested layouts, and a detailed discussion of each of the cards, including the history and folklore of the fairy depicted on the card, suggested divinatory meanings, and a guide to working with the fairy -- and occasionally a recommendation that you do not work with a specific fairy! The deck itself consists of 60 cards, organized into four suits corresponding to the seasons. Each suit has nine cards, each belonging to a specific fairy, plus four court cards -- Lady, Knave, Queen and King. Rounding out the deck are eight "festival" cards, representing the solstices, equinoxes, and fire festivals. Four additional cards illustrate suggested layouts that are further described in the book. The cards themselves are a little smaller than the Sacred Circle, measuring 8 x 11.7mm (about 3-1/4 x 4-3/4 inches), and thus should be easier for those with smaller hands (and diminished dexterity, such as myself) to use. The cards don't seem to have the slick finish that scratches easily as do the Sacred Circle, and those who long lamented the "irreversibility" of the Sacred Circle card backs will delight in the complete upsy-downsy anonymity of the Fairy Ring.

I have long thought that the Tarot, while an excellent representation of superconscious energies and their relationship to consciousness, all but ignores the unconscious forces of nature that play a critical role in the formation of human consciousness, and in the events and thoughts of ancient and modern life. Our ancestors lived and died by the events of nature, and the forces that shaped those events determined their survival. The ancient rituals of the seasons, the practices of magic, and eventually the evolution of nature gods and goddesses all spring from this intimate connection between consciousness and nature, and the participation mystique that linked the human mind to the world around it. The Tarot all but ignores this relationship; but this is the very substance of the Fairy Ring. Whether you think that fairies originate through observation or psychological projection, the Fairy Ring brings to life the connection between mind and nature, and is thus the perfect companion and compliment to the more abstract Tarot.

It is perhaps because of the loss of connection between mind and nature that the Tarot often succumbs to endless psychobabble and chatter, completely missing its mark as a metaphysical oracle. The Fairy Ring, on the other hand, seems more closely connected to the Runes and Oghams, as a mediator between consciousness and the unseen, sometimes amusing and often perplexing forces of nature. Much could be said about the consequences of isolating human consciousness from nature, and one of the benefits of studying and using a nature-oriented oracle like the Fairy Ring might be to encourage the re-formation of the link between mind and world that enlivened and enchanted the consciousness of the ancients.

Whatever you might think of the theory, the Fairy Ring should be a welcome addition to the repertoire of the diviner and students of ancient religious beliefs and practices.