Product Description

BRING THE INSIGHT, WISDOM, AND JOY OF THE FAERIES INTO YOUR LIFE

Using the enchanted art of Brian Froud as your guide, enter into the wise and wonderful world of the faeries. The Faeries' Oracle calls on sylphs, pans, gnomes -- and, of course, faeries -- to lead you on a delightful journey of adventure, discovery, and enlightenment that will illuminate the future and heal the heart and soul. This beautifully designed divination set contains everything you will need to explore this mysterious realm, including:

A complete deck of 66 radiant cards by Brian Froud featuring goblins, moon dancers, pixies, boggarts, and other faery folk we first met in Good Faeries/Bad Faeries

208-page illustrated book with text by Jessica Macbeth, which will show you how to read the cards of The Faeries' Oracle, with particular instruction on personally connecting to and communicating with the faeries

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #373189 in Books
• Published on: 2000-10-31
• Format: Illustrated
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 208 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780743201117
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

Amazon.com Review
Author and illustrator Brian Froud offers believers a chance to consult with the magical wee folks. Using a deck of 66 "oracle cards," believers conduct readings as if interpreting Tarot cards. Each of the cards features Froud's signature faery pictures. Some of the cards have specific faeries, like the naked leaping "Spirit Lancer"--a feminine card that represents "self-expression, freedom, and exploration," according to the accompanying text written by Jessica Macbeth. Others are more abstract, like the "Guardian of the Gate," a blue- tinted card with splaying silver-white streaks that look like tendrils of faery hair.

This fascinating deck will keep Froud fans delighted for hours. Once seekers are ready to actually start communicating with faeries, they will also be delighted with Macbeth's whimsical, yet highly informative, guidebook. She is quick to sympathize with the self-consciousness that comes with talking to faeries, yet she also has the ability to jolly people out of their embarrassment. Macbeth is at her wisest when discussing how to ask for guidance and interpret specific layouts of oracle cards. But if you find yourself succumbing to giggles in the midst of all this faery woo-woo, take heart. Writes Macbeth, "Giggles are the grace notes of faery music." --Gail Hudson

About the Author
Brian Froud is an artist and author who has created such bestselling books as Good Faeries/Bad Faeries, Lady Cottington's Pressed Faery Book, and Faeries. The conceptual designer for Jim Henson's films, The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth, he lives in Devon, England.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
from Part One: Faeries and Oracles

How to make friends, influence angels, and read oracles

First Steps into the Otherworld

The first thing I always tell my students about oracles and tarot decks is: Don't read the book.

This book, of course, is different...

This book is about the living oracle of the faeries -- a set of cards and a way of seeing that is different from standard human tarot and oracle cards. Brian once began to paint a human tarot with faery in it, but that wasn't what the faeries wanted him to do. They wanted him to make their own oracle cards, as nearly as he could without being able to paint in light instead of pigments.

This book is also about a different, intuitive way of reading the cards. It starts by helping you to discover your own meanings and insights in the cards instead of telling you mine. Later on, in Part Two, I'll give you the "starter" interpretations as I (and a few others) see them, but right now you need to be aware that any oracle has many possible valid interpretations. These "meanings" change from moment to moment and person to person. Like the faeries, the definitions are changeable and mutable, depending on how you see the world just now and on what the faeries would like to communicate to you. Here we will focus on discovering you?re own individual interpretations and your special pathways and connections with the Faeries' Oracle.

So, what I really meant when I told my classes not to read their books was: Don't read someone else's definition of the cards until you already have some idea of what they mean to you.

Discovering what the cards mean to you, actually looking closely enough at them to begin to find sonic of the faery secrets they hold, will give you a completely different and far more magical and intuitive approach to reading the oracle than memorizing a bunch of definitions. To help you to find your own insights, let's start here with some of the things that you will find useful to do and to understand before you read the second part of this book.

First, take a good look at your attitude. Are you really serious about this? Do you believe you will need to work hard with the cards?

If so, please, don't be like that. As much as you can, let yourself approach the cards and the faeries with a light and playful heart. Consider lightheartedness. We usually think of it as the opposite of having a heavy, sad heart, but the faeries also see it in terms of illumination. A light heart is not only not heavy -- it is glowing with joyful light. It allows us to see things in a different light. Be prepared to have fun with this. Be ready to enjoy the inevitable faery jokes and games. This lightheartedness will illuminate the Oracle for you, making your insights brighter, the concepts embodied in the cards more luminous, and your heart capable of holding even more light.

Now, with a healthy, playful mind-set, take the deck of cards and randomly spread them out, faces up, on a table -- or on the floor if, like me, you prefer a lot of space for working. The first thing you will notice, if you have any experience with tarot or oracle cards at all, is that this is not like any other deck. Well, it wouldn't be, would it? This is a faery oracle, and as unique, unpredictable, humorous, profound, and beautiful as you would expect something of Faery to be.

you will also notice that there are different types of pictures, and I'd like you to begin by dividing the cards into groups that seem to go together. Set your own criteria for selecting them and begin to notice how the different images and beings shown on the cards might relate to each other.

For example, you may sort into one group the cards that look rather abstract, while the other cards form a group showing scenes and beings that appear more detailed and realistic. As you try to divide the cards into these two subsets, you will find that there are a few that don't quite fit neatly into either but have qualities of both. They form a third set of their own.

Another way of sorting the cards is to divide them into a set that only shows one individual on the card, and a set that shows two, and another set that shows three or more. Or you can divide them into the faeries who look beautiful, the ones who look funny or amusing, and the ones who may appear menacing or threatening to you.

you might sort them by the what is on the heads of the principle faery in each card. Some wear wreaths of flowers or leaves. Some wear floating crowns of stars. There are woodland-style acorn caps, salmon hats, and many others. There are even the bareheaded faeries. What, if anything, do the members of each of these groups have in common? Can you find a kinship between them?

Use your imagination and intelligence and find a variety of ways to compare and relate and differentiate between the cards. There is no right way or wrong way to do this. It is just practice in looking at the cards and seeing the similarities and differences between them. Be inventive and creative and playful about it. The more you do this, the better you will begin to understand this Oracle and Faery itself.

I hope that you are already doing this and not just reading my words. Very shortly we are going to be discussing things that won't make nearly as much sense if you have not done these preliminary steps.

Please practice this for a while, before you go on.

Copyright © 2000 by Brian Froud and Jessica Macbeth

from Part One: Faeries and Oracles

Touching Faery

If you can't communicate directly with the faeries -- or think you can't -- this may be more helpful to you than anything else I can tell you about using this Oracle. I'm going to suggest several things in this chapter that may not seem to have anything directly to do with reading the cards, but in fact they are very helpful for developing your communication with the faeries. Developing that communication and learning to interact and share with the faeries is essential to reading the cards well.

For as long as I can remember, I have talked to, played with, worked with, and learned from the faeries. Imagine my surprise then when I began to write this book and realized how very few people know this about me: some of my friends, a few (but very few) of my family, and some, but by no means all, of my students. I was forced to realize that I was a "closet faery friend." This was a part of my life, a very important part, that was hidden from the general view.

Now, this might be understandable if I worked in a profession where keeping this a secret mattered, but I'm a healer and heaters are expected to be weird. So, why...?

Faeries keep their own secrets-and so do their friends. There have been good reasons why they have been so quiet for the past few centuries. Our world and the world of Faery have drawn apart in the natural tidal swings of the universe. While they were farthest apart, only a very few people had the sensitivity needed to sense across the gap. So Faery fell into disrepute with orthodox thinkers, resulting in disbelief in and denial of the otherworld realms for most of us.

A climate of doubt is difficult enough to deal with, but if we try to push people who are not ready into acknowledging Faery, we evoke hostility. Faeries are, of course, very energy sensitive. An atmosphere of hostility is extremely unpleasant for them, and they avoid it whenever possible. For this reason, true friends of Faery do not try to force belief or even awareness on those humans who are unready and unwilling.

Yet, now there are reasons why more and more people (human people, that is) are feeling moved to reconnect with the otherworld. The two worlds, ours and Faery, are drawing closer together again. The contact is easier, the doors open more easily. But, if we wish harmony between the worlds, it is important to meet Faery on its own terms and avoid projecting our own ideas and false beliefs onto it.

Many things about faery society are different from ours. Culture and manners differ. The things that are important and are considered to be common courtesy by humans and faeries are similar in some ways but vary widely in others. If we want a friendly response, we need to learn some things about faeries and what is important to them, just as we would of the inhabitants of a foreign human country we were visiting.

Where do we start if we want to become personal friends with the denizens of Faery? Or to enhance and expand the relationship we already have? I'm going to give you some suggestions to help you along your way, but you must understand that these are only suggestions. It is as if I am pointing to an invisible path that leads to a hidden gate. You are the one who has to actually find your way through. No human person can take you by the hand into Faery -- and people who think they can are just kidding themselves and you. The suggestions I'm about to make worked for me and for many others, and I hope they will work for you. Even if they don't, you may well happen upon what does work for you while you're trying them. You have to discover your own way, but in doing so you will quickly find that you have the enthusiastic aid of the faeries themselves.

Well, fairies like to talk, so they like people who can be quiet and listen when that is appropriate. They speak in subtle voices, in hidden ways. If we aren't good at listening -- and listening with more than just our ears -- we won't be able to hear them. We need to listen with our hearts as well, and open ourselves to the subtle senses of emotion and empathy. They like us to be open enough so we can see or sense what is really there, more than just the obvious world of the physical eyes.

They like to play jokes, so we need a good sense of humor -- good enough to laugh even when the joke is on us, as it frequently will be. I hope you won't mind their metaphorical custard pies, or taking the occasional mental pratfall while they giggle. If we can laugh at ourselves when we are laughed at by the faeries, the experience becomes ...

Customer Reviews

Enchanting, Beautiful, and unlike any other
Feeling connected with Faeries most of my life, they were pulling on my hair, telling me to purchase this. Being a big fan of Brian Froud's work on Good Faeries/Bad Faeries, and his other projects (Dark Crystal, etc) I really wanted to give this a try. When I received my order, I couldn't put it down. The book that comes with this deck is by the kindest-hearted person, Jesa Macbeth. Her words and wisdom will help you to produce the kind of results you are looking for.

Each of the Oracle cards have it's own personality and feel. When you go through the deck, you will find faeries that you are drawn to and faeries that you are not drawn to. These are important to note to yourself. These Oracle cards are not like Tarot cards. Tarot cards tend to be 'serious' and uptight. The meanings are harder to develop on your own. With these Oracle cards, the Faeries encourage you to laugh, sing, cry, do whatever you like. There are no rules, only that you feel comfortable with the cards and the message the Fae may be sending to you.

Also, if you purchase these cards, or if you are curious to what more people think (who own the cards), you should check out the Faeries' Oracle e-group. ...

Enjoy!!

The Magic Is In You!
I can't add much to the already raving and beautiful reviews, but I am so happy to own The Faerie's Oracle, this will be my second oracle to date, so I kinda knew what to expect. Please know that this isn't a tarot set as some may come to believe that oracle cards are -- oracle cards are more self discovery cards to pin-point events in your life that may be happy, troubling, what you may be thinking and not aware at the time etc. So really to bring the ideas to light and make you more intuned with faeries and the welcoming energy/information they may give you.

The magic is in you as the author points out in the first few pages of the hardcover book, she is so right. The book goes on to learn you how to pick out your power cards, to learn what each card means, and to really ask HONEST questions about how you feel about the images etc. Having the book Good Faeries/Bad Faeries is not necessary, but if you do have this beautiful book as well, you can really get into understanding faeries as the author and Mr. Froud elegantly state.

In all the oracle is telling you to really embrace and enjoy life to the fulliest -- sing, dance, etc. as these acts brings faeries into your life. You will love this book/card set and will cherish it forever. Pixel dust is in this item for sure!

Go Gentle Into This Delightful Oracle!
Whether you are a beginning oracle reader or an accomplished sage, you'll find this book and card set are a pure delight.

The 200-plus page text by Jesa MacBeth skillfully weaves the reader into a faery tapestry of pure energy, divine spirits and absolute fun. For those readers whose experience has been limited to traditional Tarot, be prepared for an adventurous excursion into the enchanting world of faeries, including their incredible sense of humor!

MacBeth's explanation of faeries, their world and their feelings about humans are an education for those of us new to their realm. If you feel some trepidation in launcing into this oracle, don't! The book gently guides you every step of the way - - and believe me, the faeries will be cheering every step of your journey.

The art work, of course, is superb. Froud fans will love the unique faces and garb of his oracle population. Of the many groups of cards, my absolute favorites were "The Singers of the Realms" - - abstract paintings which depict the most beautiful, life-filled energy you'll see in an oracle. I don't think there's a card in the deck I like more that "She of the Cruach" - - the Great Goddess of nurturing energy.

When your deck arrives, sit down with a cup of hot tea. a biscuit for unseen guests, and an open heart. This is one oracle you'll return to time and again - - it speaks directly to the heart.