Froud's Faeries Oracle - What is it about this oracle?

DragonFae

Oh F.M....that is a good point but I was looking at it from the aspects of oracles not faery in generally...but EXCELLENT point!!!
 

Le Fanu

What is it about this oracle?

Essentially it is just very expressive. Call them "real" faeries or or "beyond the fluff" or whatever, but the artwork gives them all enormous personality. Thus people identify easily with them, and can step into their world. The Froud Fairy deck is a whole new lifestyle. You live it! :D

I have this and the Fairy Ring Oracle and I'm not into fairies especially, but I think the Froud Oracle is very much the product of one man's imagination. I don't feel that this is how the fairies look, but how they are in his imagination. The Fairy Ring is much more linked to the fairy lore of the land which has been handed down from generation to generation. I actually prefer the Fairy Ring more because of the excellent book and the fact that the thinking behind it is based on "facts" and regional legends. The Froud Fairy Oracle is a vision of fairydom very much based on his (Brian's) own particular vision.

Having said that, I have the same problem a lot of people have had with the Fairy Ring. I just get really scaremongering readings with it. If I believed what the Fairy Ring told me, I'd have lost my job, my house and probably had a car accident a long time ago. It does insist on scaring me. The Froud one - the little I've read with it -seems to be either whimsical or provocative. I haven't actually read the book. I pull cards and read up on them, but despite this, I have managed to get quite a lot of sense out of them. Surprisingly so.
 

Aerin

Le Fanu said:
Having said that, I have the same problem a lot of people have had with the Fairy Ring. I just get really scaremongering readings with it. If I believed what the Fairy Ring told me, I'd have lost my job, my house and probably had a car accident a long time ago.

I'm glad it isn't just me.

I sent it away, far away.... but the book is great. When I look at a deck and just know that I *never ever* want to see certain cards in a reading then it isn't for me.
 

Le Fanu

I suspect it is a probability issue. The chances of getting nasty cards here seem much higher for some reason. Must get a statistician to have a look at the system! :D
 

faunabay

hmmm..... that's too bad Le Fanu! I definitely get smack-you-up-side-the-head readings with the Fairy Ring. But not scaremongering! Alot of times it's a very hopeful reading just very, very blunt!!! :p
 

F.M. Tarot

Le Fanu said:
I have this and the Fairy Ring Oracle and I'm not into fairies especially, but I think the Froud Oracle is very much the product of one man's imagination. I don't feel that this is how the fairies look, but how they are in his imagination. The Fairy Ring is much more linked to the fairy lore of the land which has been handed down from generation to generation. I actually prefer the Fairy Ring more because of the excellent book and the fact that the thinking behind it is based on "facts" and regional legends. The Froud Fairy Oracle is a vision of fairydom very much based on his (Brian's) own particular vision.

I love how you put this, exactly how I think and feel about the Frouds Faeries but can never quite express so eloquently as you!
 

DragonFae

I woke up this morning thinking about just this thing. I don't have the Fairy Ring so I can't really speak about it but I just recently received the Wild Wisdom of the Faery Oracle. I'm not being negative about the deck...I love it...have always loved her art...and the book is nice. But some of the meanings do not fit with my thoughts about the cards...but anyway that is a whole other story...

BUT just as Le Fana so aptly states above about Froud's faeries...I find that true of most decks and in particular the faery decks. they are ALL the essence of someone's imagination and vision about faery. All of the faeries in this deck are in human form...and while I believe they can appear as humans with little wings I do not believe that is their true form....and as Froud explains in his work....none of them have just one form....so even if they appear to him as such (reflected in his art) they may not appear to others like that at all...that is the true essence of faery...and I think it is dictated by the human....whether they are ready to see an "unusual" faery form or if they need the comfort of a more human like form....I think it can also be dictated by the situation or the human emotions involved in the experience.

I'm also not an expert of faery "facts" although I've read quite a bit about them...and one thing I noticed is just like the archetypes there are certain similarities among faery folklore in differerent regions...most certainly NOT identical but similar. And the differences? Perhaps they are a result of the above...what the humans of that time or region needed or could accept at that time....or perhaps influenced by the human emotions of the times etc. I dont know but it is interesting. Also keep in mind that the fairy "facts" and folk lore are told by humans...so again it is their interpretations of it that we are reading not the true voice of faery.

But I'm out of time...off to work I go with my head full of faery thoughts....until later!!! Take Care and take a minute today to DANCE with the faeries!!!!
 

missy

While perusing another thread, I came across this quote by SunChariot about the psychological aspects of this oracle:

SunChariot said:
I just got the Faeries Oracle this week, and I fell instantly in love with it.

<snip>

The deck seems to give me something my others (I have 12 now) don't, something I seemed to need but didn't recognize it till I saw it. I use Tarot to read for myself 99% of the time, for self-exploration, enlightenment, to draw me closer to the universe everyone in it....This deck seems to me to have a great sense of humour. It seems to encourage laughter, which is something we can always use in life.:)

And it may sound strange, but the cards (the faeries on them) often seem to represent pyschological traits we may have in us, like jeolousy...I find it could be helpful to somehow put an image to them and see them as something apart from ourselves so we could deal with them rationally as such. And his books do tell you how to deal with these characters/traits/faeires both the positive and the negative effectively. How to send the negative ones packing and embrace the positive ones.

According to the author in Good Faeries/Bad Faeries:
"In early Greece, the Neoplatists wrote of the Anima Mundi (or world's soul), which mediates between the ultimate divininty adn the mundane sensory world--just as the human soul mediates between the body and the spirit. ...The human soul flows into and is part of the world soul: there is no barrier between our essential selves and teh world's self. Faeries, being denizens of the world's soul and thus also of our own, exist in both the outer world of nature and the inner world of the mind. "

I somehow have a sense that this will not soon become my favourite deck. :)

Emphasis (bold) mine.
 

missy

Now that this thread has been moved to a subforum of a subforum that I never read, I can only hope that somehow people like me who only visit the "Oracle Decks" forum will find it.

I hope that discussion will continue, as I still do not own this deck and am very interested in how others view this deck.

I mentioned the psychological component in my last post. Someone had said, paraphrasing, that the Froud's Faeries were a bit like looking inward at different aspects of ourselves.

So do people consider the Froud's Faeries more as an internal study of different aspects of your conscious and subconscious, or do they consider the faeries as "real" on some level or plane, as individual faery beings with their own independent existence?
 

DragonFae

I do not consider them inner components of the human self...although in fact many of their attributes do seem to mirror that.

I wrote one time that I thought all of the Singers were like pieces of a puzzle and they fit together to create Unity....which I view as God. The Singers are powerful cards that convey powerful messages and so at the time this view made sense to me. It still seems to at least on a certain level.

Bringing that concept further along...then we could propose that the remaining cards are the pieces of the puzzle that make up humans....the goods, the bads, and such.

BUT.....I think of the faeries as individuals....they do contain those human qualities or parts (parts of the human puzzle if you will) yet they are more than just those components....they are at the same time puzzle pieces, mirrors and individuals....It is through their unique personalities that they hand us the puzzle piece. And they can not simply be contained as ONE emotion/characteristic/human aspect.....as a human can not be either.

To me these cards are not just about self exploration but work well in readings for others, although they have to be treated correctly to do so...in my experience the depth and accuracy of the reading is related to just how well one tries to relate to the faeries on a daily basis....and this can be something as simply as appreciating nature etc.