Customer Reviews

The Fairy Ring: An Oracle of the Fairy Folk

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I must admit that I was first drawn to this deck by the artwork, the fairy pictures are lovely. I didn't really think it would work very well, not being a traditional tarot pack. Then I started to read the book, and it is very deep indeed and Anna Franklin has obviously done a lot of research into fairies and the book made a lot of sense to me. When I started using the cards they just blew me away! The readings cut right to the chase. I love the whole thing.After this I bought their fairy encyclopedia to learn even more.

I can't tell you how much I disagree with the last reviewer, I found the deck spookily and alsmost frighteningly accurate when I used it for readings. I see from the other reviews posted here that others have had the same experience. It makes you wonder! I think you have to be willing to be open to fairy energies to use this deck. If you read the excellent book that accompanies it, you find all the information you need on fairy powers, it even tells you which fairies you should not even try to work with.This could be a stand alone book on fairies and fairy powers. I found the pathworkings excellent in furthering my own magical work with fairy energies. I loved most of the artwork. It is very atmospheric and feels as though you have stepped into fairy land. Some, I felt, worked better in this respect than others, but this is being really picky in a deck with sixty cards- an almost impossible task to make them all brilliant, I would have thought. But most of them are very good indeed.

This is a set of Tarot like cards and a book on how to use them.  The deck is divided into four 'seasons' and there is a  grouping of eight (8) cards listed as 'Fairy Festival' representing the eight (8) Sabats of the Wheel of the Year'.
The deck is lovely.  The artwork of Paul Mason is almost photographic in nature and the graphics are super.  Each card is loaded with symbolism and the fairies, either truly beautiful or really ugly are a joy to behold either way.   The artwork here is what captures the attention, which is what the cards are supposed to do.
The 'seasons' - spring, summer, fall and winter - are each very close to the four suits of a regular deck of cards, ace through nine, and then there is a 'Lady' card, a 'knave' card (in place of a jack), a 'queen' and a 'king' card.  While just a tad different from the other 'Rider-Waite' style of decks, the familiarity with a standard style of deck will allow you to pick up and use these cards with only a small amount of modification to the way you read.  Being familiar with the 'Wheel of the Year' will also allow you to easily substitute this for the usual Major Arcane. 
The book is also very well done.  Ms. Franklin has put in much research and time to making this an excellent reference book to go along with the cards.  Discussions about the seasonal nature of the fairy folk, the meaning of the names of the fairy folk, which are taken directly out of folklore and myth from the British Islands.  To read this book is to take a trip through fairy tales (not Mother Goose here but the old fairy tales).  Anyone with any interest in fairies would want to own this book just because of all the reference material collected in one place about the various fairy names.  Here we find King Finvarra, The Blue Hag, Jack Frost, and explanations for the various types of fairies such as garconer, phooka, kelpie and will o' the wisp. Some of these you may recognize, some of these will wet your appetite for more information.
The meaning of drawing these cards is very well explained by Ms. Franklin and working a bit with the deck will allow you to very easily identify the cards with the meanings.  Ms. Franklin gives the upright/reverse meanings so they are there if you draw your cards this way.
Ms. Franklin has also included several suggested ways to draw the cards and with a little practice this too can become easy for one who is familiar with card reading.  The meanings will come as the cards are rich in imagery that does associate very clearly to the explanations given in the book.
Each section has a reference list for notations in the chapter, giving sources for the information provided and there is a very thorough bibliography for those who want to go off and do some research on their own.  But the information that Ms. Franklin has provided here is rich in lore and myth and appears to be very accurate for her research.
A lovely deck and a well written and researched book make for an overall excellent presentation here.  I find this to be a perfect gift idea for someone you know would be interested in decks or fairy lore or just a special treat for yourself.
Boudica

These cards are great! The artwork is wonderful, I definately get a sense of the card's meaning based on the images.

The accompanying book is easy to absorb, full of ecclectic fairy lore & each fairy's description (52 fairies in all) comes with a section on ideas for working with the fairy.

Every reading I have done with them has been right on. Very insightful & a pleasure to work with!

It gets 4 stars, however, because the box that comes with the set to house the cards is very weak & flimsy - you'll want to find them a new home ;-)

The Fairy Ring is a wonderful set of tarot-like cards. They are beatifully illustrated and the book is written so it is easy to understand. It's really quite fun to do. I really enjoy this set and know that you will, too.

THE FAIRY RING consists of a gorgeous book and deck of divination cards that are similar to Tarot cards, and are divided into four seasonal suits of Spring, Summer, Autumn, & Winter. The beautifully designed cards give one an immediate sense of the wonder of entering the fairy realm, and are truly stunning to behold. THE FAIRY RING book provides enchanting stories of each character that explain the divinatory message imparted in every card reading. I particularly enjoyed reading the story about Queen Oonaugh, where she cleverly helps Fin MacCool avoid a fight with a giant called Cucullin by recommending that Fin pretend to be his own baby when the giant shows up at his home.

In addition to a court of thirteen fairies representing each season (with a Lady, Knave, King, Queen, and Ace), there are eight fairy festival cards (Imbolc, Ostara, Beltane, Midsummer, Lughnasa, Herfest, Samhain, and Yule). It's easy to sense at a glance which fairies are good to work with and which are not, since each card conveys through use of color, expression, and lighting the feelings being described. THE FAIRY RING book further clarifies which fairies are helpful and provides advice regarding how best to obtain help from them (such as Habetrot, Asrai, the Sea Mither, Brownies and Leprechauns), and which fairies are best avoided because they are known for being treacherous, illusory, or inaccessible (such as the Changeling, Will o' the Wisp, or Jenny Greenteeth). For those who need a little help asking the fairies for guidance, nine different divinatory spreads are provided, along with a sample reading for the Fairy Market spread.

If you already feel an affinity for fairies and are willing to read through the stories and divinatory meanings for each card, this deck will quickly become an invaluable aid. I received meaningful guidance and advice from THE FAIRY RING deck after using it twice!

It seems the more Anna Franklin and Paul Mason (Sacred Circle Tarot) work together the more we are rewarded! These two have the gift of a unique and magical bond! "The Fairy Ring" is a mastered oracle set of classical beauty for all of us diviners who feel the connection to the Fairy folk.

Ms. Franklin, a practicing pagan and high priestess, has spent more than twenty years collecting and exploring fairy lore and legends. Her time at this pleasurable occupation has been spent commendably, for she offers us a deck where each card has its legend or lore, divinatory and reversed meanings, ways to work with each fairy - or whether it is wiser not to work with them.

The cards are split into the four seasons called the courts, which I find a huge plus for not only those of the fae path but also for hedgewitches whose day to day lives are also lived by the seasons and elements. Along with the four suits of court cards, there are also the eight major fairy festival cards. This I have not seen before and I enjoy working with these as well. There are nine spreads, a sample reading and a guide for meditations for the cards. All in all, the book was written for the basic reader and is very user friendly.

Mr. Mason is truly a visionary. Using photography and artistry together, he blends the cards into a beautiful masterpiece that is his own signature. Bringing fantasy, imagination, illusion and desire into the cards, he has managed to create symmetry of grand proportions!

The Fairy Ring is one of grandeur, from the beautiful fairies to the distorted ogres, and all in between. You will want to work with the oracle on a daily basis to give you the divine inner wisdom that you seek! Anna Franklin and Paul Mason, together, have created a treasure in The Fairy Ring.

M.L. Benton, Publisher, Echoed Voices
Copyright © October 2002

It seems the more Anna Franklin and Paul Mason (Sacred Circle Tarot) work together the more we are rewarded! "The Fairy Ring" is a mastered oracle set of classical beauty for all of us diviners who feel the connection to the Fairy folk.

Ms. Franklin, a practicing pagan and high priestess, has spent more than twenty years collecting and exploring fairy lore and legends. Her time at this pleasurable occupation has been spent commendably, for she offers us a deck where each card has its legend or lore, divinatory and reversed meanings, ways to work with each fairy - or whether it is wiser not to work with them.

The cards are split into the four seasons called the courts, which I find a huge plus for not only those of the fae path but also for hedgewitches whose day to day lives are also lived by the seasons and elements. Along with the four suits of court cards, there are also the eight major fairy festival cards. This I have not seen before and I enjoy working with these as well. There are nine spreads, a sample reading and a guide for meditations for the cards. All in all, the book was written for the basic reader and is very user friendly.

Mr. Mason is truly a visionary. Using photography and artistry together, he blends the cards into a beautiful masterpiece that is his own signature. Bringing fantasy, imagination, illusion and desire into the cards, he has managed to create symmetry of grand proportions!

The Fairy Ring is one of grandeur, from the beautiful fairies to the distorted ogres, and all in between. You will want to work with the oracle on a daily basis to give you the divine inner wisdom that you seek! Anna Franklin and Paul Mason, together, have created a treasure in The Fairy Ring.

M.L. Benton, Publisher, Echoed Voices
Copyright © October 2002

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.