The One Gypsy Oracle

 

The story behind the recreation of my grandmother's  Gypsy Oracle cards 

 

Gypsy Cards

"Gypsy cards" as definition of Gypsy cards is like trying to define all the flowers in one word: "Flower”.
When Gypsies left India they took with them all the cultural richness of thousands of years, which varied from tribe to tribe, but had the one basis of cultural and religious principles.

We have seen the  Gypsies wandering path around the world for 1.000 years, and many are still moving from place to place, but much less today.

 

All this Gypsy wealth in their culture and tradition is apparent in their art of fortune telling, which also vary from tribe to tribe, and even from one fortune teller to another. It also largely depends in what country the tribe stayed and for how long.
The Gypsies adopted many of their fortune telling practices and traditions from the host country. Fortune telling of tribe women that camped for decades or even centuries in Iran differs from that of the tribe who sat most of his life in Turkey, Greece or Poland. However, the mythic-philosophical tradition is significantly Hindu and Greek. Nevertheless, the Gypsies always synchronize the gods, goddesses and the mythical religious motifs of other cultures with their own, therefore, there can be no Gypsy cards with the image of Isis or Athena, Zeus or Osiris, for example. The cards with such an images can be beautiful and oracularly, but they are not Gypsy cards.

 

Symbols and motifs in the gypsy cards
The advantage of the Hindu background of the Gypsies gives them a proper understanding of ancient symbols such as the cross, pentagram, six pointed star etc. Those symbols are far more ancient that the modern religions which adopted them, and you can see them in the temples of ancient India and Egypt. That’s why authentic Gypsy cards won’t use the cross as a symbol of bad luck and suffering, for such an attribution to the cross is strictly Christian.
Gypsy cards won’t depict bear as a symbol of authority; or the fox for treachery, or the snake for enemy and cunningness etc. All such images are cultural European and Christian religious symbolism.

 

 

 

 

 

Cross represents the four forces acting in the universe.

The symbol of the cross is very complex and the space here to a short to detail the full meaning;  but in India this symbol continues to be sacred.

Cross symbolizes the Earth, and this is symbolized in astrology, and its significance stems from the sun crossing the sky, as it is detectable from Earth, and the four cardinal directions and powers. The activation of those powers are by the cosmic intelligence, or Brahman.

 

And so, cross as a symbol of suffering and misfortune is clearly Christian symbol, and as such cannot appear as a symbol of suffering and bad luck in an authentic Gypsy cards.

 

Gypsies are known as bears trainers. The bear perfomed with them at fairs and was part of their compound and he was their family member. So the bear cannot be used as a symbol of authority in an authentic Gypsy cards.

 

The gypsies lived together with nature, that’s why, regarding their view, fox cannot be used as a symbol of cunningness. Canning can only be a man.

 

The dog cannot be a symbol of loyalty. True, there is an old Gypsy saying: where there are Gypsies there must be both dogs and bonfire. Then, the dogs are an integral part of the home environment of the Gypsies. However, in Gypsy tradition dogs and cats are unclean animals (poluted). Gypsies share food with their dogs and treat them nicely and affectionately, but absolutely forbid dogs and cats to enter the place of residence of the family, they will not choose a dog as a symbol of loyalty.[1]

 

In Gypsy tradition the trust and loyalty is one to his brother and one member of the clan to his clan fellows, and in such an approach I chose to introduce the Loyalty card in my The One Gypsy Oracle. The dog is not absent from the card, but he appears where Gypsies would have placed him.

 

In most called Gypsy cards the Lily flowers symbolize family and sexuality. No any Gypsy would allow and agree on such a connection! The laws of family purity of the Gypsies are singularly severe, perhaps only Jewish purity laws could match them. That's why in The One Gypsy Oracle these two issues are completely separated. There is the Family card, and sexuality can be tracked through many other cards, as detailed in the explanatory booklet that came with the cards. 

 

Now, the Hindu attitudes about death and treatment of the corpse differs from that of the Western culture. In the Hindu and many other Eastern traditions death is not the end of life, and the corps should not be put in a sealed coffin. These traditions do not accept that death is the end, but only as a completion of a cycle. And although the Roma who live around the world treat their burial rites according to Western Christian practice, the coffin cannot be used as a symbol of cycle completion in an authentic Gypsy cards.
In Jewish tradition the body is wrapped only in a shroud.
Therefore, in my The One Gypsy Oracle appears a Reaper that reap ripened wheat, and we can already see a new green sprout of new wheat.
Immediately after the Reaper appears Stork with a new life.

 

There are some symbols I left them as they appear in most so called Gypsy decks and their generics, such as LeNormand, for example. 
You will find in my cards the Fish symbol representing luck and some money. The Fish is a symbol adopted by Christianity, and symbolizes the Fish sign and early Christianity. The fish is neutral so I saw no reason to change it, and didn’t want to deviate to far from the familiar images of many years. And the same goes for the Stork image etc.

 

Cards in a Gypsy deck

The number of cards in the Gypsy deck varies from tribe to tribe, and even from one fortuneteller to another.

In most ancient decks the cards were not numbered and had no captions titles. Later some decks were numbered; some appeared with captions title, or both.

The difference between the decks continues to exist, so that in fact there is no any law on this matter.

My grandmother's cards were not numbered and had no captions titles, but my grandmother was well educated of their cosmic order and the meaning of each card and it's position in the deck.

 

My grandmother always used to say that life does not end with death. It has a beginning, middle and completion, and then all begins all over again ad enfinitum, and so must be the cyclical order of the Gypsy cards.

The cards in The One Gypsy Oracle are numbered and have captions titles. The images are faithful to the spirit of my grandmother's cards, though not identical and have modern touches

 

The One Gypsy Oracle Cards

Years and years I longed to recreate my grandmother's cards. I dreamed of creating a deck faithful to my grandmother’s original cards, and yet I wished to see a real people who belong to our times, to see their expressions, their authenticity and yet I did not want to lose the charm a beauty of the cards.  

I’m a writer but not a painter, and so I stayed with my desire unfulfilled.

There were 56 cards in my grandmother's deck, and one of the most important cards, actually the one most important, was the card blanch; the blank card.

I always looked for a deck of 56 cards. The closest I found was a deck of 52 cards, but it lacked the blank card and some other themes. I have found some decks with a blank card, but the themes differed to far from the Gypsy images.

 

Here I must tell you, my friends, I even add a blank card to my Tarot cards, to read the cards as befits any card reading.

 

So years passed and my dream to recreate my grandmother’s gypsy cards just continued. Then I studied graphic design, unrelated to my dream to create the cards, but eventually it served me to create my dream – The One Gypsy Oracle.

When using the Gypsy cards in reading, what is essential is that you concentrate mostly on the arrangement of the cards on the table, and their relative position to each other. So what guided me in the each card design was its clear statement, and the expressive and symbolic presentation of each card.

Certainly, in creating The One Gypsy Oracle, I kept my obligation to the Gypsy spirit in the cards colors and their magic, which is the most important in cards, particularly in Gypsy cards.

I added two cards to The One Gypsy Oracle. My deck has 58 cards, which of course include the blank card.

 

[1] Most of the Gypsies do insist on banning an entry to a dog or cat to their house, but as every rule this rule has also exceptions. My grandfather did not separate from his two dogs, who lived with him at home. And my grandmother always fostered several cats at home, and so we all continue to this day.