Book Description

Now you can tell fortunes just as the Gypsies have done for hundreds of years when you use Ray Buckland's "Gypsy Fortune Telling Tarot Deck." The Gypsies have always been associated with the Tarot, and may even have been the group that introduced them to Europe over 600 years ago. Ray Buckland, famous for his works on Witchcraft, is from a Gypsy (Romani) family and reveals the secrets of Gypsy fortune telling with this deck and forty-eight page booklet. Although the traditional Tarot deck with its Major and Minor Arcana totalling seventy-eight cards was used by Gypsies, such decks were often hard to obtain. Thus, many Gypsies altered standard decks of playing cards to use for Tarot readings. This deck is based upon the one Ray Buckland's grandmother used. The cards are the size of a deck of playing cards, so they are easier to carry than other decks. The twenty-two cards of the Major Arcana are numbered starting with one and have images from Gypsy life, usually involving the "vardo, " or Gypsy wagon. The booklet not only gives the meaning of the symbols but also the way the cards should be interpreted. The Minor Arcana cards look like a regular deck of playing cards, but the aces each have a different "vardo" on them and there are four face cards in each suit. The people on them are typical Gypsies. Again, the booklet explains the way to interpret the cards. The booklet includes a full ten Tarot spreads that you can use, some published here for the first time. If you are interested in Gypsies or the Tarot, you must have this deck.