Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

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.

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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

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The Faeries' Oracle

Simon & Schuster

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...