Guide to the Fairy Ring
Title: Guide to The Fairy Ring.
Author: Anna Franklin Illustrator: Paul Mason
Publisher: Llewellyn Publications St. Paul, MN Date: 2002
General Comments:
This is the user's guide that accompanies The Fairy Ring oracle deck. First thing I need to note is that this deck is a surprisingly interesting collection of photograph manipulation, digital drawings, and a bit of pen and ink work. Generally, it has an organic feel to it, but I think that it is more then a bit forced in spots. It's an over sized deck and a little difficult to handle. Some elements of the deck are surprisingly close to what the old legends describe but others are a bit too anthropomorphic and ... well... pretty. It is not, fortunately, Victorian surfeit.
The user's guide is fairly well written. It tends to gloss over a signifcant amount of the myths surrounding the figures included in this deck, but if you were not familiar with the myths you'd never know. It's fairly clear that this is a condensing of a very large body of research. I'm rather disappointed because I suspect that the author could have put together a more extensive work and that the editors did not want that to accompany the deck. I chuckled at the renaming of several common tarot spreads for use with this deck, but I have no complaints on that front. On the whole, it accomplishes the goal of explaining the divinatory meanings of this oracle deck in concise and clear terms.
Useability: 4 /5
The binding on this book is sound and the pages are not showing any signs of real wear. This is a good thing, as I was given this set second hand and it is clear that it has seen use. As with other soft-cover books, there is some measure of curling of the covers in humid environments. Though it is not that bad with this book, which speaks volumes to the good care that the previous owner took of it. The typeface and page layout in this book are very good. Nice and large typeface is used that makes this easy to read, but it is not so overly large that it breaks up the flow of sentences or paragraphs. The black and white renditions of the cards are a tad dark, in my opinion, but these colorful cards would be difficult to render in gray-scale. This and the typeface used to present the name of the card one is reading about are my only real argument here. That typeface is rather difficult to read and I suspect that if you were not intimately familiar with the English language and the English alphabet, you would not be able to decipher what you were reading. This is putting aside the fact that many of the card names are the Anglicized spelling of names in Welsh, Manx Gaelic, and Scots Gaelic.
Content:
The book does give a good overview of the meanings of the cards. I feel, however, that the detail material designed to acquaint one with the faeries that are referenced in this deck is lacking. I'm disappointed because there is too wide of a range in the format that information is presented. For some of the faeries, the information is presented as a telling of the most popularly associated version of the myth attached to them, such as the one for Tam Lin. For others, such as the Brownie, only a vague description of the myths associated are given. In those vague descriptions, I find there is a tendency to lean towards giving the rather censored Victorian niceties. I've got to say that it's amusing in the light of those niceties that the author then recommends for the user not to engage in spiritual work with the more unsavory faeries presented.
It is rather entertaining, actually, to see that the content of Laurell K. Hamilton's Meridith Gentry series does a better job illustrating the old legends, which this deck is presumabily drawing from. Hamilton's work is unabashedly fiction. I also find that the fictional works of Hamilton give a more accurate rendition of the personalities traditionally ascribed to these beings then the rather large body of research done by the author after it has been compressed so very much. Here, honestly, I feel that the editors or whom ever else that had instructed the author to limit the entry has done the reader a huge disservice. If you're going to begin work with a spiritual entity that you are not familiar with, wouldn't it be wise to have as much information as possible? Using this oracle deck, you are attempting to do precisely that. The realities of working with these entities is frequently quite different from what the abridged version described in this user's guide presents. I hope that there is a decision made at some point to republish this guide with more content to it.
Author: Anna Franklin Illustrator: Paul Mason
Publisher: Llewellyn Publications St. Paul, MN Date: 2002
General Comments:
This is the user's guide that accompanies The Fairy Ring oracle deck. First thing I need to note is that this deck is a surprisingly interesting collection of photograph manipulation, digital drawings, and a bit of pen and ink work. Generally, it has an organic feel to it, but I think that it is more then a bit forced in spots. It's an over sized deck and a little difficult to handle. Some elements of the deck are surprisingly close to what the old legends describe but others are a bit too anthropomorphic and ... well... pretty. It is not, fortunately, Victorian surfeit.
The user's guide is fairly well written. It tends to gloss over a signifcant amount of the myths surrounding the figures included in this deck, but if you were not familiar with the myths you'd never know. It's fairly clear that this is a condensing of a very large body of research. I'm rather disappointed because I suspect that the author could have put together a more extensive work and that the editors did not want that to accompany the deck. I chuckled at the renaming of several common tarot spreads for use with this deck, but I have no complaints on that front. On the whole, it accomplishes the goal of explaining the divinatory meanings of this oracle deck in concise and clear terms.
Useability: 4 /5
The binding on this book is sound and the pages are not showing any signs of real wear. This is a good thing, as I was given this set second hand and it is clear that it has seen use. As with other soft-cover books, there is some measure of curling of the covers in humid environments. Though it is not that bad with this book, which speaks volumes to the good care that the previous owner took of it. The typeface and page layout in this book are very good. Nice and large typeface is used that makes this easy to read, but it is not so overly large that it breaks up the flow of sentences or paragraphs. The black and white renditions of the cards are a tad dark, in my opinion, but these colorful cards would be difficult to render in gray-scale. This and the typeface used to present the name of the card one is reading about are my only real argument here. That typeface is rather difficult to read and I suspect that if you were not intimately familiar with the English language and the English alphabet, you would not be able to decipher what you were reading. This is putting aside the fact that many of the card names are the Anglicized spelling of names in Welsh, Manx Gaelic, and Scots Gaelic.
Content:
The book does give a good overview of the meanings of the cards. I feel, however, that the detail material designed to acquaint one with the faeries that are referenced in this deck is lacking. I'm disappointed because there is too wide of a range in the format that information is presented. For some of the faeries, the information is presented as a telling of the most popularly associated version of the myth attached to them, such as the one for Tam Lin. For others, such as the Brownie, only a vague description of the myths associated are given. In those vague descriptions, I find there is a tendency to lean towards giving the rather censored Victorian niceties. I've got to say that it's amusing in the light of those niceties that the author then recommends for the user not to engage in spiritual work with the more unsavory faeries presented.
It is rather entertaining, actually, to see that the content of Laurell K. Hamilton's Meridith Gentry series does a better job illustrating the old legends, which this deck is presumabily drawing from. Hamilton's work is unabashedly fiction. I also find that the fictional works of Hamilton give a more accurate rendition of the personalities traditionally ascribed to these beings then the rather large body of research done by the author after it has been compressed so very much. Here, honestly, I feel that the editors or whom ever else that had instructed the author to limit the entry has done the reader a huge disservice. If you're going to begin work with a spiritual entity that you are not familiar with, wouldn't it be wise to have as much information as possible? Using this oracle deck, you are attempting to do precisely that. The realities of working with these entities is frequently quite different from what the abridged version described in this user's guide presents. I hope that there is a decision made at some point to republish this guide with more content to it.