Customer Reviews

The Buckland Romani Tarot: In the Authentic Gypsy Tradition

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

After taking a very interesting tarot reading in downtown sau paulo, I was hooked this original method of divination. I started looking around for something that displays the tradition in itself and is also well designed to learn from and for quicker reading. Many books were on the subject, some kits which contain the decks too. However, most were designed in a way that only experienced tarot readers would be interested. I lost my desire after a while. Then, I came across the Buckland Romani Tarot kit. I was impressed by the cover art done by Lissane Lake so I bought it as a last chance pursuit. Three weeks later, I was literally being paid a visit by friends and relatives who were amazed by the degree of accuricy and speed of my previous readings. It took me two days to get the actual hand and with the amazing, thorough guide book that comes with this deck, I quickly became a Gypsy myself! This is an amazing kit, just looking at the deck itself i sense the power within. If you're interested in tarot and you want to be a part of this amazing art, buy this and only this!

I don't own very many Tarot decks - I've never been interested in collecting them. I'm a lot more interested in using a deck that speaks to me - a deck that allows me to be a better reader for others.

I find the vibrant colors and highly evocative imagery of this deck to be one of the more interesting I've ever used. The basic images aren't that different from other decks that you won't know what the cards mean anymore, but they're different enough to allow you to gain a whole new insight on the Tarot by using this deck.

The four cards that are shown in the picture section give you a good idea of what some of the cards from this deck look like. I'm particularly fond of the secondary interpretations that one can divine from these cards. Are those Gypsy children getting a drink from the cups on the stairs of the Six of Cups or are they spiking a cup with a Gypsy love potion? It's up to the reader to decide - based on the cards around you in a reading.

The art is fantastic and reminds me a lot of the supposed Gypsy heritage of Tarot cards, although some people might be put off by that type of imagery. The colors and symbolism give me a great insight when using this deck to give readings to others.

The book is very informative and it's use of the images from the cards enhances it's value to potential users of this deck.

But it's not too overpowering for new Tarot readers either, and that's a big plus. This deck might work well at a carnival or renaissance fair if you want to give it an ideal flavor. I'd recommend it to anyone interested in Tarot reading, especially if you are interested in Tarot readings for other people, and not just self discovery.

I recieved my deck a week ago and they are just beautiful. The subjects choosen for each card and colors in them speak so freely. The book is very informative in the traditions of the meanings for each card, yet reminds you to use the feeling from the card itself. I feel this is a very welcome addition to the world of the tarot readers.

I have only been reading tarot cards for about 10 years, but this deck is priceless to me. It was given to me by someone very close to me, and ironically, they share the same last name as the creator Raymond Buckland. I was amazed how accurate these cards were the first time I used them. I have read from a few tarot decks before, and this is the first deck that made me feel like the answers just flowed from the cards. The Romani Deck allows flexability and interpritation, where most seem to be set in a specific pattern of what the cards meant.

This deck is also so beautiful, that you almost feel like you're inside the pictures. My personal favorite is the 3 of Chivs. The amount of detail that Lissanne Lake has put into her artwork is truely breath-taking. Anyone can become a gypsy with this deck. It makes it so easy to understand why gypsies are believed to have magic in their soul. This is deffinately a deck that I will recomend to my friends, and someday pass down to my children.

Being a great fan of borderless cards, the Romani deck was already destined to be a favorite in my tarot deck collection. The colors in the images run the gamut from bold primaries to soft and muted pastels and earth tones. Those who appreciate the symbolism of color in tarot will enjoy this deck for that characteristic. The same is true for the use of crystals and gemstones, although without the accompanying book, it would be difficult to determine which stones were which in the jewelry worn by female and male characters on the cards.

The addition of a brief description of the history of Romani gypsies and their way of life was a bonus for me - learning that Romani society was a matriarchal one also explained the use of a female figure for the Magician. There is further detail about Romani culture where appropriate in the discussion of individual cards. Buckland does not stick with the traditional names for the trumps - instead, they are labeled "one" to "twenty-one" with the Romani translation for each. (The back of the guidebook gives a brief Romani/English dictionary, with definitions of the words used in the text of the guidebook.) Court cards are Page, Knight, Queen and King.

Buckland has named the four suits in the Romani (gypsy) language. Koros are cups, koshes are wands, bolers are pentacles and chivs are swords. The elemental correspondences remain the same as in most Rider Waite Smith (RWS) clones, with koshes (wands) representing fire and chivs (swords) representing air. This deck was a refreshing departure for me from other RWS-like decks. In many of the cards, it is easy to apply traditional interpretations. However, there are few cards - most notably the Nine of Chivs - which have an interpretation all their own, and it is for the reader to determine. The text of Buckland's guidebook does not compel the tarot reader to accept a specific interpretation of any specific cards. He has the reader examine all the details of a card and interpret the one that really "pops" for the reader at the time of laying the spread. In fact, Buckland urges the reader to study this deck (and any other) intensively, reading as much about tarot card interpretations as possible, "[b]ut then, put the books away and go by your own feelings." This is a liberating admonition, particularly for intuitive readers, as it gives the reader permission to fully explore and interpret the meaning of a card once laid in a spread, relative to the Seeker and the card's position in the spread.

Notwithstanding some reviewers' comments about the quality of Lisanne Lake's art (if I were looking for a work of art, I would invest in art, not tarot cards), an excellent deck for those who are looking for a fresh perspective.

I stumbled across this book while browsing in a discount bookstore. Sadly, the cards were not available there, but I knew I had to find them based on the b/w images in the book. I ordered the re-issued edition (not the originals, which sell for substantially more)-- cards only. I was immediately impressed by the color, originality, and exotic images they present. This deck presents a Rider-Waite structure (page/knight/K/Q) in a Roma (Gypsy) context. All of the core symbology is inventively depicted using images that correspond to ket roles and images in Roma culture. As with many decks, the standard minor arcana families are reassigned to thematically relevant symbols (whips, wagon wheels, knives, and jugs for wands, pentacles, swords, and cups), and this correpsondence is so natural it requires no getting used to. The deck employs little if any Tree of Life, or astrological symbolism (no "Mars in Leo" business), but is extraordinalry rich the natural symbolism of flowers, gemstones, fabrics, and trees. The people are very expressive, lovely or unlovely as their numbers warrant, and distinctly non-nordic in appearance. As opposed to more minimally, or esoterically, decorated decks, it's easy to recall what the various cards are supposed to mean, and they tell a story -or many stories- quite easily. Said another way, they invoke the imagination of the querent without much prodding.

Much is made of the Magician being depicted as a woman. Get over it. She's gorgeous, she has the eyes of the Magician, and with the infinity symbol over her head, and the four families depicted round about, her energy can't be misinterpreted.

The cards are borderless, which draws the eye effectively. The minors are numbered, but not named. Those who appreciate the style of the Morgan-Greer deck would probably also like this one. A collector would want to have it, as it is uniquely expressive, symobolically accurate, visually approachable, and decidedly not "new age".

I got the book associated with the first edition, but the cards look the same. The book does an excellent job of describing the cultural references and providing an accessible, entertaining, guide to divination.

It gets five stars from me!

I deeply enjoyed both the majors and minors of the card. The artwork was regional and very period like in appearance and use of color and movement and facial expressions were abound. The artwork was easy to glean the meanings from and even swords a typically dark suit was not so dark here. The faces were well done and loaded with emotion. The companion book and cards were excellent together and the story and book on the cards were well done. I loved the way the tower was depicted in the majors. The court cards were outstanding. This deck's artwork is expressive, colorful and eye opening and invites study,discussion between you and the querant. I really enjoyed using this deck. It's glimpse into a different culture and world was really well done and after coming away from this deck I felt I had truly learned something amazing and wonderful about a people and their way of life as well as something about what I was facing. Truly a deep and penetrating deck worth looking into for a unique and wonderful experience for both you and your querant.

This deck of cards consists of images based on life of gypsies and objects used by them. For example suit of pentacles is represented by wheels instead, cups are replaced by regular tea cups, and swords by gypsy hand knives. Wands are similar to the ones in original tarot deck.

Most of the images portray the same scenes as the original (Raider-White) tarot deck, but some are slightly different. For example 8 of swords shows a man throwing knoves at the target instead of traditional woman blindfolded and tide up between the swords. But inspite of images beeing different, the cards nevertheless are easy to read.

As for the Major Arcana - most images differ significantly from the traditional tarot images. The magician is a female and Empress is an older woman, just to name a few.

The book is pocket size and fits into most pockets. There are description of the cards, detailed explanations and card symbolism. Also with each card there is a verse either in romani or in english. The ones written in romani are pretty simple, I was able to read most of them.

I bought this Tarot out of curiosity, because I've found some (not all) of Mr. Buckland's books useful or entertaining. The set does have its intriguing points; however, it doesn't quite achieve what its creators seem to be attempting.

Part of the problem is that Lissanne Lake simply isn't a very good artist. She has trouble with perspective: things that should be seen foreshortened aren't (this is particularly obvious in the suit of Swords, or "Chivs" as Buckland calls it). Figures in many Minor Arcana cards seem crudely or hastily drawn: this isn't the conscious, self-accepting, *deliberately* childlike imagery of Noble and Vogel's "Motherpeace" Tarot; it's simply bad drawing. (The Nine of Cups -- "Koros" -- is, anatomically speaking, appalling.) It's difficult to focus on the significance of the card or the image when distracted by pictures more poorly drawn than they need to be.

Hand in hand with this is Buckland's insistence on the significance of very small details. He'll describe a particular figure -- the woman pictured on the Queen of Wands ("Koshes"), say -- as wearing "necklaces of amber, lapis lazuli, garnets, and alternating jade and carnelian" beads ... and then go on to explain, in specific and excruciating detail, the significance of each of these stones. This is somewhat pointless if the user has to look such details up in the guidebook every single time the card turns up, but that's the only way it can be done, since the "necklaces" are depicted only as brownish beads (amber? copper? wood?), blue beads (lapis? sapphire? turquoise? faience? Each would have a different meaning), red-brown beads, and alternating red and green beads. Similarly, what's the point of having the characters in the Three of Cups surrounded by crocuses ("represent[ing] youthful gladness") if the picture shows only purple dots, or specifying that the flowers in the Four of Cups are "narcissus, a symbol of reflection, disappointment, and disdain," if they look like only yellow blobs? If the details are important, make them visible.

(One instance isn't just bad art, it's bad research: the pink wildflowers in the Eight of Cups card are specified as being "primroses ... [signifying] seeing through deception"; but wild primroses are yellow, not pink.)

The "borderless" layout of the cards is another drawback, since the captions have been laid directly on top of the images -- sometimes with unintended results. Of Card 21, in other decks called "The World", for instance, Buckland points out that the four animals shown -- bird, fox, rabbit, and snake -- can easily represent the four traditional elements of air, fire, earth, and water. But on the card itself, it's hard not to overlook the rabbit, since it's almost completely hidden behind the caption frame.

And then there is the cultural bias. Understand, I mean no disrespect to the gentleman who gave the world the immortal "Magick of Chant-O-Matics". But I wish someone would inform Mr. Buckland, who claims "Gypsy" heritage himself, that "Gypsy" and "English Gypsy of the early 20th century" are not synonymous. The illustrations and the descriptions in the book seem to reflect a specific and heavily George-Borrow-influenced vision of "Gypsy" life and culture -- what Ian Hancock called "the figure with which the Gypsy is today most often associated: a composite Gypsy, wearing Spanish flamenco dancer's dress, traveling in an English Gypsy caravan, playing Hungarian Gypsy music".

I don't regret buying this set, but it's not going to become one of my regular decks.