The Sibilla Oracle Cards

Measurements: 1.4 x 3.8 inches, or 60 x 97 mm.

Back of card: Based on the 3 of Clubs card, which is entitled, "Hope". It shows a woman half-standing, half-sitting, with her hands in her lap. Printed in shades of gray, repeated & inverted on the bottom half, so these cards may be inverted.

Booklet included: No. There are three instruction cards, but in Italian only.

Publisher: Lo Scarabeo. Cards printed in Italy, imported by Llewellyn Worldwide.

Comments: This edition of the cards has 3 cards of instructions, printed in Italian only. My guess is this was a mistake. Future editions will hopefully have English instructions. Italian-only is not the worst thing in the world, since the instructions are brief & every card has keywords on them, in Italian, French, English & German. Look at the pictures, remember the keywords, make up a story.

This is essentially a deck of ordinary playing cards with fancy drawings on them. Remember that playing cards are tarot decks with no major arcana cards. In this deck, in the upper left corner is a small representation of the traditional playing card eg, each card shows the proper amount of Hearts (cups), Diamonds (pentacles), Clubs (wands) or Spades (swords). In addition, in the upper right hand corner the cards are non-consecutively numbered. Number 1 is 6 of Hearts, number 52 is the 5 of Clubs.

Many people are frustrated when cards have no instructions. I suspect many are just as frustrated trying to understand fancy books. Here in the States at the moment (March 2001) there are TV commercials for a telephone tarot service featuring a woman who appears to be Jamaican. These ads appear mostly on cable channels late in the evenings. I'm not suggesting you phone the number & I can almost guarantee that if you do, you won't speak with that woman. But you could learn watching what she does, which is:

She shuffles the cards into five or six piles (as many as she wants) in a row in front of her, face down. She then turns up the top card of each pile & places these cards in a row above the stacks. She identifies one card as relating to her client. This card must show a person of the same sex & about the right age. The other cards show what is happening to the client & who is doing it. Pip cards (1-10) are ordinary people & events, kings & queens are superiors, knights are interlopers, pages are children. Major arcana cards show people & things beyond the client's control.

When the Jamaican woman has extracted the meaning of each of the cards in the first set, she turns over a new set of cards, placing each new card on the top of the previous card. So she works in layers, layer by layer, until the matter is clear. She has a wonderful grasp of the practical meanings of the cards & how they combine to tell stories. This is the reason why it is essential to have a living teacher if you really want to learn. It's a pity the tarot world does not have the resources to produce & distribute an instructional video of this quality. This is not to say we endorse the company she represents, we do not. Frankly, I don't even remember who they are. My guess is the woman shown is, in fact, a good tarot reader. Whoever wrote those lines knew what they were writing & there's not a lot of those folks around.

The Astrology Center of America

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