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In the WDA Gypsy Cards courses we use the Piatnik deck as our deck fo teaching. It is the most popular and widespread version. Also, it's a lot easier to make all the teaching materials use one deck. Toni makes all the materials, pics, and pdfs herself. As our Gypsy Card 101 course gets closer, I wanted to take some time and talk about directions with the Hungarian, and other Gypsy decks. These are the cues that I use for these decks.
Sweetheart and Lover
When interpreting our spreads it is important that we pay attention to the actual pictures on our cards. To figure out which direction is auspicious for our significator cards, lay them side by side and look at them. Are they seeing eye to eye?
In the photo above I cannot say that our Lover and Sweetheart are seeing eye to eye.
This placement looks a bit more like it! The way the artist depicts our figures makes it seem as though they are being coy with one another, unfortunately it makes interpretation difficult for the novice!
When using the Hungarian Gypsy cards, the auspicious direction for our Lover is the right. The auspicious direction for our Sweetheart is left.
Journey and Thief
The other cards follow the same directional cues. Here are our Journey and Thief cards for example:
In both cards the movement is from left to right.
Again the cards show the same directional cues. With the Theft Card, what is lost or stolen from is on the right. What is affected is on the left of the card. Our Hungarian thief is a bit more careful, merely looking to see if anyone saw him, or if he left anything behind that may identify him!
Merriment as significator &
the Biedermeier deck
Now you may have noticed that the instructions for your cards say that Merriment is the significator (What's that? Never looked at your instructions hmmm?). When using Merriment as significator, if our querent is male we use the male figure on the card. If our querent is female, we use the directions of the female figure for auspicious/inauspicious placement.
In the Piatnik deck our directions are the same in our Merriment card as in our Sweetheart and Lover cards.
In the Hungarian deck when using Merriment as significator, we can only have auspicious placement with a partner of the same gender. This is a unique feature of the Gypsy cards. In Kipper we have MC 1 and MC 2 for our partner regardless of the actual gender of the person.
The Biedermeier deck was first produced by Piatnik in the mid 1800s. It has been produced continuously by them ever since. The Gypsy deck and the Biedermeier deck have the same instructions. The Gypsy deck was a modernization of the old Biedermeier deck in the early twentieth century that also added four cards, Loss, Some Money, Love, and Visit.
When we look at the Biedermeier deck it becomes clear where the tradition of using Merriment as significator comes from. It is the only way our querent can have auspicious placement since Sweetheart and Lover are facing the same direction. And this also works regardless of the genders of the couple. You will be able to figure out both auspicious and inauspicious placement.
So while it is suggested that students use the Piatnik deck, at least until after they have taken Gypsy 101, we are all collectors as well. So ENJOY YOUR CARDS!
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