What came first? The Chicken or the Egg?

My friend does this wonderful thing on her blog, where she likens cards from new decks she has bought to ones she remembers from her collection. Try this one out for size. You must have looked through a deck before and thought 'Hey, now that looks a trifle familiar!'. I did the same with a few decks recently. I am now never surprised to see an echo of Brian Froud in the work of Nathalie Hertz and was quite taken aback by the visual hijacking of Fegus Hall's Tarot of the Witches in the Lo Scarabeo Tarot of the Sweet Twilight. Whenever my friend does these posts, I read them with pure delight and admiration of her memory, so in seeing a few similarities to cards I already know in Selina Feneche's Wild Wisdom of the Faery Oracle, I thought I'd have a go at doing the same. It is interesting that a lot of the cards in her paintings are similar to those from other faery decks, which I would assume she would have been more than aware of. I guess it begs us to ask 'what came first .. the chicken or the egg?'.

The first card I thought looked familiar is one titled Little Boy Blue. In Froud's first oracle deck, there is a young girl who appears similar to this one, but it is his Child from The Heart of Faerie Oracle which this one resembles the most. It's kind of nice how they sit together like friends here, isn't it? They're like two soul mates reunited.


Due to working with The Favole Tarot by Victoria Frances quite recently, this was the first card that stood out for me in Fenech's set. She may not be laying amongst the lily pads in death as she is in The Favole, but they are strikingly similar to me. It might seem that the lily pads have actually been replaced by Froud's Topsie Turvets from The Faeries Oracle.



The comparison between these two cards is maybe not as strong as the previous ones, but I thought I had seen this girl somewhere before. It was something about the book and position that I recognised, but in pulling The Seer from The Fae Tarot, I also noticed the similarity between the two thrones they sit on.


The Cry of Nature was another card that appeared instantly familiar. I always loved that little figure from the Ace of Wands in the Fae Tarot and she was one of the reasons why I bought it.



Even though I am not nuts about the little pink faery in the Light the Darkness card from The Wild Wisdom of the Faery Oracle, I do adore the large head. Isn't he just great? I see a simularity between him and many of the cards from Froud's two oracles. His head has a strong resemblence to the guy beneath The Journeyman on the right, and on the left, the seated faery in Laiste, Moon's Daughter reminds me of the way in which the small pink faery in the middle uses the goblin's head as a seat.



Images from The Wild Wisdom of the Faery Oracle by Selina Fenech, The Faeries Oracle & The Heart of Faerie Oracle by Brian Froud, The Favole Tarot by Victoria Frances, and The Fae Tarot by Mara Aghem