def. of sibilla deck???

misfitknits

what exactly IS a sibilla oracle? i've been looking it up, but almost everything i can find is the same paragraph copy & pasted over & over again: "a sibilla deck is a type of oracle deck used in france" blah blah blah.

but what distinguishes a sibilla deck from other oracle decks? do they all have 52 cards? are they all based on a deck of playing cards? what distinguishes a sibilla deck from a lenormand deck? *other than the association of madame lenormand!*
 

gregory

They all have 52 cards - that much I know.

The word sibilla means oracle. That too I know.

The meanings are not standard across all existing sibilla decks. There seem to be two traditions - French and Italian - and there are some decks that sort of mix the two.
 

misfitknits

ah, thanks gregory! our font of knowledge! ;)

so, a sibilla has 52 cards, and in our modern, mixed up times, meanings can be pretty much anything. since a traditional sibilla has 52 cards, were the meanings based on a standard deck of playing cards? i know absolutely nothing about the divinatory meanings of poker cards...
 

cardlady22

There's no such animal as a Standard Meaning for the playing cards. Each & every person who used or wrote about them put their own bit to it.
 

misfitknits

cardlady22 said:
There's no such animal as a Standard Meaning for the playing cards. Each & every person who used or wrote about them put their own bit to it.

yes, you're right. i didn't explain my question properly. i'm more interested in the card titles, or archeptypes if you will. for instance, in the sibilla deck i have: lord, house, love, money, hope, faithfulness, letter, gift. those are the "card meanings" speak of.

so, my question again: where the original sibilla decks structured like a poker deck? with similar titles and "meanings"?

or would it be safe to say that every sibilla deck differs, and that the only thing that categorizes a deck as a sibilla is that it contains 52 cards?
 

Freddie

Hi,

I own more than few of these and I have studied them and my answer would have to be no, because not one of the modern or reproduction sibilla decks that I own are the same pictues with the same card number/suit.

These decks mostly claim to be a version of the deck used by the famous French reader Marie Lenormand, but nobody really seems to know exactly what her deck looked like.


Freddie