Book summary “Buckland's Book of Gypsy Magic”: summary

Introduction

Unlock the ancient mystical traditions, healing practices, and divination arts of the Romani people.

You often seek practical ways to connect with nature, heal physical ailments, and divine the future using time-tested methods.

Raymond Buckland presents the authentic magical practices of the Romani people, stripping away Hollywood myths to reveal a rich heritage based on intense will, personal concentration, and a deep respect for the natural world.

The book traces Romani history from India across Europe and explains foundational principles of magical work, including strict secrecy and the use of sympathetic magic. You learn how to perform love rituals, master herbal remedies, read cards and palms, scry for future events, and protect your home from negative energies.

How do you harness your personal will to manifest desires? What herbal preparations heal common ailments? How do Romani diviners read the future using everyday objects?

1. History and Principles of Gypsy Magic

Travelers on the Move

The Romani people originated in northern India and migrated westward across Asia and Europe over many centuries. Successive military invasions in northwestern India dislodged various tribes around the ninth or tenth century. These groups moved westward through Persia and split into northern and southern bands across Europe.

Local populations falsely branded these travelers as ancient Egyptians or sorcerers because of their distinct appearance and nomadic habits. This led to widespread European edicts of banishment and, centuries later, mass extermination by the Nazis. An estimated 250,000 to 600,000 Gypsies died in Nazi concentration camps during World War II.

The earliest record of the Romani in Great Britain is dated April 22, 1505, in the Lord High Treasurer of Scotland account ledger. Other early dates include 1348 when nomads were recorded in Serbia and 1531 when Henry VIII issued an edict against the Gypsies.

Principles of Magic

Successful Gypsy magic depends entirely on four core internal and practical ingredients: will, concentration, patience, and secrecy.

You must generate power through intense desire and need instead of acting halfheartedly. Unwavering focus puts the necessary willpower into your action.

Practice these four core rules during any magical working:

• Generate power through a strong desire and need, establishing your will.
• Maintain strict concentration on what you are doing to put necessary willpower into the action.
• Exercise patience, allowing weeks or months for the magic to take effect.
• Keep the working strictly secret within the privacy of your home to prevent bragging from weakening the power.

2. Love and Partnership Magic

Romani practitioners utilize sympathetic magic, herbs, and ritual objects like stones, potatoes, and mirrors to draw mates and ensure marital faithfulness.

You can draw a desired mate's attention using thirteen white stones laid out in specific shapes and charged with personal intent.

Plato Sheen, a pure-blooded Romani shuvano from the New Forest in England, told the author this spell always works.

• Find thirteen white stones, ideally while walking.
• On the first Friday after a New Moon, lay the stones on the ground in the shape of a heart.
• Lie flat on the ground with your heart over the stone heart, closing your eyes and concentrating on the person you want to attract.
• Sit up and rearrange the stones into the initials of the desired person.
• Lie down again with your heart over the stones, concentrating on yourself and your interest in this person.
• Gather up the stones and tie them in a white cloth, carrying the bundle until the Full Moon.

Romani practitioners use a carved pendulum or an acorn suspended on a thread to divine the ideal romantic partner from a field of options.

• Write the names of potential mates on a sheet of paper radiating outward from the center like a star.
• Tie an acorn onto a nine-inch length of red silk thread.
• Hold the end of the thread so the acorn hangs as a pendulum just above the center of the paper.
• Say aloud each name written on the paper.
• Clear your mind, concentrate on having the ideal mate, and observe which name line the pendulum swings along.

Love Spells

Placing facing photographs of oneself and a target against a pocket mirror creates an energetic link designed to compel the target to think of the practitioner.

• Take a small pocket makeup mirror and put your own photograph behind it.
• Place a photograph of the person you want to think of you face down against the front of the mirror so the photographs face each other with the mirror between them.
• Wrap the three objects securely in a piece of red paper or cloth.
• Hide the package in the home of the desired person where it will not be discovered.

Preparing specific phallic root vegetables in a longitudinal manner while chanting a focused charm is utilized in Romani practice to stimulate a mate.

• Include carrots, parsnips, cucumbers, and celery in the food preparation, cutting them strictly lengthwise rather than crosswise.
• Wash and pare the vegetables while concentrating on your mate.
• Repeat the charm phrase 'Here is strength, here is joy...' seven times while seeing your mate as desired.

Family and Love Magic

A buried potato charm inscribed with spouses' names serves as an enduring sympathetic anchor to ensure marital faithfulness.

• Take two large potatoes, scrub them clean, and cut them in half lengthwise.
• Scratch your own name on one half and your spouse's name on the other half using a sharp-pointed knife.
• Place the two halves face to face to resemble one whole potato.
• Stick a new three-inch nail through the potato, with the head on your spouse's side and the point coming through on your side.
• Bind the whole potato around with red silk thread.
• Bury the potato at least seven inches deep in a garden or common land during the waxing Moon.

Mandrake root is utilized in Romani magic as both a powerful protective amulet and a positive love talisman when purified through specific wood smoke and incantations.

• Hold a piece of mandrake root in the smoke of a wood fire fueled by alder or juniper twigs.
• Turn the mandrake root in the smoke and chant the incantation including the Romani words 'Yek, dui, trin' and 'Shoon, dick, te rig drézi'.
• Place the consecrated piece of mandrake in a green silken bag and hang it around your neck.

3. Gypsy Healing and Herbal Remedies

Traditional Romani healing combines hands-on Sun-Moon energy work with extensive herbal preparations, botanical syrups, and sympathetic pain-transfer rituals.

Hands-On Healing

Romani healers practice hands-on healing by using their hands to represent the Sun and Moon in microcosm, working through points corresponding to the chakras. For right-handed healers, the right hand acts as the Sun and the left as the Moon, sending healing rays and reflecting energy through the recipient's body. The process involves attunement, drawing off negativity with specific downward passes, and pulsing energy through key points on the body. Pierre Derlon documents similar Sun-Moon healing methods used by Gypsies in France.

• Have the recipient stand with feet shoulder-width apart and eyes closed, both naked.
• Hold hands, breathe deeply to attune, and hug each other.
• Place hands on temples, draw off negativity by moving down the face, arms, hips, and legs to the ground, then shake hands.
• Perform five sets of passes: one set with both hands down the outside, three sets using right hand then left down the inside and crossing over, and a final set down the outer sides.
• Hold right hand like a claw and left hand flat to direct and reflect healing energy, moving from forehead down through the neck, heart, breasts, abdomen, and pubic area, ending with a firm hug.

Herbs and Ailments

Gypsies use specific herbal preparations and magical charms combined with lunar phases to treat hair loss, dandruff, and headaches. Hair growth is believed to be promoted by waxing moon rituals and herbs like rosemary, whereas cutting hair during a waning moon keeps it short longer. Headaches are treated with vinegars, herbal tonics, or sympathetic charms involving stones and hair. Transylvanian Gypsies rub rosemary liquid into the scalp during a waxing moon while chanting a verse asking God for a remedy for poverty.

• Boil an ounce of dried rosemary in a pint of water for five minutes, cool, and rub into the scalp during a waxing moon while chanting.
• Mix one dram of goa powder in two ounces of pure hog lard and rub into the scalp for hair growth.
• Simmer willow bark and St. John's Wort in water for fifteen minutes and drink as a tonic for headaches.

Traditional remedies for eye and dental problems incorporate mineral washes, herbal infusions, and sympathetic magic such as nailing objects to trees. Sore eyes are washed with solutions of bluestone, fennel seed, or eyebright combined with specific chants to transfer the pain to the earth spirit. Toothaches are addressed with herbal pouches, hedge-hog paws, or transferring the pain into a tree with a horseshoe nail. An old Welsh Gypsy recalled being cured of a toothache when his uncle hammered a horseshoe nail into a cedar tree at the height of his aching tooth.

• Dissolve bluestone in boiled water in an eight-ounce bottle to create an eyewash.
• Simmer fennel seed in water until golden, cool, and strain for sore eyes.
• Tie a barley straw around a stone and throw it into a running stream while chanting to banish tooth pain.

4. Dukkering and Cartomancy

Dukkering encompasses all forms of Romani divination, which are mastered through a lifelong observational apprenticeship rather than sudden initiation.

While palmistry was the original meaning of dukkering, the term now applies to any form of divination. Female adepts known as shuvanis practice this art predominantly. The training is gradual, beginning with herb lore and culminating in healing, spellcasting, and prophecy.

Bregus Wood, a Welsh shuvani born around 1910, began her training at age seven by learning wild flowers and herbs. She advanced to salves, hands-on healing, and prophecy before becoming the tribe's shuvani at thirty years old, after her healing powers had become legendary by age thirteen.

Cartomancy and Tarot

The tarot deck, which originated in India and was brought to Europe by Gypsies, consists of the Major Arcana and Minor Arcana.

Modern playing cards evolved from the Minor Arcana. Cups became hearts, pentacles diamonds, swords spades, and wands clubs. The Major Arcana contains twenty-two allegorical figures. The fifty-six Minor Arcana cards are divided into four suits running from Ace to Ten, plus court cards, among over two thousand estimated tarot decks on the market. Full-scene decks are recommended for beginners because they offer richer symbols for interpretation.

The author remembers his Romani grandmother using a deck with homemade Major Arcana cards depicting Gypsy life scenes and standard poker cards for the Minor Arcana.

• Choose a tarot deck that you enjoy most by trying a number of different decks.
• Disregard the printed titles on the Major Arcana cards when interpreting, as traditional names like Death or Justice do not mean literal death or justice.

Gypsies use various generational and traditional card layouts where specific card positions dictate narrative or thematic meanings. The Star layout uses twenty-four cards placed around the Significator and read like a narrative. The Fan uses thirteen cards split into three groups representing past, present, and future. The Keltic Cross uses ten cards mapping outward appearances, opposing forces, ideals, the inner self, past, immediate future, home, overall self, hopes and fears, and the final outcome.

• Choose one card that best represents the person for whom the reading is done to act as the Significator.
• Have the Querent concentrate on a particular question while shuffling the cards.
• For the Buckland Seven Star, lay twenty-one cards around the Significator in an upturned seven-pointed star using only the Major Arcana and starting in the top right-hand corner clockwise.

Standard poker decks can be used for cartomancy by applying specialized Gypsy spreads and continental card reduction methods. The Continental method uses thirty-two cards from a fifty-two-card deck by removing the Two through Six of each suit, leaving Aces, Sevens, Eights, Nines, Tens, Jacks, Queens, and Kings. Suits represent personal traits, where spades correspond to dark hair, clubs to medium brown hair, diamonds to light-brown hair, and hearts to very fair hair.

• Remove Twos, Threes, Fours, Fives, and Sixes from a standard deck to create a thirty-two-card deck.
• Shuffle and cut the deck with the left hand into three piles, placing the center pile under the right and the left on top.
• Pull out the highest-valued card from each set of three spread from the bottom of the pack.

Palmistry

A person's hand structure, skin condition, and physical consistency reflect their inherited traits, temperament, and inner energy levels. The physical makeup of the whole body determines hand type. Hand consistency reveals underlying energy or laziness, where short fingers indicate quick judgment, long fingers show capacity for detail, hard hands denote perseverance, and soft hands signal mental or physical laziness.

• Take the subject's left hand palm downward to judge the outline, finger shape, and length.
• Turn the hand over and press the palm to determine hardness or softness.
• Keep a file of read hands using a fingerprint kit with a rubber roller and ink across the entire hand, or press the hand flat on a photocopy machine glass plate.

The mounts lying at the base of the fingers and thumb indicate specific character traits, which are modulated by their fullness or flatness. Fleshy and full mounts represent an excess of the associated quality. Flat or lacking mounts indicate its absence, requiring analysis in conjunction with finger shapes and major hand lines.

• Inspect the base of the fingers and thumb to evaluate whether the mounts are especially full or flat.
• Study the mounts in combination with the Line of Head, Line of Heart, and finger shapes before drawing conclusions.

The major lines of the palm trace a person's inherent potential, health, emotional nature, and worldly success, changing according to the habits they cultivate. Left-hand lines show what was born with the person, while right-hand lines show what they have made of themselves, with the reverse applying to left-handed individuals. Time is measured downward on the Line of Life and Line of the Head, upward from the wrist on the Line of Fate and Line of Fortune, and from Jupiter to the percussion on the Line of the Heart.

5. Advanced Divination and Protection

Shuvanis perform diverse scrying and divination arts using tea leaves, crystal balls, beans, pendulums, and fire, while employing kettles, salt, and gold to ward off evil and attract wealth.

Divination Arts

You can read tea leaves by having the client drink the tea and leave a small amount. The reader interprets symbols starting from the top rim down to the base, where the handle represents the client.

• Pour a full cup of tea for the client.
• Client takes at least three swallows.
• Pour off most of the excess liquid, keeping the tea pure without milk or sugar.
• Leave about a tablespoonful of tea remaining.
• Client holds the handle and rotates the cup three times using the left hand.
• Swirl the liquid to spread leaves around the bottom, sides, and rim.
• Tip the cup upside down on a saucer with a napkin.
• Turn the upturned cup around on the saucer and make a wish.

You can also use a crystal ball placed over black velvet in a quiet room. Use a single candle placed behind you and burn pleasant-smelling incense. Breathe deeply and look into the crystal without staring or straining. Limit the session to a maximum of ten to fifteen minutes.

Slavic Gypsies perform divination using nine dried beans and a client's coin.

• Ask the client for a coin.
• Hold the coin and nine dried beans in your hands.
• Concentrate on the question being asked and shake the beans and coin.
• Open your hands and let the beans and coin fall on the table or ground.

Warding Off Evil

Continental Gypsies use a specific boiling kettle ritual to protect against the evil eye.

• Take a kettle to a stream and fill it with water taken with the current, not against it.
• Place seven pieces of coal in the vessel, along with seven handfuls of oatmeal and seven cloves of garlic.
• Put the kettle over a fire and bring the water to a boil.
• Stir it with a three-forked stick and say the protective evil eye spell.

You can cleanse small items or coins received from untrusted people by placing them in salt.

• Place the questionable coin or small item in a bowl of salt.
• Leave the item in the salt for twenty-four hours to cleanse it of negativity.

Gold functions as a money magnet in Gypsy culture, prompting travelers to wear it as jewelry. Stan Boswell admitted that his affluent family's success was due to a single gold nugget created by his great-grandfather from melted gold coins taken from family branches and buried in a graveyard.

10 Key Ideas

1. Successful Gypsy magic depends entirely on four core internal and practical ingredients: will, concentration, patience, and secrecy.
2. Romani practitioners utilize sympathetic magic, herbs, and ritual objects like stones, potatoes, and mirrors to draw mates and ensure marital faithfulness.
3. Romani healers practice hands-on healing by using their hands to represent the Sun and Moon in microcosm, working through points corresponding to the chakras.
4. Dukkering encompasses all forms of Romani divination, which are mastered through a lifelong observational apprenticeship rather than sudden initiation.
5. The tarot deck, which originated in India and was brought to Europe by Gypsies, consists of the Major Arcana and Minor Arcana.
6. Standard poker decks can be used for cartomancy by applying specialized Gypsy spreads and continental card reduction methods.
7. A person's hand structure, skin condition, and physical consistency reflect their inherited traits, temperament, and inner energy levels.
8. Shuvanis perform diverse scrying and divination arts using tea leaves, crystal balls, beans, pendulums, and fire, while employing kettles, salt, and gold to ward off evil and attract wealth.
9. Continental Gypsies use a specific boiling kettle ritual to protect against the evil eye.
10. Gold functions as a money magnet in Gypsy culture, prompting travelers to wear it as jewelry.