What do you think of the Romani/Gypsy people?

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Have read different pedigrees for Yul Brynner.

One book agreed with you that he was a "Finnish Gypsy".

But Wiki says he was born in Vladivostok on the Pacific coast of Siberia (five thousand miles east of Finland) mostly Buryat Mongol with Russian and German ancestry- no mention of Roma ancestry.

Who knows? His talent as an entertainer seems consistent with being Roma. His features were certainly a mix of ingredients from hither and yon. Part of his success in that age of Hollywood when they wanted actors who looked exotic , but...not TOO exotic ...for the White audiences.

Spanish Flamenco was invented by Andalusian Gypsies.

In the Balkans of old both Jews and Gypsies would find employment as musicians for weddings and the like. Both groups had music rooted in the east, and when playing together both ethnic group musicians would "trade licks".

This 21st Century French band, called "the Barcelona Gypsy Klezmer Band" honors both flamenco and Klezmer.


https://youtu.be/oXjK3BLyzPI

Last edited by naturalplastic on 31 Mar 2024, 6:46 pm, edited 1 time in total.

The Roma were singled out for persecution in Nazi Germany and many thousands were killed by the Nazis and all were considered "inferior" and undesirable (possibly as many as 500,000 were killed). They are a people with a difficult history, and present, and like everyone they deserve human rights and freedom from discrimination.

However my personal experience with Roma people has not been very positive. When I lived in Italy in the 1970s you would know that the Gypsies had arrived in town because they suddenly would be everywhere. They wore very ragged clothes so they were easily recognizable. They were very aggressive panhandlers, getting in your face and shouting, and they would curse you if you didn't give them any money. You couldn't walk on the street without being accosted and shouted at. The panhandlers were usually women with small children, either carried in their arms or held by the hand, and they were dirty and with no shoes, and appeared to be used as props to elicit pity and therefore larger donations.

The whole horoscope, cards and telling the future might have arrived with the gypsies. Horsocopes are still important in India and the gypsies are originally from N/W India.

The Nazis were primarily focussed on what they perceived as the biological > cultural inferiority of the gypsies. One of the ironies is that the gypsies language is related to modern Rajasthani in northwest India and their language is one of the original "Aryan" languages related to Sanskrit. Indeed the gypsies have more cultural connectedness to aryans and swastikas (another sanskrit word) than Germans do.

Yeah Vedic Astrology (what they use in India) is amazing stuff, but you have to know the exact time of birth in order to use it. I've read blogs and watched videos from Vedic Astrologers predicting things and I have to say they're predictions are eerily spot on at times.

As for cards, I've read that nobody really knows for sure how they came to Europe and spread throughout the world. Some same they were introduced by the gypsies, others claim they were invented and introduced by China through trade.

Both gambling and fortune telling with playing cards has been around seemingly forever and the first tarot cards (playing cards with the extra cards known as the Major Arcana) were actually invented in Italy in the 1500's for gambling but it wasn't until the 1700's or 1800's that they became popular for divination aswell.

Playing cards certainly have a very mysterious but fascinating history. At least to me.

^^^ You might be interested how much astrology is used in India even today.
In India farmers use star constellations to determine when to plant crops
Marriages and business decisions can't be made without an astrologer

Indian star charts look very much like what was being used in medieval Europe (again I'm not an expert but India is known to be the home of astrology)

BTW picking a card is very much fate. So much so, many astrologers even allow trained parrots to randomly pick cards for paying customers.

They were victims of the same holocaust as the Jews during World War II.

^^^ Yes

Here's one of the websites explaining the history of playing cards.

One thing for sure I think it's obvious they were introduced to Europeans through countries in Asia and maybe Africa too (like Egypt).

https://shuffledink.com/the-history-of- ... dern-deck/

I also think it's fascinating how how in Japan they invented what are called Hanafuda (flower cards) for gambling shortly after Japan closed its borders to the world for many centuries. Some scholars think the idea for Hanafuda cards were created from the Japanese witnessing Porteguese and Dutch merchants and sailors who had their own playing cards.

Interesting enough Hanafuda was never a popular tool for divination in Japan, but very recently there have been Japanese books written about how to do fortune telling with these cards and even some fortune tellers outside Japan have caught on and are trying to use Hanafuda in modern card readings too.

I might can make a seperate topic about that because I don't want to hijack this thread any more than I already have lol.

Yeah it really is fascinating stuff. I would love to learn more about Vedic Astrology really works. It seems eerily more accurate than the Tropical Western system most of us are familiar with.

There's even Vedic Natal Charts focused on the exact time that the United States was founded, and so far they seemed right about every disasterous thing we have experienced in recent years.

I also like how they use the traditional planets of astrology (Sun, Moon, Mercury, Mars, Venus, Jupiter, and Saturn) plus the two lunar nodes known as Rahu and Ketu (Head and Tail of the Dragon who stole the Elixer of Life and was chopped in half by one of the Gods becoming two seperate immortal entities).

They don't use Uranus, Neptune, or Pluto though there is one American Vedic Astrologer named Joni Patry who incorporates the newer planets into her readings.

I don't particularly like her though because she seemed biased as an apparent Trump supporter, but I can't argue that her predictions were eerily spot on about Trump gaining tremendous power through his fixed star Regulus and she also seemed to predict the violence on Jan 6th and when she said "Trump will make a comeback because he chart is stronger than Biden's", she really wasn't exaggerating...

Kind scary...

And in the 19th Century in Bulgaria you could actually own a Gypsy as a slave...like the Blacks in the American South. And it wasnt outlawed until about the same time as our Civil War.

Bulgarians didn't want to miss out on all the "fun" western Europeans and Americans were having in the 19th century.
It was become fashionable you could enslave and force non-Europeans to work under slave conditions because eugenics explains that "inferior" people need civilising and what better way to "civilise" them by making them work for nothing.

Last edited by cyberdad on 31 Mar 2024, 9:04 pm, edited 1 time in total.

As an aside, the above song was composed by Carlos Puebla of Cuba.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-064cEZfK8

and believe me buddy, i'm APPRECIATIVE

And I really appreciate you letting me read cards for you.

I wish I had more friends in my life who enjoy doing cartomancy too. Unfortunately everyone else I know refuses to do readings with me either because they're afraid of divination or they simply don't believe in it.