Hey y'all, it's been a while.
So I'm one of those who dismissed Oracle decks early on, but then found the Lunar Nomad Oracle, which is loosely lenormand based but does it's own thing. So I’ll be referencing that deck a lot here as LNO.
Image from Benebell Wen’s review here
How I found it:
I was at a used bookshop with a giftcard and saw it and I kinda knew it was that one I'd be leaving with. It wasn't really a BAM feeling, it was subtle but persistent, resonant with the deck itself.
Specs:
The Lunar Nomad doesn't have title borders, it has a nice consistent (and aesthetically relevant?) font that doesn't distract from the art.
The guidebook feels like magic and is well written and matches the aesthetic of the deck too and adds some magic to it when needed, but isn't necessary to use. It’s beautiful and wonderful, but I don't often use it. I glanced through it and it was enough for me to know that the information in the guidebook was encoded into the cards, and the creator theirself tells you to ignore it in favor of your ‘lunar wisdom,’ so to paraphrase. When I do use it though, it's fantastic and powerful.
There are 43 cards and it has a lenormand skeleton, but isn’t a lenormand deck. The cards are large. The art is collage style with a mystical vintage feel.
What I love about it:
LNO is the deck that taught me how divination works.
When I pulled a card, I understood in that moment that
everything is meant to relate to that card. My every thought, feeling, and wondering is woven into the fabric of this card. The present is stitched in. If I draw it for the day I can return to it over and over again and it'll always be relevant, a sort of centering space or living pillar in time. Like a quilted blanket where the present moment are both the patchwork squares and the larger mosaic image too. I hope that makes sense.
To get woo for a second, it’s the most oddly synchronistic deck I have. I’ll shuffle and pull the same card, two – five times in a row and know the reason for ‘why’ it’s happening or even be able to anticipate it. That’s another thing too, anticipating cards, or thinking ‘it’d be funny if I got ___ card,’ and being right. It’s like it has a auric field of lunar magic. At first this REALLY weirded me out, and it still sort of wigs me out, but I’m slowly….sinking into it and accepting it.
It also taught me to keep silent....that the lunar is subtle and experiences like these have strange ways...….delicate like the surface of a lake, or like spells, or mirrors. A realm where words are like swords that pierce, or bullets that shatter. So if subtle things are happening and you wanna deepen or understand or perpetuate it, maybe keep your mouth shut. It reminds me of the idea of "twisted language.”
These are all things the deck taught me, simply by BEING in my life. It’s not my most heavily used deck, because I don’t often use Oracle. I’ve barely read the guidebook. But I learned so much from it in such a short time, and it has been a profound influence on me and my magical practice.
It could just have a cool name, be pretty and moony-moon themed with a loose lenormand skeleton, but it's not. It's really richly, deeply what it is. Inside, outside, book, box, backs, aura, shape, in content, and between it's ink too. It has a strong identity and depth of character, and holisticness in personality and design. It’s internally consistent from core to shell.
There's nothing wrong with decks that aren't this, but my personality is sometimes a bit demanding with these things and I'm really particular. I think what I want is a deck to know what it is, who it is, and be a self-contained universe, whether that's a silly and light cat deck, or a shadow-working themed deck.
So this is leading into….
What I think I look for in Oracle decks:
(Bear with me here, I’m not exactly sure myself, but here are my best meandering guesses.)
I typically hate / avoid collage
tarot decks, at least those with people in them (Tyldwick is a masterpiece), but I'm finding I'm really drawn to them in Oracle decks and even find them desirable. I’ve heard this exact sentiment expressed before. I think it's because of how the imagination / unconscious seems to work. Our psyches really are collages of experience, place, emotions, people, and sensations. I think it’s easier to use creative association with Oracle as a medium where there’s a blurred or layered variety of images rather than clear-cut lines. It's like dreams. Layers of symbolism, meaning, vibes, feelings, intermingling. Different interconnected and interwoven images to connect to with a common relevance (generally speaking, the title of the card).
One of the gifts of Oracle decks I'm finding is reminiscent of the High Priestess. It can't be like the Moon where you're just thrown into some abstract art without reference or explanation, but if you come in heavily like the Emperor the water dries up. The structure is there for a frame of reference, to help define the scope, to help you not get lost in the images. The structure oughta be like banks to a river, vs the uncontainable ocean, or complex city plumbing. I think once it gets too left-brained, we're leaving the natural landscape of the imagination and headed towards the villages of affirmation / guidance / hug decks, or cartomancy metropolises like tarot.
The difference may be something like looking through a carefully created telescope vs just gazing at the night sky. Oracle to me is being able to deeply involve yourself and explore viscerally, not be guided or have certain aspects of your psyche highlighted and reflected back to you. It’s more interactive than tarot I think, it’s more living. Where tarot may be more naturally oriented to be a mirror, I think Oracle is like a pool of water you plunge your hand into. I’m not saying tarot can’t do that, but there’s more of a maze, with doors, and conditions to meet. It’s a bit more initiatory and the landscape is laid out for you to navigate and decorate.
So in my perspective I think a good Oracle deck has a more challenging balancing job and precarious line to straddle. It needs to be flexible, accessible to everyone using them (controlling for art preferences), and involving. It’s got to
work. It’s gotta be able to dialogue and play with your imagination, tell you something new/old about it. A dream-like variable, visual, visceral quality in the images is helpful, I think. It’s gotta be fluid and behave like water in that way.
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Size and Number of Cards:
There aren't
that many cards (43) in the LNO but somehow it still feels like a complete system. The Vessel, one of the other decks I’ve gotten some use out of, has 35, and doesn’t feel complete to me. I often have this problem with lenormand and oracle decks feeling incomplete to me, but I don’t think it has to do with the number of cards itself.
I’m not completely sure myself why it is though. With lenormand I can guess it’s because it comes from playing cards, so I just end up wanting the whole playing card deck and feel somewhat cheated. Otherwise, perhaps it’s a lack of scope? Goddess decks often feel random to me. I wonder about the criteria for goddesses chosen. And why did they stop at 35? Why not 34 or 36? Time constraints? Publishing limitations? Intuition?
I don’t want to feel like I could just keep flipping cards….forever…..pulling them out of the air even, like it doesn’t matter, or like I could just keep cycling through the same deck endlessly. I don’t think it’s necessarily about a deck being numbered either. I think it’s about design and scope.
Vessel oracle as a personal case study:
I have a guess or an idea for why at least with the
Vessel oracle, which I do like and I do feel that it is capable of giving lovely and gentle readings. I’m kinda bullshitting here and I haven’t used the deck in a little while, so take the following with a grain of salt. It seems to be encapsulating a
time period in the life of the artist and that need for gentleness and tenderness is what has been translated into the cards, rather than the oracle deck’s name (and even box design) literally being the theme. So, to me, it feels incomplete and open-ended. There isn’t a broad or full range of emotions. The large cursive keywords as far as I’m concerned are a part of the art, and while their organic font style keeps things soft and flow-y, they do drastically limit the range of meanings for a card (unless you’re able to ignore them. But like I said, I consider the text to be part of the art, and I do like the art.)
However, I think if you’re going through a difficult time, similar to what I think I read the artist was going through, then the compassion of the Vessel oracle while shine through and even the keywords will be oddly resonant and healing. So perhaps it functions as a sort of a time capsule of loving-kindness for people going through grief or hard-times. Otherwise, it might always be a stretch….
Essentially, it’s not universally applicable in terms of situation, and it’s ability to function depends on your being able to relate to a person and their heart at a particular point in their life stream. I think that’s beautiful, and while these emotions are universally experienced, it isn’t…..hmm...you’re not always able to use it. It’s not a swiss army knife. It’s more like a friend.
This makes me feel like this isn’t so much an oracle deck than it is a guidance / affirmation / hug deck. I’m kind of inclined to call these “love decks.”
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TL;DR and then some (sorry)
I think, for me, a good Oracle deck, on top of art I like, has the following qualities:
1. Font is part of images and / or easy to ignore. (Or non existent if possible, but not sure how that would work with the following....unless it wasn’t necessary or part of the vision of the deck)
2. Numbered or abc order in book, or easily referenceable book. The Morgan tarot is a bit of a nightmare there.
3. Character design of deck has depth and / or understands itself. The deck has a ‘personality.’
4. Juju, magic, woo. Something about it is touched or has that feeling. Otherwise I could just use tarot, honestly. I think this comes as a natural consequence of #3 though.
5. Enough structure to not get lost, but no studying required, though supplemental reading is available and insightful.
6. The deck can stand alone. Ready to use out of the box if I wanted to, maybe with a minor introduction.
7. Divination aptitude - whether that's future telling or just involves your imagination and unconscious in a really visceral way. Collage decks make this super easy, since it layers images in a dream-like way that makes associative thinking easy and has the variety you need to let your attention float and come up with connections.
8. Feels complete. Sometimes lenormand decks feel incomplete to me, or decks where the number of cards is just random. There could've been more or less. It's gotta feel open sure, but like it's whole unto itself. Like a book. The cards themselves are open, like portals, but the deck as a whole oughtn’t feel so open-ended I think.
All this said, I don't use Oracle decks that much and I am mainly basing this on my adoration of the LNO and frustrations with what I'm calling love decks and (petit) lenormand. Though writing this has also helped me understand my frustrations and see decks as they are rather than what I want them to be. I’m feeling more open to them now that I have some more clarity on them as a catch-all category.
Oracle decks I’ve been eyeing:
One of the decks I've been eyeing is the
Inner Compass Oracle.
It has a similar vibe to the Lunar Nomad in art style, though I am worried about the scope problem I mentioned, I do think it would dialogue well with my imagination. I looked at a couple images online and play-tested asking questions (it's rarely ever the same as in person, but it does give a very faint hint sometimes) and got some very sensory answers (cherry-coke, summer time shriek-y tag as a kid at the beach (I don't even have this as a memory I think), etc).
Another is the
Threadbound oracle, which very clearly has a scope. It's tied to a graphic novel series and is an oracle deck about books and Stories. That makes me
very curious about how it would read. The main reason is the theme, characters, and how absolutely gorgeous it is. I’d be getting the graphic novel too for sure. I worry it’d be limiting or not relevant, but it might be perfectly suited to my style so who knows. It is exciting though. I had the Alice tarot by Baba on my wishlist for a short while for the literary backbone....
woof that was long, hahaha. I'll retroactively link and / or add photos of the decks I think. I'll edit here once I do. (edit:
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I need to learn about controlling scope myself.
, thanks for sharing Pen.
I should have looked at your profile to realize you already owned this deck.