I spent a fantastic many sleepovers flipping through tarot cards without really connecting to what I was visiting. As much fun as it was to worry my friends with absurd interpretations of this deck, so I never felt a personal connection to the vibrant cards I had been flipping over. I have since learned that there are actually alternatives to the prescribed tarot deck. If you are over the standard deck you have been visiting on Instagram, you will find far more unique, personalized decks out there, very similar to tarot, called oracle decks. The gap between oracle and tarot cards might appear subtle, but it could make a large effect.
Chances are you already know the tarot cards work — or at least, what they’re. A tarot deck is a classic set of 78 cards which fall under the class of major or minor arcana. Tarot cards have been studied and translated by specialist readers, primarily to talk to a person’s life story.
Oracle cards, on the other hand, are more free-wheeling from the established arrangement of tarot. An oracle deck can basically be whatever the inventor of the deck wants it to be they select how many cards are inside, what kinds of imagery it’ll utilize, and what purpose it’s supposed to serve. There are several distinct varieties of oracle decks that come in all shapes, sizes, shapes, and functions. The basic set-up is they have images and words, along with a book that explains ways in which a reader should interpret them.
To understand oracle decks better,I talked to Aarona Lea Pichinson, the author and co-creator of that the Moon Deck, which is an oracle deck that’s supposed”to assist ritualize the path to self-love,” Pichinson says.
Because tarot takes time to study and is a rigidly set deck, Pichinson says, oracle decks could be”more accessible for more people.” Oracle cards can be a variety of items, from affirmations to operate with the components to religious guides. Every card in the Moon Deck, for example, includes a write-up and ritual attached to it, so it prompts actions and accountability”to take part in [a reader’s] own advancement and recovery.” What the flexibility of oracle cards means, she says, is that even more creative people are getting into the making and studying of oracle decks,”at which you can genuinely bring a combination of one’s teachings on a private development and spiritual path into something visual, digestible, and experiential.”
Pichinson clarifies that oracle cards are like tarot in that they are”directive tools,” so they supply guidance, clarity, and a fresh outlook — frequently pointing you toward something you already knew, but needed an external vision on. “It’s helped me to get a little more clear and connected to an answer I am seeking and remembering the replies are in me, and such cards really help direct that,” she says.
Though everyone can make their own oracle deck, tarot reading it does take a great deal of commitment and time to put it all together. Unlike the tarot card deck, you have to create your own cards and meanings. “It’s an intense process,” Pichinson says, adding that it took the group a few years. She started ideating around 2010, and also spent a few years amassing notes and researching as she wrote the speech for those cards. Pichinson finally asked her friend, Andrea Keh, to be the deck’s illustrator. From there, she needed to think about what the deck would be, and she decided she wanted her deck to become feminine, in regards to the skies, and ritual-based.
Pichinson adds that in case you want to produce your own oracle deck, you should”start before you think you’re prepared.” The Moon Deck did not happen overnight: It took years of thinking, studying, writing down notes, and after doing the work of writing and making the art for the cards. “For me personally, it was a survival, which became a passion, which then turned into a profession,” Pichinson says about her journey . Therefore, if you never really felt tarot cards, there’s a whole oracle entire world out there waiting for you to research.