It is surprisingly easy to create your own oracle deck. That’s because anything goes.
You don’t need to be artistically talented. You can choose your own artwork, but you can also use photography, your own or stock and public domain images.
It can be any theme, with or without keywords, phrases, size, any structure you like.
You can even choose how many cards your oracle deck contains. It’s all down to your imagination.
But you need to ensure that the deck you create actually works in a reading.
When I created the Cosmic Journaling Oracle, I applied a little trick to give it structure:
I used the Major Arcana from the Tarot to cover a universal range of life experiences, so the oracle would offer meaningful advice in readings.
For this purpose, choose an upright and reversed keyword for each of the 22 Major Arcana cards, and hey presto, you have the titles for 44 oracle cards.
For example:
The Fool – new beginnings, folly
The Magician – potential, trickery
The High Priestess – intuition, illusion
The Empress – creativity, lethargy
The Emperor – leadership, control
The Hierophant – stability, dogma
The Chariot – independence, struggle
Once you have completed your list of cards you want to create, you can decide whether to just use the keywords or turn them into a phrase.
For example:
- New beginnings: A new journey bears risks but also great reward.
- Trickery: Beware of deception. Not all is what it seems.
- Stability: A solid foundation provides security.
You can also expand on these phrases. In fact, if you don’t have the artwork for your oracle deck yet, you can just print the oracle messages.
I have done this for the Mainfesting Change Empowerment Cards and the healing cards included in Cosmic Journaling Through The Year.
Next, print your cards. Insert them in a Word table (you can also do this in Google Docs) and convert the document to PDF:
For the artwork I have used my own photography.
Check out How to create your own Tarot Deck for more information on photo editing websites and where you can get your deck printed, if you want to sell it.
However, as a first step create your own oracle deck for personal use and try it out.
A handmade oracle deck would even make a great gift for a friend, who is into this kind of thing ?
Tip
Just in case you do decide at a later stage to have your deck printed by a printing company, make sure the size of the images complies with standard playing card sizes, otherwise you will have to reformat all your images, which would be a lot of unnecessary extra work.
You can find the sizes on printing companies’ websites, most of which will have templates for you to download.
You can choose from mini size (like mine) right through to tarot/large playing card sizes. Some companies even offer round and square card printing.
Try this…
An oracle deck with keywords can also be used as a random tarot spread generator, a technique I have already mentioned in my previous post.
Simply draw three cards to create your spread. Here’s an example:
You can either formulate a question around each keyword or just keep as it is to read intuitively with a tarot card drawn for each keyword.
Now it’s over to you to create your own magical oracle deck, or make a start by downloading the digital edition of the Cosmic Journaling Oracle (take advantage of 15% sharing discount during September!)
Warmest wishes,
Christiane
Combining tarot and oracle cards in a reading can offer you a fresh and innovative approach to divination.
As you can see above, the printed version has a black background and border.
The days are getting longer, but due to the snow we’ve been having here in Leeds, the warmer weather just seems like a distant dream away.
The artwork of the 48 cards blends fantasy, Egyptian and Celtic themes, and the style of the deck is described in the accompanying booklet as “incorporating mythical lore and old world concepts of the Tarot with New Age mysticism”.
If you have an interest in faery lore and would like to learn more, then this oracle deck is for you.