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Tag Archives: rockpool publishing

Green Witch Oracle, by Cheralyn Darcey

Green Witch Oracle: Discover real secrets of botanical magick, by Cheralyn Darcey
Rockpool Publishing, 1925924718, 44 cards, 144 pages, February 2021

Green Witch Oracle: Discover real secrets of botanical magick by Cheralyn Darcey is absolutely bursting with garden wisdom and colorful fun. This deck really pops, and it reminds me of a plentiful garden on a warm summer’s day. Darcey has beautifully blended elemental affinity with the secret sagacity of plants to create a multi-purpose deck. It is a splendid resource to create a magickal bond with plants through spellwork, learn about the different plant correspondences as you garden, or engage in divination with plant energy.

Opening the box and seeing the brilliant green back of the cards filled me with a sense of heart-opening abundance. The alchemical symbols for the four elements (fire, water, air, earth) are drawn in white on the back of the cards. The cards were nice and smooth as I shuffled them, offering little resistance due to their glistening shine.

Looking through the deck, I was struck by the bright color of all the varieties of plants featured in the deck. The creamy background is the perfect contrast to make the images burst forth and capture the reader’s attention. Black ink blots add to the dynamic energy of each card, further illuminating the plant image. There’s a wide range of plants featured in the deck, which include fruits, vegetables, flowers, and herbs.

On every card is the number at the top for guidebook reference, the elemental symbol, a key word, and the name of the plant (both common name and genus/species name). If the plant has an astrological correspondence, there is also a glyph of the zodiac sign. There are also little sketches of metaphysical objects that are related to the card’s meaning, such as a dreamcatcher for Marigold’s key word ‘Positivity’ and a sword for Fennel’s key word ‘Strength.’

I’ve been pulling a card a day and have very much enjoyed reading the guidebook to better understand the energy of each one. Reading through it I noticed that the deck is organized so that certain types of plants correspond with an elemental energy: vegetables are earth, herbs are fire, fruits are water, and flowers are air. Also being a tarot reader, the elemental correspondence of the cards made intuitive sense to me. Now when I pull a card, I am also able to sense the elemental energy within it too, which I feel has enhanced my readings.

In the guidebook, Darcey first provides a short and sweet introduction and a bit of information on how to use the deck. Then there are three garden-themed card spreads suggested. My favorite to use so far has been “The garden shed” that is meant to help the reader with a challenge they are facing. The card placements relate to gardening, such as Card 1 being called “the shovel,” and this card is meant to highlight the energy of “the deepest part that needs to come to light.”1 All the spreads are creative and well-suited for this deck. It was unique to see something different than the standard card placements (ex. past, present, future) often suggested.

The rest of the guidebook focuses on the 44 cards in the deck. For each card there is a quote, oracle meaning, description of the plant’s cultivation, and list of magical correspondences (uses, deities, celestial, and astrological sign). The best part is that there is also a spell to generate the energy of the plant in your life. All the spells listed use the plant of their card in the spellwork, which gives the reader another way to connect to the magickal energy of each plant.

So far I’ve only tried one spell: a desire spell from the Lettuce card. Who would have thought you could make an incredible facial mask with lettuce and use it to super-charge your desire? I did have to switch out dried milk for a bit of whole milk, but it still turned out just fine. Looking through the spells, I would say the majority of them can be done easily with simple ingredients most people already have in their kitchen. Next time I want to do some protection work, I plan on using the spell given in the guidebook for Onion!

The very end of the guidebook includes a small glossary of terms used and also *drum roll* a bibliography! I really like to see a nice bibliography, as so many books and decks seem to freely dispense information with no sources listed for where it was found. While things like the oracle meaning of the card are bound to be more subjective, I value Darcey’s sharing the sources of her knowledge. This is sure to be a starting point for readers that use the deck and wish to continue learning more about the gardening techniques and properties of different types of plants.

For anyone interested in enhancing their magick with a bit of green witchery this is absolutely a deck you’ll want to have in your collection. I highly recommend Green Witch Oracle to anyone who is interested in learning more about the energy of plants. Whether you’re interested in cultivating a magickal relationship or simply discovering new ways to connect with your garden through learning about plant properties and timing techniques, this deck is a wonderful resource. It’s a deck filled with an enthusiastic levity that makes these explorations fun and exciting.

Seasons of the Witch: Samhain Oracle, by Lorraine Anderson and Juliet Diaz

Seasons of the Witch: Samhain Oracle: Harness the Intuitive Power of the Year’s Most Magical Night, by Lorraine Anderson and Juliet Diaz
Rockpool Publishing, 978-1925924657, 180 pages, October 2020

I knew the deep magic of Halloween well before I ever heard the name Samhain. Sound familiar? This potent tome and deck of wisdom offers you the secrets of this sacred time in just the style to make your witchy heart sing. The Seasons of the Witch: Samhain Oracle is a powerful transmission by mavens of their craft, Lorraine Anderson and Juliet Diaz. Anderson draws on her varied cultural heritage, which includes Benish, Romanian, and Irish. She is the co-founder of Sacred Craft Academy, an online school for mysticism and spiritual truth. Juliet Diaz is an Indigenous Taino Cubana. She is the author of Witchery: Embracing the Witch Within. This magical deck is exquisitely illustrated by Giada Rose, a Kentucky-based illustrator and designer who “strives with her paintings to create a portal into stillness,”2

This deck first pulled me in by it’s witchy aesthetic that is a little Charles Addams, a little Edward Gorey, and a whole lot of visual intuition and expressive magic. These images have an incredibly witchy vibe to them. The color palette is beautifully autumnal. The red gilt edges and details remind you that you are about to enter into ritual. Each card pairs a few lines of poetry with an evocative image to make this an accessible deck for working your will as a witch or witchling. This deck speaks so beautifully to young witches curious about what the craft might mean to them, especially as they deepen their knowledge of this sabbat. Any experienced witch who favors this season will no doubt enjoy the chance to immerse themselves in these archetypes. 

Samhain Oracle has come into my hands closer to Ostara, the spring equinox, than Samhain, the vernal equinox. I so appreciate being brought back into the energy of the thinning veil, of long, quiet nights to explore the inner realm. This deck does that impeccably. 

I offered my stepdaughter a reading with these cards over tea one afternoon; the deck practically begs for such precious rituals. We both loved how the poetry allowed us to wend our way into the cards with its familiars, tools, and archetypes of Samhain. The guidebook took us so much deeper in language both profound and accessible. One card we drew together was Dark Moon. A slender white woman set against the dark moon releases smoke from her palm — “In the dark of your heart lives new breath / waiting for you to release its ghost.”3 The card was on point for us both.

There are a couple cards that sing to me in particular. Wolf (44) offers two slender, white-skinned witches sitting at the hearth. The room they are in is both a home and a galaxy. The full moon shows its face through the window as a white wolf howls. There is so much vitality and quirkiness to these drawings, the hand of the artist is present in the way ink and watercolor stain the page and in the way objects are drawn. Wolf invites you all to “devour the ferocious calling within the howling of your / spirit. Run wildly into the freedom of your knowing.”4 

Pulling Healer (22) we see the lone woman of color represented in this deck; her soft, direct gaze centered by the full moon behind her and the full and crescent moon that sit at her third eye as she stands in ceremonial, feathered regalia. She invites us to “listen as the medicine bleeds through her / teeth, a river of mercy blessed by Mother. / Seen only by those who hold her mirror.”5 There’s something powerful in the joining of these paintings and poems; it gives you so much space to allow meaning to arise from the cauldron of your belly.

Throughout the deck there are so many potent symbols — Owl, Cauldron, Frog, The Veil. As I attune to the cards, I find they offer so much space for inquiry and curiosity. The visuals strike an exquisite balance between the macabre, so appropriate to the season, the whimsical, and the alchemical rooted in the power and agency of the wielder.

I am not usually that interested in guidebooks. Here with this deck, the book feels essential, particularly for those people who are learning to deepen their craft. There is an exquisite attention to color in Candle Magic (9); There is a wealth of information on the magical properties of Crystals and Herbs (12). This book is clearly written by experts in their fields — knowledgeable, wise women who want to make this knowing accessible.

I appreciate that Anderson and Diaz offered the reversal of each card. When you pull Wolf in reverse, the card invites you to “let yourself run wild, howl at the moon, dance naked, laugh for no reason, and sing your heart.”6 This deck is full of life that invites the querent to embody the wisdom offered in these cards through their own lived experience. 

Another delightful thing about the deck is how easy it is to shuffle the cards. They are thick enough to feel substantial and bendable enough for the perfect bridge shuffle. The flash of red as you work them is on point for the season. 

Seasons of the Witch: Samhain Oracle is a tool for someone who wants to understand witchcraft more deeply. It does not shy away from the more high sensation pieces of the witchy human-being experience–grief, transformation, letting go, being a bridge between the seen and unseen world. 

My deck is already promised to my stepdaughter, who is eagerly awaiting it. Hopefully, she’ll let me borrow it on occasion. It is a wonderful remember of how much poetry can help to anchor an idea while giving it room to grow. I absolutely plan to gift this to my playful, witchy friends when my favorite holiday looms.

Goddess Love Oracle, by Wendy Andrew

Goddess Love Oracle, written and illustrated by Wendy Andrew
Rockpool Publishing, 1925924329, 107 pages, 2021

Goddess Love Oracle is an incredible deck that packs a lot of Goddess guidance into it. Measuring only about 3 inches by 4 inches, the deck and accompanying guidebook are easily portable. In fact, creator Wendy Andrew recommends carrying the guidebook in your bag or pocket and opening it if you need inspiration or a bit of direction. As both author and illustrator, Andrew brings the wisdom of the Goddess into our lives with her beautiful paintings and accompanying writings. Based in southern England, she writes that she first heard “Goddess whispering in the wind and vibrating through the land.”7

When I first received the deck, I shuffled the cards and pulled Radiance, a card that illustrated the Goddess Flora, ringlets of golden hair flowing down her back. A halo of purple and pink flowers surround her head as she tilts her face toward the light and warmth of the sun. Her guidance was spot on for what was going on in my life: “No more hiding in the shadows, no more silencing your voice and no more walling up your heart.”8 I was immediately drawn in by the warm colors and comforting illustrations, which all have a feminine sense of fluidity to them.

Another day I did a three-card spread that Andrew calls “Work, Play and People.”9 Cards fully shuffled, I cut them into three piles and magically, I pulled three cards in numeric order, Rebirth, Reflection, and Rest, all cards that encouraged inward thinking, restoring one’s energy, and stillness. Incubating periods versus outward growth. Again, the cards resonated, and I felt the Goddesses communicated with me.

I truly loved how Andrew approached the deck – simple but certainly not simplistic, uncomplicated but complex. In the guidebook she writes that “there are no hard and fast rules about how to use the cards; simply do what feels right and that will be Goddess guiding you. Allow yourself to feel the essence of Her messages as Her love enfolds you.”10 She continues by offering very easy ways to connect with the message of the cards – sit quietly and when it feels right, shuffle the cards. Although she writes that there are many ways of laying out a card spread, she offers only three. There is a single-card reading and two three-card spreads: one on work, play, and people and the other on body, mind, and spirit.

The back of the cards contains a circle of 12 winter-bare trees, their roots extending into the earth until they reach a circle of eight purple hearts. The trees appear against what reminds me of a purple-colored, star-filled night sky. Then every Goddess is richly illustrated, inviting one to go deeper into the meaning/communication by quietly sitting with the image. As Andrew recommends, put the drawn card on your altar (if you have one) or in place where you’ll see it during the day. Allow the image and the Goddess’s message to become part of your day. Invite in the Goddess’s love and wisdom.

There are 36 Goddess cards in the deck, each card offering a message and also a connected “Goddess-inspired daily practice” such as a guided meditation, journaling/vision boarding, or doing something that brings you out of your comfort zone. The daily practices are intended to “deepen the communication”11 from the Goddess.

Almost all of the images contain animals with rabbits/hares and foxes dominating the group. I use the term animal loosely, including those of the air and water. Only two cards do not contain animal imagery, Rati (Love Your Body) and Quan Yin (Compassion). Also present in most of the cards is the spiral of the Divine Feminine, sometimes obvious and other times very subtle. The cards foster a sense of connection to the natural world.

Named Goddesses do not appear on all of the cards but those that are represented by name include Rhiannon (twice), Brigid (twice), Lakshmi, Demeter, Freya, Arta, Flora, Iananna, Cerridwen, and Mellangell. Other cards simply reference a communication from “Goddess.” 

The two cards featuring Brigid contain her flame, her light. One of Brigid’s cards is Awakening, encouraging us to live in the moment. A swan appears behind her, its extended white wings seemingly giving her the ability to fly. Spirals appear in her orange flowing hair and also on her forehead. Five white stars crown her head. He is cloaked in a garment covered in winter snowdrops, the flowers that first poke through the earth around Imbolc. A hare stands near her as she cradles a flame in her hand, Brigid asking if we are “ready to be fully awake?”12 The Goddess-inspired daily practices asks the reader to ask one’s self “What would happen if I released rather than strived?”13

Another card that I was drawn to was Hope, reminding us that “out of darkness comes light.”14 The card features Demeter and her daughter, Persephone. The star-filled winter evening sky contains a crescent moon. Bare trees stand on the landscape. In the right corner of the image one sees the pink of the rising sun. Two birds fly around Demeter, her head crowned in brown flowers. Her arms open to surround her daughter who holds a brown hare. Although this reunion will be short-lived, Persephone brings flowers and the hope of rebirth. As Andrew writes, “Demeter comes to you now, saying: ‘I understand. I hear you when you call for help. I know that there are times when life can be hard. But I also know that the darkness is balanced by the light.’”15 The Goddess-inspired daily practice encourages one to find a symbol of hope to carry around. 

Perhaps my favorite card is Wisdom, the last card in the deck. Here we encounter Cerridwen, the crone, the “ancient Welsh Mother Goddess.”16 Cerridwen is cloaked in purple, her garment covered in spirals. A spiral also appears on her forehead. She holds a cat that tenderly strokes her long hair. In her other hand she holds an orange pumpkin, carved with leaves and tendrils. The pumpkin holds a brewing hot liquid, steaming rising from its center. Cerridwen stands against a purple colored night sky, a sky that contains stars and a crescent moon.

Andrew reminds the reader that Cerridwen is here to tell that “you came into this life as a wise being and you have spent much of your time forgetting and unlearning.”17 She writes how the Goddess will “come…at significant times during your life to give you special opportunities to rediscover your inner wisdom.”18 The Goddess-inspired daily practice is a guided meditation that brings one into the presence of Cerridwen where one is invited into her house in the woods. 

I highly recommend Goddess Love Oracle for those who want a colorful burst of Goddess energy in their life. It is filled with messages of warmth and love, of hope and inspiration, of tenderness and guidance. Wendy encourages us to be “alert to any synchronicities that may occur” as we use the deck for “these may not be mere coincidences by subtle nudges from Goddess to heed her message.”19 I’ll let Andrew’s words close this review as they embody the intention of the deck: “May Goddess bless you with clarity, enlightenment and love.”20