The Love Pack --- Help!

I just received in the mail to help give me guidance to find love in addition to tarot. This is my first oracle deck and quite frankly, I was somewhat disappointed. Or maybe frustrated. I didn't care for the books interpretation of the cards. Maybe I was expecting it to seem like a tarot book where it will blatanly give me answers.

Also, I didn't like the book's spreads. I tried using this oracle in a tarot spread. It didn't work for me.

Does anyone use this deck and created their own spread for it? I need examples of Guidance and Prediction spreads that has worked for you.

Hi BLFO,

I am very fond of oracles and had a look at the Love Pack at AT. It looks lovely! My advice or rather, what I think is happening to you, is what you yourself suspected. Oracles are NOT tarots. The reading requires a bit more on intuition because you don´t have all those handy dandy numbers and suits and courts to help you out. You´re in a way, on your own. You and the card. Try getting acquainted with the cards first. Look at each one, see if there are some neat details that tell you something more than the sentence at the bottom. For example, in the card "Never Enough" is it clear that the lady wants always more but look closely at their postures. the guy is offering her a heart but his stance is a bit too relaxed to show he´s fallen for her. It almost seems like he has a hand in his pocket. Also, whose hearts are those on the floor? His as well, or other lovers´? The fact that she is sitting means she always wants more but doesn´t go out looking for love: she waits for it to knock at ther door.
As you see, if I had this deck (have to control my buying urges now...) I would dismiss the book at first. You may use the sentence at the botom but train your eyes and heart to read into the card a bit more. And please, do not give up. Oracles are great insight tools. Ask Valeria for tips. She´s been doing an amazing work with daily draws and the mystical Lenormand.
As far as spread, I would go for a small one. From one to three cards max. Ask a single question such as "What image do I project as far as love is concerned"?
Ask two questions such as "What type of relationship am I looking for?" as opposed to "What type of relationship will bring me more happiness?". For this one, shuffle twice and see how the two match.
I´m not much of a spread person; the moderators may help you out with tons of excelent ones. But I do believe that once people learn how fascinating oracles are, they get hooked fo life!

I hope it helps and good luck on your journey.

Love,

Ana

Yeah, because I thought I made a mistake buying these cards. I decided to see what other oracles look like and quite frankly i can't see how people can read from them. Maybe I am so used to tarot that oracles just look like plain old artwork on a card with no real meaning.

I will give it a try. I am just frustrated. I expected something different. I thought an oracle was going to give me answers like IChing or Runes. I didn't think I had to still use intuition based on the illustration.

I have the deck and I find the keywords and images rather clear. The book gives more insight about the cards. I agree though that the spreads in the book tend to be crappy but you can easily create your own spreads for your matters. Personaly I love oracles with images to rely on, it's clearer and you can use intuition as well, based on the images. I have quite much less success with oracles like I-Ching and runes on my side which I find more confusing than anything else.

Hi BFLO!
I took a look at the love pack as well and I really like it!! If it wasnt for the fact that I am trying to save $ i'd go out and buy it right now!
Oracles are not at all like Tarot cards. Give it some time and you will see that oracles are really helpful. They just go more on intuition and what you see/feel in the images. I find oracles much easier than tarot and you can ask yes or no questions with some decks which is always helpful. Also with oracles I rarely use the book. I find I dont need to really the answer is usually very clear bc its in the image. I only use the book if I am trully stumped. Like once I asked about a job situation and kept getting a card about healing, I was like what is that!?!? but eventually I got the meaning of it. I personally don't use spreads with oracles. I ask a question and pull out one card, 3 tops and tie them in like a story.
Stick with it, once you get use to it and learn to differentiate between tarot and oracles I think you'll really like it!!
good luck!!

Okay, I will just pull one card. I was pulling many like Tarot by trying to create a spread. I think Oracles is a one card pull kind of thing.

For me, this deck works well with small spreads, or with purpose-built spreads to explore certain issues in my life, or the life of the people I have relationships with.

An example short spread I like to use is:

1 - where I am now
2 - what I need to pay attention to (this includes advice)
3 - where I am heading

Simple and effective. If you are now in "loneliness"; and you need to pay attention to "joy" - you know you can come out of your loneliness through embracing all the joyful things in your life. The third card will either give you an outcome of where you are going if you follow the advice, or where you are going if you don't (depending on whether it's positive or negative). E.g. if your third card is "healing", you will see that you are healing your loneliness through embracing joy. But if it is "never enough", you will see that you are limiting yourself and through not embracing simple joy, nothing is ever enough and you continue to feel lonely.


It is also very - very! - useful to explore what I learnt from home and how that carries through into my present love life (both negative and positive things).

For instance you can build a spread like this:

attitudes learnt from mother (2 or 3 cards)
attitudes learnt from father (2 or 3 cards)
attitudes learnt from their relationship (2 or 3 cards)
attitudes learnt from siblings (if any - 2 or 3 cards)
attitudes learnt from peers (2 or 3 cards)
attitudes learnt from past love relationships (you can either pull 2 or 3 cards in general, or if you are looking in depth, do a special reading and look at each relationship, pulling 2 or 3 cards per relationship)

This helps to pinpoint where you are going well and where you are going not so well, and where these attitudes comes from. Then you can reinforce the positive, release the negative, forgive those people who gave you examples or experiences that are not helpful, and thank those people who gave you examples and experiences that are helpful (simple, huh? ). This deck is a worktool and a map - but not a miracle deck. It won't give you a good relationship. Only you can do that.


I like Ana Luisa's explanation of paying attention to the attitudes of the people on the cards. A lot can be got out of that! Use it with and without the book and compare.

One card draws to start off with is probably best. But once you are comfortable with that, there is no limit.

thanks. I like your 3 card spread.

I might do this weekly and create a thread on it. I see that some of you are doing that.

BLFO said:

I just received in the mail to help give me guidance to find love in addition to tarot. This is my first oracle deck and quite frankly, I was somewhat disappointed. Or maybe frustrated. I didn't care for the books interpretation of the cards. Maybe I was expecting it to seem like a tarot book where it will blatanly give me answers.

Also, I didn't like the book's spreads. I tried using this oracle in a tarot spread. It didn't work for me.

Does anyone use this deck and created their own spread for it? I need examples of Guidance and Prediction spreads that has worked for you.

Click to expand...

Hi BFLO. I have this deck and really like it. I don't use it a lot, but when I have, I've really enjoyed using the cards. The artwork is lovely, the images are very evocative and quite easy to interpret (for me), the little hardcover book is quite good. A lot of thought has gone into this deck.

I've mostly just done 3 card past, present, future type spreads for myself and friends. However, I once did an in-depth 'Partnership Potential Reading' (see page 111 of the book) with a boyfriend. Wow, what a reading....very powerful! There are 7 card positions for this spread (eg Love, Friendship, Communication, etc), and you each pull a card for each position....so there are 14 cards in total. Well, for the Love card position, we got two purple 'Problem' cards: Trap, and Deception. The card Trap shows a woman behind a cage door, with the key on the ground on the other side, and out of reach. The card Deception shows a man offering a woman a big bunch of flowers with one hand. The other hand is behind his back holding a large chain with a padlock on it. *grin* These cards were absolutely spot on....I was the person being deceived and trapped, there was a lot of emotional abuse and manipulation, and I ended up breaking up with him.

So in my experience, these cards can be very powerful!

Regarding spreads, I often make my own spreads up, particularly for tarot. So don't be afraid to make up your own spread. Get out a piece of paper and pen, and just jot down the questions you want to ask. Then make up a card position for each question. And wallah...you have a spread. Try not to write questions that end in a yes or no....as its very hard for a tarot or oracle card to just say yes or no. Instead, try to make them open questions, like:
What is stopping me from having a loving relationship?

Have you tried doing the 'Patterns of the Present' Reading on page 128 of the book? That one looks quite revealing.

I once made up my own 4 card spread for the potential of a relationship with this guy I liked. I made up my own card positions, eg friendship, love, communication.....
It was very revealing. For the communication position I got Drought, and I think one of the other cards was Bad Choice.

Have fun with your new deck,
Liz.

I love this deck. But it isn't one i use lightly. This is one I actually use for working through issues. To read with it for someone else, for example, can take hours. The spreads I do with it are not the sort you take at face value and then walk away from. When a negative card comes up I work through it. (Either by myself if I'm reading for myself or with the sitter if there is one). I work out why the card comes up. I recognise where the negative feeling is coming from and I release it or acknowledge it. Then I draw another card. If I draw another negative then I start again working out whats going on for me. And I keep drawing cards (and working through the layers) till I come to a postive one. This is a heavy duty deck for me.

I have had great results with it being used in this way. I actually find the negative half of the deck much more useful than the positive. Though, of course, I prefer to get positive cards.