Thank you for the welcome, Emmsma
I've only just got the Celtic Tree Oracle and I didn't refer to the book when making my choice of favourite and least favourite, but just chose instinctively. I loved sooo many of the cards, but my shortlist were all trees with bare branches and energy currents swirling around them! I went for Willow in the end, and that is partly because I'm in love with the enormous willow tree in our garden.
My least favourite were all cards which didn't show an actual tree, but more of a detail. I chose Muin - in some Ogham lists this is bramble, which I do like, but often it's grape vine. In this case, the card just shows bunches of grapes. It doesn't appeal partly because I love the shapes of the trees so much, and partly because it's not native to this land and I realise how much I respond to the land where I live. Part of the magic for me is actually seeing these trees in the wild.
Now, the Celtic Oracle. This deck gets a bad press when compared to the Celtic Shaman's Pack. The cards illustrate exactly the same concepts as the CSP, but in different styles. I like some of them more, some of them less in each of the decks. In the Celtic Oracle, my shortlist of five contained four of the animal cards - Owl, Stag, Crow and Crane. The other one on the shortlist was the Father, which shows a fiery Celtic mask hovering over a cauldron, which itself floats on water. I like all these five better than their counterparts in the Celtic Shaman's Pack. In the end I plumped for Crane, which like the Father card has fiery elements over the water in which the Crane stands. It is a very magical-looking card, and I know that a large part of my fascination with tarot and oracles is in the search for 'magic'.
My least favourite card, in both the CSP and the Celtic Oracle is the Keeper of the Wheel. The card itself is boring and un-emotive - no more than a pattern, really, and I don't really go along with the idea of 'Fate', anyway, which is the meaning of the card.
On to the Druid Plant Oracle. Another instinctive choice - although I do know something about plants, which I'm sure will have affected the cards I feel particularly drawn to. A difficult choice between Ivy, Betony and Comfrey, but in the end Comfrey was the winner. I love the movement in this card; the plant itself looks so magical beside the water and then you notice the bones of the hare beside it ...
My least favourite was very easy to choose. I really don't like the Restorers card, which shows a red-haired woman with a pestle and mortar staring out of a window, with bunches of drying herbs above and in front of her. This image is on the front cover of the box and book, and it is probably the reason why I was put off investigating the deck until just recently, after I saw scans of the cards themselves. None of the other cards has a human being on it, and I much prefer the plants themselves to 'people' the images. I don't imagine myself as that woman, so in a way it distances me rather than drawing me in.
When I look at my favourite cards from each of the three decks, I notice that the Crane and Comfrey both have running water at the bottom, while the Willow is closely associated with water. They all have a lot of fiery energy in the main part of the card - and all, even, have yellow 'skies'. I'm not sure what this means, but it's a surprise to me and something to think further about.
