Deck of the Month Study Group??

So December 1st and time to face the last month of the challenge.

I have had a hard time trying to decide which oracle to devote this month too. I thought I would look back at the several months where I had good times with the oracle of the month.

January -- Sacred Path. I really liked this once I got into it and I still have some reference stuff that I can follow up with this. This is definitely a contender.

February -- Rory's Story Cubes. I love these. I have gone on to buy nearly all the sets inexistence and this has meant ordering them from the UK and getting them shipped to the U.S. Very much a contender.

March -- Oracle of Vision. Love this deck, so beautiful but not as much connection. Not a likely contender but an oracle I liked in the year.

April -- Oracle of Initiation. This is a great deck and truly deserves more of my time. I sense something in the depth of it that I have barely started to scratch.

The summer months were disappointing and I didn't really see any success


August -- Isis Oracle I liked it for the art and the new ideas that it gave me but didn't seem very rounded so not going on with it.

September -- Kipper cards This was kind of a cheat but I liked them a lot and will be using them in the future. Got the deck by Ciro and love it. Strong, Strong Contender.

October -- Halloween Oracle. Great deck but not for December.

November was an off month as well.


So these are the oracles I have used this year and are up for the continued use and study in December.

There is also the chance that I might try out something new.
I am drawn to the Sacred Rebels deck, I am considering a Fae deck, or the Transparent Oracle that I have had for years but never really used. I picked up the Goddess Inspirational deck and it holds a promise too.

Then I have been wanting to explore of the Oracle of Shadow and Light, and Oracle of the Shapeshifter by Lucy Cavendish.

I also came across a French deck based on coffee grounds reading that I have studied but am think that I could get into again.

So I am going to take the next day or two to decide but was wondering what everyone else might be thinking.

Onyx.

I'm definitely sticking with the Solar System and Elements fact cards. If forced to use just one I could read with the Solar System but the paired Elements cards sharpen the messages up considerably .

The Solar System book is also giving me a lot of interesting ideas about the planets in order of their distance from the Sun, the corresponding numbers and their meanings, so I'm starting to get a general meaning for each planet etc. as well as what's shown in the individual cards, similar perhaps to when you get a majority of one suit in a Tarot spread .

These days I am working with the Shaman's Pack by Chesca Potter. I started in November, doing all the suggested exercises - that is, whenever I had some time to spare.
My schedule is quite taxing right now, I have several terminally ill patients, one of them a close friend, so there is little time to "play and do exercises" like that. I found, that inevitably they got painted/ clouded by what is going on IRL right now. In order to walk in Balance through this sad, upsetting and heavy time, I have to be mindful of "self care" and not ad any extra weight. So I am going to take a step back and for December and just use a simpler, more uplifting Oracle, =The Well Being Cards by Esther and Jerry Hicks, which I received as a present last month. They are not reallllly Oracle cards, but more affirmation guides and that is all right for now.
Blessings to you all!♥

Drawing from a deck of positive and happy thoughts when that's what you need sounds very sensible Mi-Shell .

I wobbled a bit this weekend after randomly drawing The Death of the Sun as a study card and thinking how blunt and one dimensional it was compared to the Tarot Death card which has all those extra ideas about how the ending of one thing can be making room for or leading on to the birth of another. The Death of the Sun is just a death or ending card though - there may be a period of brightening or expansion first, but when the fuel's all gone there's no coming back .

There are still a couple of Thoth Tarot books on my Kindle so I had another read today to see if they made any more sense and whether I should perhaps give Tarot another try. Well they didn't - they were still as complicated as ever with endless occult associations and magical meanings that I don't have enough lifetime to pursue .

In the end I put the Kindle down and asked my two decks What is the best thing I could achieve with this deck? and now I feel much better .

The Solar System card was Uranus - "the first planet to be discovered that was entirely unknown to the ancients. Its discovery was a sensation" .

The Elements card was a special introductory one What is the Periodic Table? and the sentence leaping out was "Whether you want to enjoy the pictures or study the technical data in detail, these cards offer a variety of activities impossible with a traditional periodic table poster" .

So that's pretty plain - I could find something completely new and outside the traditions of the Tarot .

In hindsight then, I guess The Death of the Sun might be referring to my Tarot reading career .

2dogs said:

There are still a couple of Thoth Tarot books on my Kindle so I had another read today to see if they made any more sense and whether I should perhaps give Tarot another try. Well they didn't - they were still as complicated as ever with endless occult associations and magical meanings that I don't have enough lifetime to pursue .
......
So that's pretty plain - I could find something completely new and outside the traditions of the Tarot .

In hindsight then, I guess The Death of the Sun might be referring to my Tarot reading career .

Click to expand...

Dear 2Dogs!
I feel for you and your confusion about all the complicated and endlessly occult associations and magical meanings that are associated with the Thoth Tarot.
but, see, they just function from a premise of "superior knowledge" and from the conviction, that memorising all these varied meanings and combining then "accurately" will make you a sufficiently capable reader. Over the years I have met several people, that eventually, after years of careful study and "learning all these meanings by route" they STILL had NO "inner sense", no intuition, no empathic insight into the person, they were trying to read for and failed miserably in face to face readings.
I have seen one of them, with an"identical memory rattttttteling down everything there was to know of a spread of cards and still not get / reach/ touch the sitter with any meaningful insights.
She came across as VERY knowledgeable, an enigmatic oracle spewing out occult wisdom and rather proud of what she knew.....
this however most likely is NOT YOU!
Especially Oracles hone deep seated intuitions, when things come together without rules and in a rather liquid flowing way, that focuses on the sitter, rather than the card meanings.
The Thoth of course is a preferred deck for individuals that feel "ifff i learn all that knowledge I will be a good reader".......
the Thoth also is the brain child of good old Aleister, who in my personal opinion was rather eccentric and used occult knowledge to wield power and influence over people. that in my personal opinion does not put him within the ranks of "good", compassionate people, that use their knowledge and gifts with humility and honesty.
This is for example, why I personally have always staid clear of the Thoth Tarot. I do not like the energy of its creator.
Maybe to follow the teachings of a person like that is also not really your calling?
There are other ways, to use the Tarot: The ancient ways the Marseilles decks are used, the wonderful and compassionate way, many modern deck creators approach and often re- invent the Tarot
Tarot has many facets.
I am sure, you will find one, that you find you can dove-tail your reading skills with.
Other than that - remember, that Tarot is just a specific kind of Oracle.

Thank you very much for that Mi-Shell. The Book of Thoth comes across to me as a very scientific analysis of the meaning of the cards and their connections but Crowley's magic is not something I want to mess with. I think I need to keep studying and practising with the pair of decks I've ended up with and just see where it leads .

I got this fantastic reading from the New Deck Spread for the Solar System / Elements cards back in April 2014 but never posted it up. It's just as well I recorded it to look back on now .

1. Tell me about yourself. What is your most important characteristic? Eros / Tellurium. The meanings come from the pairs formed by the attraction of corresponding cards.
2. What are your strengths as a deck? Venus / Berkelium. Stimulating the imagination to reveal meanings hidden inside the cards.
3. What are your limits as a deck? Jupiter / Thorium. The whole world is present in miniature but the explicit meanings are missing. The limits are those of the reader's imagination.
4. What do you bring to the table -- what are you here to teach me? Deimos / Gallium. The absence of predefined labels gives space for the reader to discover their own meanings and the power to change them by means of their own energy.
5. How can I best learn from and collaborate with you? Solar System / Ruthenium. Look up to the awesome spectacles of the cosmos, but see also that their patterns repeat at our own scale and reflect our own lives.
6. What is the potential outcome of our working relationship? The Moon and the Tides / Platinum. Understanding the web of forces in the world, the connections between things and how they act and react on one another.

As for actually studying my decks, there is a rather complicated structure to the physical Elements and I can find some correspondences between the planets of the Solar System and numbers, but they don't obviously group into neat suits like the Tarot does .

So I did a reading asking if there was any system to these decks and drew:

Iapetus - showing the surface of a cratered moon with an unusual ridge like a long mountain, twice the height of Everest, that extends along a third of the equator.

Cesium - having some similarities in the image, but talking in the book of a number of things - golden liquid, explosions, exposing false claims - but mainly the measurement of time with "atomic clocks". Now these are tuned by slowly adjusting a signal until a peak response is obtained, and for this to be done accurately requires perfectly isolating the cesium atoms from all outside influences.

The conclusion I draw from these is that there is no system - the way to use the cards is just to draw the pair and see what stands out, try and get the pure meaning by studying the corresponding sections of text or images in the books and filter out the bits that don't fit in. Drawing the cards in pairs means that certain features will match and reinforce each other while others won't, depending on the particular combination. The cards therefore don't all have fixed meanings or structure, but a range of different characteristics that can be expressed in context - in this way I suppose they behave like real entities .

Does anyone use Oracle apps rather than printed cards? I felt like trying something with beautiful artwork and inspirational messages to think about and found a load of cheap apps on the Play Store for my Android tablet. I tried a couple that were a free download with just a few of the cards so you can have a look at the cards and messages, then buy the full set of cards for any deck you like, and went for the Spirit Oracle Cards. The artwork is lovely on a lit up 10" tablet. .