Oracle Card Review

Beautiful souls of the internet, I present to you my first review 💜

The Witching Hour Oracle by Lorriane Anderson, illustrated by Olivia Burki

My first thought when I received this deck was that there was too much plastic shrink wrap used in the packaging: the box was wrapped, and then the cards inside the box were also shrink wrapped. While this may not be a problem for some of you, I disliked it. It made it more difficult to access the cards, and there is too much plastic packaging in the world already.

The cards themselves are beautiful. The Junior Witch said the artwork gave him “adult Disney” vibes, and I can see what he means. The box contains 44 beautifully illustrated cards and a guidebook to help you interpret them.

The cards are easy to shuffle: they glide smoothly against each other and it is also easy to fan them out to choose the cards. They are slightly larger than I am comfortable with, but I have small hands and have this issue with many Oracle decks. I cannot be the only person who would love Oracle decks to be the same size as playing cards!

For the purposes of this review, I chose to use the “Phases of the Moon” spread from the guidebook. No particular reason for choosing this spread except for it being a quick and easy choice.

1. New: What is unfolding in your situation?

2. Waxing: An action to take

3. Full: What do you already know about your situation?

4. Waning: Something to release

   
   

I am not going to get into a full reading here in this review, but I will tell you some of the things that I really liked about the guidebook. Firstly, each card entry has several keywords associated with it. (Prying Eyes says: someone has their eyes on you, competition, defensiveness). I particularly like this because it can make it easier to do a quick reading or card pull when you don’t have time to do more.

Next in the entry, it tells you what the tarot companion card would be (Seven of wands, for Prying Eyes). The Prying Eyes and Seven of Wands have similar energies. Some people like to use both tarot and oracle cards in readings, using the oracle cards to confirm what the tarot cards said, or for further guidance. This isn’t something that I see in many of the guidebooks for the cards I own.

The next section of the guidebook entry is the information about the card and what it means. Some of the entries are longer than others, and this section may also contain a reversed meaning for the card (Some oracle decks contain reversed meanings for all the cards. This deck does not do that, and I have so far only found two entries that contain information about a reversal).

Finally, there is a section listing the “Companion Cards”: If these cards appear in a reading with the card you have pulled, it changes the meaning in some way. Those cards and the altered meaning are listed here. (I really like this feature of The Witching Hour Oracle ~ it allows for a reading that is a little more nuanced or personal).

I have only used these cards in a handful of readings so far, but the results have been very accurate. I find that each of my decks has a different personality, and these cards feel almost motherly ~ they handle the less pleasant topics in a firm but loving manner.

Overall, I would recommend The Witching Hour Oracle to anyone who is looking for a new deck. It was moderately priced (usually £18.99 on Amazon, but I got mine on sale for £15.99), but you can buy it from other places. There is also an app from the publishing company (Rockpool) that shows the decks they have published and is supposed to make it easier to purchase them, but it is buggy and doesn’t appear to have been updated for quite a while.

Morgana’s Rating: 💜💜💜💜

4/5