Creating an Oracle card deck

Creating the Journey Oracle card deck has so far taken 20 years and apparently I am not quite finished yet.   When I began in 1992 my experience was like looking at these rocks in the Forbes Bay river, on the northern coast of British Columbia.  Such a welter of confusing beauty—painting the cards, discovering versions for conducting readings, receiving spirit-filled insights about correspondences between the oracle cards and the full moons, Celtic tree months, Wiccan wheel of the year and the shamanic journey—as the Journey Oracle rushed into my life as a river of creativity.

But then came years of complicated deciphering of the vision.  How are the cards to be laid out?  How are the phrases collected from the cards’ first viewing to be used?  Where do the dream questions fit into the reading?  For a long time it has been difficult to see a way through the dense tangle of possible directions, and yet the river of creativity keeps flowing, always eventually bringing me back to its main channel of manifestation.

Now at last I believe I am seeing glimmers of the shore where the Journey Oracle meets the vast ocean of human consultation with an Oracle. There are still areas to be explored: the how the dream question is homework; what is the intention for the phrase from Divine Will.  Yet I am realizing that the scale of the conversation with Spirit contained within a living Oracle is matched by the scale of transformation required to be the river of its creation.  From the pebbles worn smooth by the river’s constant tumbling to the mingling of waters as the fresh daughter flows into the salt mother—it’s been quite a journey.