History of oracle card

I have been working to find the correct form of my Journey Oracle divination card deck for 23 years, and sometimes have felt its true form was impossibly out of reach.  Then I started reading Chris Hadfield's excellent book, "An Astronaut's Guide To Life On Earth," and now I believe I am right on course.  In 1992 I had a dream in which I made a deck of Oracle cards.  The first shape the Oracle card took was a little leather circle with colored beads fastened to its rim.  This glimmer from my dream reminds me of Hadfield's wanting to be an astronaut since he was 9 years old.

I next remade the discs using hardened deer hide. Images appeared which I enhanced with India ink. The little circle of colored beads--different for each 'card'--was still part of the design. This Oracle card is Ngetal, or Reed, the Celtic tree month from Oct 28 to Nov 24 which symbolizes accuracy, aim, completion and resolution. 

These rawhide discs were too bulky to make and work with, and so I painted each card as an art work using colored inks.  The colored beads became my criteria for selecting colors.

The colored beads of Ngetal made a rainbow, and so the full spectrum of colors needed to appear in the painted card.  I understood that Nature never looses anything, and so each orbit of the cards around my original vision of the Oracle deck had to keep all the parts. Painting the cards took 5 years, and I really could relate to Hadfield saying that, "the ratio of prep time to time on orbit is many months: single day in space."

Hadfield describes how much of the work an astronaut does is for other astronauts who might already be in orbit, or are going to be, or who have just returned. Certainly my first version of self-publishing the Journey Oracle cards would not have happened without the good friends who came forward to help with design and printing.

In the last several years I have given oracle readings at the Cortes Island Friday Market, and so the friend who printed the oracle deck made this version without text that I could give to a client at the completion of a reading.

Even the blue 'shadow' from the print has been kept in this new, soon to be released edition.

 My favorite teaching (so far) in The Astronaut's Guide as been about the word attitude.  Hadfield says that in space flight, attitude refers to orientation: which direction you are pointing.  Attitude keeps one feeling steady, stable, and headed in the right direction.  Thinking like an Astronaut has helped my attitude about the journey of the Oracle cards.  Everything is right on course, and its good to know that my attitude is what keeps me heading in the right direction.