In my previous post, I shared with you the making of my first card deck, the Oracle of Himm.
Little did I know then that there would be more decks to come – and within a short period of time between each of them.
Three months later – to the day – I was inspired to create my second deck.
I had a phone conversation with a prospective new coaching client (which was significant, in and of itself, as the coaching side of my business was in decline, due in part to the collective COVID-19 experience).
It wasn’t that anything especially profound was said in the conversation that led to the inspiration; it was more of a matter of the idea to take elements of life coaching and put them into a deck.
And that was the day my Intuitive Coaching Oracle was borne.
Just as with Oracle of Himm, there was a social movement within the collective taking place as the backdrop. For Oracle of Himm, it was COVID-19, as it began making its presence known in the United States (and bringing with it “social distancing”) ; for the Intuitive Coaching Oracle, it was the Black Lives Matter movement, sparked by the death of George Floyd.
Because of that backdrop, I wanted the Intuitive Coaching Oracle (ICO) to be as diverse as I could make it – while being true to my personal experiences with people of different ethnicities and cultures.
In that deck, there are a number of men and women cards (my nod to systems like Lenormand, Kipper, and Zigeuner Wahrsagekarten), as well as family cards, relationship cards, and marriage cards, all featuring people of different races and cultures. There’s even cards for trans(gendered) and non-binary (gender fluid) people.
And because of the diverse representation, the deck has a total of 116 (!) cards. I have to say, I’m especially pleased with how ICO turned out.
I made a video walkthrough of the deck for my YouTube channel (just as I’d done for Oracle of Himm), and, at the time, I thought ICO would be a deck I would offer to the public at some point in the future.
The Universe must’ve heard me, and thought, “Not so fast…,” because shortly thereafter, I was inspired to create my third deck.
One day, I was sitting with Oracle of Himm, and drew the Archangel Uriel card. Looking at the image of a lamp/lantern, I said, “That would make a great Hermit (Tarot) card.” And right then, the Tarot of Himm was conceived.
The Tarot of Himm is a personal deck, as the Minors are a deck of playing cards. I made it that way to pay homage to the (sleep) dream that put me on the path of becoming a cartomancer (which I shared here – and its follow-up here).
Keeping with the theme of the (now) Hermit card, I deliberately searched for imagery that didn’t have people in them – the very opposite of what I was going for with ICO. I succeeded for the most part, with the exception of Hanged One – that one had to have a person in it, I felt.
And, just as with the previous decks, I thought I was done. But time would prove there was another deck within me.
My fourth deck was inspired by the upcoming release of Kyle Gray’s latest deck, the Angel Guide Oracle (it is now out in the world), which I had pre-ordered. As Kyle teased out cards from the deck, I thought to myself, “If I were to create an angel oracle deck, what would mine look like?”
One could argue that Oracle of Himm is an angel deck (and I’ve said that myself), as it has some of the Archangels represented in it. But it also has other metaphysical and esoteric topics mentioned aside from the Archangels.
When I pondered this question, it was with the idea of guardian angels in mind, as they are the angels who are divinely assigned to each of us – and I personally wanted to create something that would aid me in bonding with mine more.
And that’s how my Everyday Angel Oracle came into being. The images consist of angel statues, because I love looking at them so much. And it was a nice way to carryover elements of Oracle of Himm, as there were cards in that deck where I used angel statues to represent the angels that “visited” me years ago (the Anaiel and Cassiel cards, as well as the Existential Angst card).
With Everyday Angel Oracle, I noticed a style emerging within my process: the images were “framed” in a black paisley border, and some were more of a “landscape” variety, as I didn’t want to lose a lot of the image to fit the cards (and I didn’t want to have to turn the cards on their sides to do so, either). With that in mind, Everyday Angel Oracle was the first oracle card-sized deck I made
I so loved how this deck turned out, that it led me to re-do Oracle of Himm, changing its size from Tarot card to oracle card-size. In the first edition, I “stretched” some of the images to fit the size of the card; making the card size larger allowed me to feature those images in correct proportion.
And just as I did with Everyday Angel Oracle, some of the cards are “framed” with a similar border, giving these two decks some cohesion; I liken Oracle of Himm to a Majors-only Tarot deck, and Everyday Angel Oracle are its Minors.
It was at this point that I really thought I was done, that there wasn’t another deck in me. After all, I just created three decks back to back.
But, no…
Shortly thereafter, I had a (sleep) dream. In the dream, I’m holding a deck of cards in my left hand. No bag or box; I literally have the cards in hand. It’s daytime, and I step out into the street, walking through traffic – not at a crosswalk, but walking around cars as they move along the street.
Then the scene changes: I’m now with a man and he’s telling me that he wants to create a deck of cards for people new to card reading.
And then I could feel myself starting to wake up.
As I wake up, I “see” a word in my mind: Neophyte. As I wake up fully, I realize there’s another deck to create – and that’s its name.
Since the inspiration came from Dreamtime, I wanted the images to have a surreal, dream-like quality to them. It was a lot of fun scouring Pixabay (the source I go to for images) for just the right and perfect imagery. Most often, I would see an image, and the name of the card immediately came to mind.
I kept with the design elements I had with Everyday Angel Oracle, and framed the images within a border of silver sparkles. And I also kept with the “landscape” format for some, as I didn’t want to cut off certain parts of the image.
And an interesting thing happened: As I began showing the cards on social media, there was a great deal of interest in them – more with this deck than when I shared images from the previous decks.
And that interest led to making the decision to share Neophyte with the public.
As I write this, the deck is now in production and my initial copy is being sent to me. I’ll be taking a look at it to see if there are any changes I need to make, as well as actually using the deck to conduct readings. I’ll also be writing both a short and an expanded version of a guidebook that will be offered in e-book formats, as well as exploring how I want to distribute the deck.
And so that’s what I did with my summer – my season of oracle card deck creation. It will be interesting to see what the fall brings…
life of HIMM 