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CONFUSED ABOUT ORACLE CARDS? ORACLE EXPERTS EXPLAIN WHAT IT’S ALL ABOUT.

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Are oracle cards a type of tarot? What’s the connection?

DANA O’DRISCOLL, author/illustrator of Tarot of Trees and The Plant Spirit Oracle and author of Sacred Actions: Living the Wheel of the Year through Sustainable Practices:

Tarot is a specific system of divination that includes 78 cards that fall into five categories: four minor arcana (often cups, wands, swords, and pentacles) and the major arcana.

Oracle decks are very different in that every oracle deck has its own system of meanings and no set number of cards. Each oracle deck can have any number of interpretations, themes, artwork, and more.

Tarot and oracle decks both use the principle of archetypes to help explore meanings. In an oracle deck, many different archetypes and other concepts/meanings/themes may be explored—what and how vary considerably by deck. For example, one deck may interpret the role of the trickster through an animal (say, a raccoon), another through a plant (such as the staghorn sumac), and a third deck may choose a person to represent the trickster.

YASMIN BOLAND, author of Moonology: Working With the Magic of the Lunar Cycles and two oracle decks: Moonology and Moonology Manifestation:

On the surface, the main difference between the two decks is that tarot follows a set format, whereas oracle cards do not. Less superficially, I feel that most oracle cards are less potentially upsetting than tarot cards. I’ve used tarot cards for years and they are super accurate, but cards like the 3 Swords or The Tower tend to be very worrying to people.