Quick Specs
- Format: Boxed oracle deck with 112-page full-color guidebook
- Card Count: 45 cards
- Card Size: 3 x 5 inches
- Card Edges: Gilt-edged
- Author: Angi Sullins
- Artist: Evaboneva
- Publisher: U.S. Games Systems
- ISBN: 9781646711628
Inside Wisdom of the Wild Things Oracle
Wisdom of the Wild Things Oracle starts from one idea: the original wildlings live in the realm of psyche. Angi Sullins built the deck around the critters of every shape and size that dwell in that inner forest, and Evaboneva drew them. The cards introduce you to wise, mysterious woodland creatures, so a draw feels like a meeting with a character who has something to tell you. The deck invites you into the shadowed wilds of your own inner forest, and the messages you find there are introspective and encouraging. The creatures stand for the untamed side of a person, so the deck turns your attention inward. You get to know each one, notice what it points toward in your own life and carry that back out of the trees with you. Because every card is a creature with something to say, a reading can run like a short conversation: you ask, a wild thing answers, and you decide what to do with the reply. A single card is enough for a daily message, and a quiet evening with several cards gives you a small cast of wild things to think about. Reach for it when you want guidance in the voice of a creature.
The cover sets the mood. A pale-haired girl with pointed ears wears a red, white-spotted mushroom cap like a hat and cradles a snail against her orange dress. White hearts and scalloped trim edge her skirt, patterned bands circle her sleeves, and her striped stockings and bow-tied shoes show at the hem. She stands in a misty forest between two tree trunks with weathered faces, a thin curl of pale smoke rises beside her cap, small pale eyes glint from the dark forest behind her, and red toadstools line the bottom edge. Her expression is solemn and wide-eyed. The artwork blends spooky and cute, and its surrealist style gives the creatures a side that is both vulnerable and dark. The same blend carries through the cards, whose whimsical, slightly eerie woodland creatures belong to the deep woods. Inside, the full-color guidebook gives a description and meaning for every card and scatters short poems through its pages, so each creature arrives with words to go with its picture. The deck comes in a sturdy box with a magnetic closure, and a drawstring organza pouch keeps the cards together when you carry them.
Practical Ritual Applications
Pull one card with your morning coffee and carry that creature through the day, watching for where its message shows up. Log the date, the card and one line about how it landed in a notebook from my journals collection; a month of those lines shows which wild things keep turning up. When you want a longer sitting, draw three cards and treat them as a small cast: the creature that greets you, the one you keep dodging and the one watching from the trees. That layout is a suggestion, so change it freely and invent your own. If one creature keeps turning up, give it a page of its own. Keep the cards in the organza pouch between readings and the box on a shelf within reach. Take one card on an evening walk and let its creature give you something to look for among the trees.
How to Read with Wisdom of the Wild Things Oracle
Here is one way to begin your first reading with this deck.
- Meet the Creatures First
Go through the cards face up, slowly, before you ask a question. Let your eye rest on the creatures that draw you and the ones that make you uneasy, and notice how the art mixes sweet details with eerie ones. Then open the guidebook and read the opening pages and a few card entries. An evening spent this way makes the deck familiar, so your first question feels like a conversation with someone you've already met.
- Draw One Card and Write First
Shuffle in whatever way suits you while you hold a question in mind, such as what you need to notice this week. Draw one card and look at it for a full minute. Write down how the creature looks, the first feeling it stirs and any connection to your question before you read a word of the guidebook. Your own impression is part of the reading, and it is easy to lose once the book's text is in your head.
- Read the Entry and Answer Back
Find the card's entry in the guidebook and read what it says about the card, along with any poem you come across nearby. Compare the entry with your note and mark where the two meet. Then write one sentence that answers the creature, saying what you'll do or notice because of it. Slip the card back into the deck and the deck into its pouch; one card is enough for a sitting, and the creature will still be there tomorrow.
The Tarot Fellow Standard
I stock Wisdom of the Wild Things Oracle because it gives inner work a face you can look at. I choose oracle decks by two things: art with a clear point of view and a guidebook that explains each card. This one offers both, with woodland creatures drawn in a style that is sweet and eerie at once and a full-color book to go with them. It suits readers who like their guidance with a little shadow in it and a lot of forest. You’ll find it beside the other cards in my oracle decks collection, where it is the one to reach for when you want a creature for company.
Frequently Asked Questions
The guidebook describes each card and sets out no fixed spreads, so how you lay the cards out is up to you. The publisher suggests drawing a single card daily, and single-card pulls also work for insight into a situation. A beginner's guide to oracle cards recommends that same daily single draw as a starting point, and you can add layouts of your own whenever you want a longer conversation with the creatures.
A Tarot deck has a fixed structure of 22 Major Arcana and 56 Minor Arcana cards, 78 in all. An oracle deck makes its own rules: anyone can create one and choose its number of cards, its themes and its layout, and Bustle puts typical sizes at 36 to 64 cards or more. Oracle decks often come with a guidebook, and Bustle, citing Elite Daily, reports that they tend to be easier to learn and are more free-flowing. This deck follows that pattern, with its own creatures and a guidebook to read them by.
Angi Sullins wrote the deck, and the artwork is by Evaboneva. The boxed set includes a 112-page full-color guidebook that gives a description and meaning for every card and scatters short poems through its pages. Sullins has written other decks for the same publisher, including Dream Song Oracle.
Oracle decks suit questions that call for inner reflection, such as what to focus on this month or what to do when you're stuck between two choices, according to HipLatina. This deck leans toward personal themes: deeper questions about what blocks you and the shadowed sides of yourself fit its woodland creatures well. Write the question down before you draw, as one beginner's guide advises, and the card has something specific to answer.
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