Some of you may wonder how I got into oracle cards. It seems pretty unlikely for a girl who grew up pretty religious to start pulling cards for guidance, and if you’d told me that I would be pulling cards, I would have said, you were telling a falsehood (in my younger years, I was not allowed to say lie). For those who don’t know, I grew up Baptist in Alabama, and the only cards I was allowed to play with growing up were playing cards. Even then, I couldn’t play with them at my grandma’s house because she considered it gambling. Speaking to God or Jesus and asking for guidance was only permissible through the power of prayer. I was taught a prayer to say each night before bed and wasn’t really schooled on the asking for guidance part until I got older, but even then, I was struggling to hear the “still, small voice.” Needless to say, my prayer life suffered miserably because it felt like a chore and a duty more so than a means to communicate.
Fast forward to 2016 and a girl in one of the Facebook groups I was in offered to pull cards for people from the Magical Unicorns oracle deck by Doreen Virtue. What could be bad about unicorns? My mom used to buy me Lisa Frank all the time and unicorns featured heavily, so I took the girl up on her offer. She pulled three cards for me—Love, One Step at a Time and Happy Surprise—in response to my question of whether I should move forward with joining a particular coaching program. The essence of the message of these cards really helped confirm that I was loved and that if I took things one step at a time, I’d get a happy surprise. At least that was my interpretation of the guidance, and it felt really right for me at the time because I was feeling a bit overwhelmed but didn’t want to miss out on an opportunity if it would help me with the coaching I was doing at the time. A year later, I realize how amazing it was that I followed that guidance because I’m no longer even doing the coaching I was doing back in 2016 and that program I would have joined though great likely wouldn’t be necessary for me in my life at this time. The cards guided me, indirectly, to what I ultimately am doing now, which is sharing my love of oracle cards as a transformational tool and helping others to live their best lives right now not later.
Shortly after that initial reading, I bought my first deck, which was Doreen Virtue’s Daily Guidance from Your Angels. After getting that first deck, I began to do daily readings for myself to empower and guide me throughout my day. I loved having an instant connection to the Divine. I committed to taking courses to make me a better reader for others too, but overwhelmingly, I was more called to use the cards for myself more so than using it for others. I felt somewhat selfish in doing this, but I really felt the cards were helping me to see areas of my life that I needed to focus on and learn to help grow my intuition and my trust of the Divine. It wasn’t until I entered into Colette Baron-Reid’s Oracle School that I found out why. It’s because intuitively, I was using them in the way that Colette uses them. Her teaching is so different from any other oracle card course you’ve ever seen or heard of, and it’s worth every penny.
Not only does Colette want you to learn the cards for yourself first, she actually encourages you not to read for others and to throw all your pre-conceived notions about cards out the window. She teaches on the history of divination and divination tools. She explains how cards and card readers, psychics, mediums and natural healers, which in so many societies were referred to as witches, came to be seen as taboo and not “of God”, when in actuality they were the primary way that of connecting to the Divine prior to the establishment of central meeting places for the worship of the Divine like temples and churches. The word divination has at its root the word “divine”. One of the synonyms for divination is prophecy, which is listed as one of the spiritual gifts in 1 Corinthians 12:8-10. But, I digress. In addition to learning the history of divination, I also learned about why the cards are so accurate, how they have no power without me and how they are simply a reflection of my own soul.
Yes, the cards simply reflected what was inside of me already. They reflected the secret longings and desires that I’d been afraid to admit to myself. They encouraged me to take steps that took me out of my comfort zone to live more authentically. They empowered me to speak my truth and to feel my feelings. For this, I will forever be grateful. It’s also why I feel so called to share my love of oracle cards as a transformational and healing tool and invite you to get to know the wonder of oracle cards as well.