Goddess Oracle Cards
Sharing an inspiring gift from my friend Alison Price...
For Christmas this year, my good friend and podcast partner, Alison Price of Starzology, gave me a lovely deck of Goddess Oracle cards. Part thoughtful gift, part reminder that I need to create my own deck of badass goddess cards one of these days!
The deck was designed by mystical illustrator Katja Perez, and contains 50 goddess cards from mythologies around the world. Also included is a 96-page booklet with descriptions of each goddess along with rituals inspired by each goddess.
The cards are bright and colorful, focusing on the central figure with abbreviated surroundings, most incorporating symbolic elements, like fiery halos for solar goddesses, animal companions, plants and flowers, celestial bodies, etc.
Among the 50 goddesses are many that I’ve already drawn, some of them more than once, but it’s always fascinating to see different interpretations.
Some are very simple, others are rich with detail, telling a story without the need to refer to the booklet. Just looking at the image of Oya, a fierce and regal African goddess swathed in red and wielding a sword, with lightning crackling around her, you can tell she’s a powerful elemental deity who controls the weather.
Here are my versions of the same four goddesses as above:
You can often tell when an artist really enjoyed delving into the mythology of a certain goddess, and when they were relatively speaking, phoning it in. I’m no exception, especially during Inktober/Pinktober, when I sometimes struggle to just get something—anything—down on paper for the day.
Now that I’m just drawing once or twice a week vs. every day, I’ve got an ongoing list in my Notes app that I can refer to when I’m not sure what to draw. I’ll add new goddesses to the list when they occur to me and cross them off once I’ve drawn them.
Searching for Inspiration
When I first started drawing my “badass goddesses” back in 2017, my two main sources of information were Godchecker.com and Wikipedia—in that order. Godchecker is great for scanning all the gods and goddesses from a certain country or region, but not all their entries are fully fleshed out.
More often than not, I would find intriguing goddesses that offered only a sentence or two of description. For example, this entry about Juturna, the Roman Water Spirit, Goddess of Wells, Springs and Wellsprings:
“Very beautiful nymph (see Nymphs) who spurned the advances of Jupiter.
Jupiter sighed sadly and made her the Goddess of cold showers.”
Intriguing and irreverent—just enough to make you want to learn more. Next came Wikipedia or Google to find a full biography on some other mythology site.
It always took me a while to come up with a list of 12 goddesses that were balanced across all the continents in the world, and it’s only gotten more challenging now with the Inktober/Pinktober challenges. Not that I’m running out of goddesses, but…
Compiling a list of 31 goddesses, most of which I’ve never drawn before, now requires the help of ChatGPT. It’s not 100% reliable, but it’s a great start. It “knows” what I’m looking for now, so I can basically say, give me 20 more examples with short, vivid descriptions, until I have a good list to work with.
Oracle Cards
What interests me the most about this deck are the goddesses that I haven’t drawn yet. I’m looking forward to taking inspiration from them, delving into their stories and figuring out what my own interpretations will look like.
The Rituals
In the accompanying booklet, each goddess has a brief ritual associated with her mythology. For example, for Morrigan, it says:
Morrigan, the Celtic goddess of war and fate, represents the strength in facing life’s battles. This ritual is about harnessing courage and shaping your future.
Visualize a challenge as a battle to be won.
Stand tall, feeling the strength and foresight within.
Affirm, “Like a warrior, I face my challenges with courage and shape my destiny.
So that’s my ritual for today. On that note, I’m off to the gym! Last week I mentioned that one of my goals for this year is to get in better shape than I was four years ago. In addition to my usual cardio workout in the stairwell of my building, I've increased my time in the gym from 15 minutes to 40, three times a week, adding as much weight as I can tolerate and incorporating a variety of exercises with free weights and the universal machine (seated rows, lateral pull downs, etc.).
I also bought a package from the nearby spin gym (Spin Society) and went to my second class yesterday after work. On Monday, I start my first of five weekly Go Go dance classes with Melody Mangler.
Have a fierce and fearless week, my lovelies. I’m off to “face my challenges with courage!”