Oracle Deck Pedagogy: A Collaborative DIY Oracle Deck
A Sunday creative prompt, guide, and invitation
Dearly beloved readers,
Continuing with Wednesday’s theme of creativity as an antidote to fear and destruction and flow chart poem prompt, I would like to offer you another creative practice today: the collaborative DIY oracle deck! Get our your art supplies and let’s begin…
In September, when I offered my foundations class lecture to the UPEACE class of 2025, I asked them to write on slips of paper the question that had led them to UPEACE or the question that was alive in their learning, which they then brought up to place on the learning altar. As they set them down, I read them and I thought, “This is like an oracle deck!” I have kept them on my office altar ever since.
Also ever since, I had been thinking about facilitating an activity in class where we make a collective oracle deck, but I hadn’t managed to find the time to do it yet. Then during our peace education class, on one of the student’s facilitation days, she guided us through this exact activity, which I even had on a sticky note on my desk as a reminder to myself.
In the book Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear1, Elizabeth Gilbert talks about how when an idea wants to be born, it will look for a willing human partner until it is made manifest. She writes:
“I believe that our planet is inhabited not only by animals and plants and bacteria and viruses, but also by ideas. Ideas are a disembodied, energetic life-form. They are completely separate from us, but capable of interacting with us—albeit strangely. Ideas have no material body, but they do have consciousness, and they most certainly have will. Ideas are driven by a single impulse: to be made manifest. And the only way an idea can be made manifest in our world is through collaboration with a human partner. It is only through a human’s efforts that an idea can be escorted out of the ether and into the realm of the actual.”
By way of example, she tells a great story about how she had an idea for a book, and didn’t write it, and the same very specific book idea found its way through her friend, author Ann Patchett (through a kiss - read the book for the whole story). It felt to me like the collaborative oracle deck idea wanted to be born, and then manifested through my student (who I had not shared this idea with, to be clear!).
I love oracle decks, in my personal life and in my teaching (which is part of what had inspired the idea for my student - I had brought The Cantigee Oracle to class earlier in the week, one of my favorites to use). I use the Beautiful Trouble deck in my nonviolence class, and use Trisha Hersey’s Rest Deck often - especially when I sense students are exhausted, and I also keep it on my desk with an invitation to colleagues to come take a card when they need one. Over the holidays, I am excited to be picking up Yumi Sakugawa’s new Cosmic Comfort deck and the Lineages of Change tarot (both not out yet but available for pre-order!). And I will draw from Dr. Sharon Blackie’s Rooted Woman Oracle below.
As a pedagogy, oracle decks are a way of bringing transrational ways of knowing into the classroom (beyond the linear, rational, intellectual), and a tool for re-enchanting education. I usually have them spread on the learning altar and invite students to come up and ask a question and pick a card. Not to mention, card decks are beautiful and fun - two elements that I see as essential to learning processes! I am always amazed at the potent messages and reflections that occur when we practice with an oracle deck. The messages are always right on time and what we need to hear (and even when the message is confusing, working with it can still be a generative practice).
How to create a collaborative DIY oracle deck
See the Guides tab of Enchantable for other activities, prompts, and resources for teaching, learning, unlearning, and reflecting!
You could do this on your own, but it is much more fun to do it with a group. While we did this as a class, I could see this working well with other groups. For example, if you are a therapist or coach who sees clients 1-on-1, you could do this individually and still make a collective deck.
Materials: The idea is quite simple, and you can use any materials you have on hand. For a higher quality deck, you could use thick cardstock, but in our case we just used regular paper and markers. If you wanted to get really fancy, you could laminate them afterward.
For prompts, you might invite people to write:
A piece of wisdom that was important to you in your life in a moment you needed to hear it
An affirmation you need to hear right now
Go outside together, and write some wisdom from the nature that surrounds you (“flow like the river,” “be solid and strong as the mountain,” etc.).
A word of something you want to cultivate
Insert your idea here. It could be an oracle deck of a particular theme (like nature wisdom, or pertaining to the class you are teaching or the purpose of your group) or you could leave it really open.
You might offer the prompt and have people freewrite for 5-10 minutes first if that feels like it would help get creative energy flowing.
Two variations:
Have people write a phrase on one side of the card, then draw an image to represent it on the other side, or
To make it extra collaborative, have people write the word or phrase, then mix up the cards and have them draw an image for someone else’s card.
Depending on the size of the group, you might invite people to more than one card until you have a deck!
Then if you want to get even more elaborate (and if you have more time), you could have everyone write a longer description of the card (as most oracle decks come with a descriptive book with additional guidance) in a shared document.
Depending on the size of the group, you can then have everyone share their cards out loud and what inspired them (if the group is large, you might do this in pairs or trios).
We could even try this here at Enchantable, making a collaborative deck together! My Sunday invitation to you is:
Respond to one of the prompts above that resonates (or we could make this an Enchantable-themed deck: share some inspiration you have received from these messages :)
Make your oracle card - message and image (description, too, if you want to get fancy!).
Post it in the comments below! (Or email it to me if you prefer - but I bet other readers would enjoy seeing it).
I can’t wait to see what you come up with!
To close, it only feels appropriate to pull a card for us today. I’ll use The Rooted Woman Oracle by
, asking, “What is the guidance my readers and I need to hear today?”Wow.
We received: INITIATION.
Does this resonate with you? What reflections does it spark for you?
Happy creating, dear ones!
With love and care,
Stephanie
This is one of my favorite books of all time, which I own in hard copy and audio book. I have read and listened to it many times. If you haven’t read or listened to this, I can’t recommend it enough (and I recommend both - her reading of the audiobook is fantastic, but I needed a hard copy to highlight passages like this one!).