Tarot vs Oracle Cards | Hidden History, Mystical Uses & a Shocking Conspiracy! (Ep 289)

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very spooky hi hey I just had an adventure home yeah we were together we were recording and then you had to rush away I saw the clouds and the sky changing color and I was like hm my windshield wipers are broken I should drive home before the rain gets bad I just broke Sven did you yeah his hand just fell off I think when I leaned back I snapped it it just fell to the floor can you reconnect it probably I'm not trying now I'm not going to bend over like that yeah yeah yeah Fair what we can give him

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a little cast yeah make him feel better for his Boo Boo and we can sign it how cute we should his bones are fragile he's the most fragile member here at two girls one ghost yes I mean he has been broken apart pulled apart and then reassembled many a Time stitched back together this is two girls one ghost two

Divination foundations

girls one ghost and we are your ghostesses that is Karen hello and I am Sabrina and I've befriended another creature in the woods M what kind of creature a trash creature a raccoon oh oh they're so cute they are so cute and they love trash they love it and so there's been a mystery and it's clearly solved by the raccoon but also every time I say raccoon I'm like am I saying this right raccoon raccoon how do you say it I feel like you must say it with some sort of like Jersey accent or something raccoon how do you say it raccoon raccoon you're saying raccoon raccoon raccoon okay I don't know which

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one I say I think I switched it up but every morning he's gone help I've fallen and I can't get up Sven is taking a tumble yeah sorry sorry buddy that's okay he's just laying there but every morning our trash bins have been like knocked on the ground and trash has been spayed about and obviously I knew it was a trash Critter but last night I heard the trash bin fall and I was like oh and then I came over to this little like window area that overlooks the trash bins and Leia is like peering out all excited and I spotted the raccoon raccoon and it's so cute and I went out there and it didn't move no it's a big boy he's huge yeah like big he knows what he's doing oh yeah he's been around town but I went out there and I was like I'm going to try to scare him away and close the trash he just stood there he stood his ground and he looked at me he's like I

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dare you they tend to yeah I feel like they're not really spooked creatures like I remember on LMU campus sometimes walking late at night back from the library or through campus from a party or whatever they would be out and they would not scare away like they wouldn't just Scamper they would still be at my feet let me send you the little video because I really think he's cute and we could put it in the YouTube video here a it's so fun to discover all the creatures NE for a moment when I was looking at the raccoon I was like Wow Leia you guys look quite similar in size probably definitely oh for are you sure she's just a Siamese cat no she's part Bigfoot too no I mean she's a stray what are those cats that are super huge cabie she probably I mean she probably has something I mean she's definitely a long cat yeah one of my brother's friends had one of those cats that's like not really I don't think it's like kind of meant to be a domesticated cat the Bengals yeah yeah yeah one of those they're huge

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they're kind of scary it's interesting my friend Jill and stevenh they have two Bengals and they're not massive they're pretty skinny and small oh really but I guess they're breed so like you can change you can get different sizes yeah Choose Your Own Adventure you can do that with pets I guess it is interesting how we crossbreed animals and species with both pets and with plants and fruits and vegetables and all those things yeah I'm very fascinated by like grafting trees and that sort of thing but the animal thing is it does make me feel bad especially when it comes to like purebred dogs and I know cats and whatnot because if you have you ever looked at the videos where it'll be like historical photos of like this is what a pug looked like back in the 50s now it's a whole different creature completely different like we really messed them up and then eventually we're going to be able to do that with humans where you can like handpick like I want my baby to have blue eyes and I think you can already kind of start to do that right but it's like the whole ethics it

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like it hasn't really scientifically I think we might be able to technically do that sometimes right I think well then there's also crisper which is this idea of changing DNA in people that already exist which technically already happens to you anyway yeah doesn't your DNA kind of change when you have a baby yeah and just like various diseases and whatnot can like environmental factors that you're around we do evolve we do change a bit we're not just completely Who We Are always this mentally physically genetically all of the above this is now a science podcast welcome we're educated and inell barely yeah this is the last episode I'm going to record here at the Airbnb in Marblehead oh yeah and then you're in your house and then I'm moving in I feel like we've been talking about you moving into your house like you're moving in in two weeks for 30 weeks straight because we've pre-recorded so much because of my maternity leave but you will be in very soon m I'm excited to give you what I

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bought you is it what's been sitting on the dining room table yeah that's wrapped that you just like walk past every time I keep looking at it I know which one's Leia's gift yeah because I showed you Leia's gift yeah I got Leia some polka Dog Bakery the dog and cat treat store got her some chowa treat cuz she's a little chowa head now I did try clam chowder you tried it yeah it tastes like cream of anything soup yes it's delicious it's just creamy creamy goodness look at you a pescatarian now I guess more than that because you've tried some other stuff too you're in New England so yeah I'm open to trying to try the the meats and the Seafoods but I'll never order it you know not on my own I'm never going to be like I'm craving a big juicy steak oh that's all I've been geving for the past few months red meat aren't they rich with iron what's good for you I don't know I'm getting hungry now so perhaps we should distract me with some ghostly Tales well you're not really going to get any ghost tals today so turn off the

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podcast no I'm kidding give me some witchiness I will okay so this is a very

Dabbling in cards

witchy episode and it's also a bit more informative if you are about that [ __ ] do you like information do you like learning no this was partially also selfish because I was very fascinated by this topic or topics it's the topics of divination specifically Oracle and Tarot cards and you know I've talked on the podcast and with you on campfire stories and kind of in the beginning of some of our episodes I've been dabbling in Oracle and I think it's really fascinating and it felt like the Gateway into divination for me because it is a lot more freestyle it's like the freestyle version of reading cards and divination practices but I was curious about the history and I also think that we were lucky in that I know you can buy your own deck I feel like you can definitely buy your own deck but we heard the rumor that you're supposed be like gifted a deck or whatever and I

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think we're very lucky that we were in the position that we were or the position that we are where people do send us decks yes I actually have two props today they are two decks also given to us by listeners the southern Oracle which is one I've mentioned before you actually have one on your bookshelf behind you I noticed earlier today it's a a Southern Gothic Oracle deck but I think different artwork oh yes yeah it has white flowers on it I also have uh Claire goodchild's the antique Anatomy Tarot deck so I have an oracle deck and a Tarot deck both on my bookshelf and then I have cat tarot of course wait was that sent to you I feel like I recognize that yeah it's so cute but okay so basically for the episode I did Research into the histories of both forms of divination and the the practices the rituals and then hopefully this helps you understand what the difference is between the two and also

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if your early days like I am into your practice and feeling called to practicing witchcraft or divination or practices of the occult perhaps this will help you choose something that speaks to you perfect I'm excited because I don't really know the difference and I feel like I interchangeably use them and I'm using them incorrectly yeah they're very different and also I think the biggest impression that I had even before this episode was that tarot is a lot more complicated and it takes a lot more knowledge and studying and understanding and memorization almost whereas Oracle more of a free style go with intuition and imagery and Association and feeling okay and Oracle is what we used when we were at the Lizzy Bardon house last year correct correct yes okay so oracle cards and Tarot cards are used for very similar practices but they're also very very different so this episode is going to be a discussion of the origins the practices the uses of both tarot and Oracle and also help myself and maybe

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you understand what they are and how to use them and maybe it can help you in your own practice amazing I'm going to try really hard to commit all this information to memory and not to forget any of it I'll send you my notes so that you can uh refer back to them I'm gonna read it every morning until it's memorized the hard thing is well I'll get to this when I get more into the details of tarot but there's so many things to memorize which makes tarot a little bit more like you're not going to leave this episode being like Oh I can read tarot cards comfortably you know right yeah we'll have to take a class on that so we're going to Bing in with divination which is the broader term that encompasses attempts to gain insight into a question or a situation by way of a cult ritual or practice so there are so many different forms of divination there's reading signs Omens communicating with spiritual entities to interpret the will of the universe so tarot is an example Oracle is an example scrying prophesizing reading tea leaves there's so many different versions like zodiac and astrology are also forms of

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divination and divination is very religious or ritualistic and studied with great reverence there's also many methods throughout history and throughout cultures which Al when I was looking into them I was like Wow there are some things that I've never even heard of that date back centuries or Millennia and then also are related to specific cultures like in Taiwan there's the active divination called po which are moon boards that translates to Moon Moon boards and there are these little like Moon wood pieces and rocks and I didn't look into all like what the actual practice is but it made me want to be like oh we should do a bunch of different episodes on all these yeah that's so cool and I'm sure I mean we have listeners from all over the world too so I'm very curious what people grew up with beyond what we just frequently reference because that's what we see here where we are MH well I'm going to share a couple other ones not really go into depth but just more of like mention them so in India and Nepal practice they

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am in which they invite a Hindu god or goddess to use their body as a medium or to channel the answer to questions of others so kind of just Med like a channeling basically the doy Lama has his own personal Oracle known as Nung Oracle of whom he consults on a regular basis like he has his own personal Oracle damn I mean and apparently in the Bible Acts 1:23 through 26 the remaining 11 Disciples of Jesus use cleromancy which is a form of divination that involves rolling dice to select a replacement for Judas humans just don't want to make their own decisions I think no it's hard to I think we're all looking for signs of where we should go what path we should take so it makes sense this it's just part of human nature to be like help the dice decide roll the dice shake your magic eightball and figure out what's going on buy that mood ring to see how you're feeling oh hi Leia

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cat Crossing she stopped right in the middle too of course she stopped check things out what I also like about and like personally with my oracle cards and this might not be a universal feeling but I do feel like it's very psychological and and if you're pulling your own cards for your own self and your own sake I do think a lot of it comes from we do know what we want or we have some inkling and some gut feeling and sometimes utilizing cards can help direct us properly almost like as a reassurance or yeah if you're reading your own cards you're using your own experience your own circumstances to inform the reading right part of me feels like when we read cards we feel like they're either spoton or if they're not we just ignore them we're like oh that wasn't right and we move on but at the same time I feel like the majority of the time I feel like the readings are really specifically spoton or at least I feel like when I feel like I need a reading it ends up being really spoton if I'm just like randomly like oh sure

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I'll do a reading I'll whatever and I'm not actually looking for answers or like needing any reassurance or doing anything then sometimes the messaging is like I don't know if that relates but I feel like when I actually need something they always are specific right in the messaging that I'm getting and then sometimes someone who's reading for you because there is room for interpretation they might be reading for you based on their own circumstances so the way that they're interpreting it isn't exactly how you would be interpreting it if you were pulling them yourself right right yeah but okay there are a couple other forms of divination that I was going to tell you about so there's geomancy which is Earth divination there's readings of runes dream interpretations I mean there are so many iterations and it goes back to the beginning of humankind but today

The history of Tarot

we're going to focus on tarot and Oracle I'll start with tarot because tarot is more of a to-do and a lot more history to it than Oracle does you're going to be surprised by this because I was very surprised by this okay at Inception

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tarot cards had absolutely nothing to do with the Paranormal they were actually playing cards oh you know what I'm not overly surprised by it because when we talked to Greg and Dana when they told us that Ouija boards were meant to be like a dating game a dating board game like will we get married will we have will how many children do we have Bally like playing Mash I understand it right and like they're beautiful but so they date as far back as the 1300s they were an iteration of playing cards called tooi which was the game that they originally were called and it was played in Italy and then it evolved through Europe but they weren't called tarot cards until the 1500s the decks were Exquisite they were all hand painted so in order to own a deck of cards you had to have a lot of wealth so they were a symbol of wealth and only the wealthy people owned decks of these cards Because unless you were an artist and you could paint your own right I wouldn't want anyone playing with the

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cards if they were so well if you're rich enough to own them then you probably are rich enough to have a lot I guess but it's not like today where like people digitize their art and if a card gets messed up you can just like buy another deck or whatever right but they didn't have any other frame of original artworks yeah but for them it was just you know everything was handmade yeah that's true I feel like owning a deck was the thing to do like almost like owning a Stanley Cup today is pregnant People Unite drink your Waters there were a lot of variations of the game and none of them were really written like the rules weren't really written down they were vaguely passed around until a complete description was written for a French variation in 1637 so for 300 plus years it was more of just like a you teach each other how to play the game you either know or you don't the characters and contents and suits of the decks varied region to region so basically depending on like religious beliefs and monarchies and

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political stuff the cards would have different figures on them okay but they were very similar to playing cards today they had four suits also similar to tarot today and in the 1400s in Italy the decks included 40 numerical suit cards 16 face cards 21 Trump cards and the fool card which was a total of 78 cards the same number of cards that are in a Tarot deck today or in a traditional tarot deack I should say and I am speaking very much today we'll focus only on traditional tarot because there are so many different iterations and versions and people who have different practices that they prefer certain things but traditional deck there are three original luxury Decks that have survived from the mid-5th century and they have been split up and they're now preserved or shown in various museums and private collections but there's only three Decks that seemed to have lasted Through Time which is so wild it also makes me so curious like I

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just think about humans and collecting things like we love to have little collections right like people will collect Pokemon cards and they'll never open them coins right dolls like Barbies that never never become uncased so it's like how was there no one collecting this back then like why are we left with so few that's a good question maybe there were I mean three lasted that's a long time that they lasted through and they were hand painted yeah it also makes me question how many are just like in a random thrift shop and we have no idea I feel like you would know there are some photos and we'll put them in the YouTube video of these original decks and they are so intricate and beautiful and I'm sure they have like the texture of being hand painted you know okay so now that's the history but if they started as a playing game how did they evolve into the form of divination that we know of them today Ken you're gonna love this it began with a conspiracy theory hell yes where's my

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tin foil hat I know I need to put it on okay so there's this man Antoine cord or C jaab who was a Frenchman he was born in France in January 1725 and he was like he wore many hats a tinf foil hat being one of them he was a French reformed Pastor a Protestant propagandist a supporter of the North American colonist in their quest for Independence and he spent I think 10 years like the last 10 years of his life he began began working on what was his life work and it was a multivolume book called the Primeval World analyzed and compared to the modern world so he was just trying to look at like how things evolved through time I guess yeah he died 10 years into his work so he never completed it but he did publish some volumes and in one of his volumes he published a theory that was founded on zero grounded information therefore it's a conspiracy theory yeah but it's about tarot cards so back in ancient Egypt

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there is this legend of the book of Toth Toth was an ancient Egyptian god linked to wisdom writing and magic and there are many books of Toth that have been claimed throughout history but they're believed and said the legend is that they are written by the god Toth himself and that they are lessons on the world and Magic oh interesting so he himself wrote them or he was channeled through various people the belief is that he himself wrote them dang Antoine cord jaab jaboi I don't know how to say it believed that there were only a few entrusted carriers and Protectors of the Lost book of Toth and that these entrusted Travelers were given the task of basically transporting and keeping alive the book of Toth so his conspiracy is that these Travelers in order to

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disguise the book of Toth they transformed them into these beautiful intricate tarot cards that are now hold the mystery and hold the magic and secret to the world so these Messengers are stuck in the form of tarot cards they are not the the book of Toth is basically disguised in the cards and that the god Toth interesting can communicate his messages and wisdom of the world through these cards that is quite fascinating you want to know what his proof was what nothing um hey I don't need much proof to believe it to be honest but he did basically he linked the 22 Trump cards to the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet and then there were prophetic people or practicing occultists of the time around the 1700s who did utilize imagery on cards so it was like they weren't quite tarot cards but they were cards with images

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which actually is oracle cards he basically had little evidence but he was just like pulling it strings trying to stretch it and at the time spiritualism at arise and people wanted to believe in magic and the ability to communicate with the other side and understand a greater meaning to the world so people despite the very little evidence were like oh my gosh yes what 100% tarot cards magic and they ran with it yeah it makes sense I mean that's that's kind of how most religion starts right it's one person saying look at like the Book of Mormon too it's one person saying that they discovered something or found something or that it has this sort of meaning and everyone else looking for meaning being like exactly yeah I can get behind that that makes sense exactly so people got behind it and there is a man who prior to the publication of anan's like Manifesto basically there was a man in Paris his name was Jean Baptist aliet who by Italia who had

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actually developed a tarot card deck to utilize for the occult with themes that were related to the book of Toth which seemed to back up Antoine's claims even further so then after this the use of tarot cards and divination became much more commonplace and this man Italia Italia I'm saying it wrong he wrote a book he basically takes this concept and runs with it even more and now is backing up his development of tarot cards and writes a stating that tarot was actually a book written by the Egyptian god Toth and is the oldest book in the world and that wow yes and this book is primarily responsible for the modern understanding of tarot like he truly writes down the number of cards the meanings of the cards he invented the idea that if you pull a card and it's inverted that it actually signifies a shift in meaning and so a lot of itellas I know I'm saying his name wrong I'll say his John Baptist there we go a lot of his writings are still used today in our understanding of tarot that's so

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interesting because it's like it's his interpretation which is influencing how we interpret things like they're big words that he's using right like these are Big messages these are big changes in the shift of how tarot is used or thought of like it's not just a deck to play cards okay so it's translated a lot through history from Jean Baptist original writings and he believed the role of tarot cards were less for divination but more for Spiritual philosophy so you know an understanding of the world which is what the book interpreting the world and yourself and your own feelings rather than looking into a crystal ball and seeing your future yeah and then came the printing press which meant access to tarot cards became much more readily available and more sought after in the Divination process it was not as rare to purchase them okay so they weren't hand painted anymore you could have an original set that's hand painted but then the printing press allowed them to be mass-produced way more affordable so

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today the standard Tarot deck consists of 78 cards divided into two groups the major Arcana which has 22 cards SL Trump cards and then the minor Arcana which has 56 cards the major Arcana have various pictures characters virtues and vices and they're numbered with usually with Roman numerals from I to xxi the only card of those 22 cards that is not numbered is is the fool and I'm putting a photo in the YouTube video of the major Arcana so you can get a visual interpretation of that but you know you have like the tower and death in there the lovers you have all of those in there oh yes this is exactly what I feel like I think of when I think of tarot this feels like the traditional sort of deck so then the minor Arcana is divided into four suits with 14 cards each so very similar to our playing cards that we have today and these are the four suits and I'll tell you what those suits

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typically deal with so wands or sometimes they're called batons or rods mainly deal with business matters and career Ambitions cups deals mainly with love swords often are more about conflict and then the Pentacles also sometime sometimes called coins or discs refer to money and material comfort so it's like I feel like when litha pulls tarot cards for us you have like the four of Wands or you know six of Wands and different yeah the nine of Swords reversed and you're like oh yeah still there's so much like it's again there's so much to memorize when it comes to tarot it's like I don't know what anything means and I feel like I'll never not that I'll never but like without actively practicing all the time it would be so difficult to understand I feel like it really does take a long time to learn the cards and their meaning and then marry that with like your own intuition and interpretation and understanding of the energy that's

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permeating around you as you're pulling and reading these cards right so it's not a practice that comes instantly so again similar to our playing Decks that we know today each suit has four Court cards so king queen Knight and Jack and then 10 numbered cards it's truly like you were saying a very elaborate practice that yeah bord upon an art form and it requires understanding of the cards which comes with practice ice and study and then it requires being able to interpret and use your intuition and sometimes people pair tarot readings with other forms of divination like mediumship and psychic capabilities where they can use Spirit to convey messages through the cards or ask Spirit what cards specifically mean to the current situation there's also different types of spreads meaning like you could pull three cards and one being past present future you could do a two card spread you could do a spread

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specifically about one situation and the way that you pull the cards differs so like if you pull one card it might mean something as one individual card but when you pull a different card with that card the meaning completely changes right as it's paired and then God forbid one of those cards is reversed and the picture is upside down it's a whole another meaning so you have to memorize so much right so as you can tell it could be very very complex practice but it is very powerful and despite originating as a playing game or card game it has most definitely evolved into a magical tool for divination and as we

Understanding Oracle cards

started in the beginning k you brought up this like Legend and rumor that we had learned about not buying your own Tarot deck right but that's actually false you can okay that's good yeah there's no no bad omen or bad luck that comes upon you for buying your own Tarot deck actually it's a very personal experience and the imagery that is on

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tarot decks can speak to you and if it speaks to you then like hell yeah buy yourself your deck I bought Claire's I loved the imagery on it exactly and today that's the beauty of the availability of tarot cards is there's so many different artistic expressions of tarot but there's always the uniform in terms of what the cards mean and how many of each suit there is the cat tarot is one Claire's deck is another but there are so many options and so many varieties many of them do come with these little guide books that can tell you about the cards and the meanings as a starting place the app lainos is actually a really good place too to study and learn there are some beautiful tarot Decks that you can choose from there are also some truly beautiful Oracle decks and if tarot feels a little overwhelming to you let me direct you to Oracle which is where I am I feel like that's where I'm going to head as well well it just feels more

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digestible especially if you're a beginner or like if you're not looking to ever Master tarot right exactly just to have something kind of fun to pull more casually or if you want a stepping stone if you want like a first step before you fully dive into tarot Oracle is a good place to start yeah build your comfort levels okay so Oracle means many different things in ancient Greece Oracle was placed upon a temple or a high priestess or priest with whom one can consult to receive prophetic messages is so Oracle in general was always a term about receiving message from something or someone about your life and your future MH Oracle was a method of connecting to the Divine and seeking messages that would help guide a person in their daily life but the cards themselves that we understand today are much more new age and modern than tarot cards are and are said to have originated in Western Europe in the early 19th century but again there's also with without being called oracal cards there were some psychics in

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history who utilized imagery to convey and understand messages but they weren't called oracle cards back then yeah okay the first in history like documented version and iteration of oracle cards were called lonand cards after this amazing woman this woman Marie an lerand Madame lenormand was one of the most celebrated psychics of her time dang girl a photo of her yeah and upon her death all of her prized possessions and you know occult practice items objects were collected and studied and among them was a deck of cards that she had custom made that she would utilize in her readings to contact the other side she made her own she channeled so much into that deck yeah and actually when I was reading a lot about Oracle all of these websites were like how to make your own oracle cards and there was like suggestions of like you start with the meaning and then when you're dissecting

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a meaning you think of what images come to your mind and then you put that on the card that's very fascinating that makes me want to do that like meditate and do a an oracle drawing and then I would never use the cards they like stick fig be too attach to them it reminds me of like a school project where you had to draw and write a children's book if there are any art teachers out there should do that as a project with your art class fun that's how you get a bunch of decks that's amazing yeah I want to go back to school and have an art teacher like that we could do that for like a a patreon a fun little hang where we all make one oracle card and one card just one card they all have our own in meanings but we write down the meanings and we make a deck with all of them that'd be so cool cuz it's less of an undertaking if everyone just says one again I feel like I'd be too attached to them and I would just want to frame them instead of putting them actually together in a deck well make like copies of them we'll digitize

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them yeah exactly make them accessible okay so after madame's death these cards were then replicated and named after her so basically people were trying to seek her own abilities and study her methods so they called them Leon cards and decks which became a trend in the occult circles they then evolved from there where other psychics and occultist would create their own deck of cards with their own intentions and their own meanings and Oracle was so deeply personal an expression of self creativity and of spirit that now they're called oracle cards oracle cards vary so there you know how with tarot cards there's the 78 cards there's a structure to it whereas oracle cards no structure we are free ball free all freefor all the number of cards vary per deck the meanings vary per deck there's like one Oracle deck that has 10 cards and there could be another one that has as many as like a hundred they can vary okay so this makes sense because my brother when year as a gift to me he he

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bought me like a spirit animal deck oh I think I have that too do you yeah he bought it for me I think it was like part of a Christmas gift or something and so that must be an oracle deck then right because it's just kind of like random how you pull your spirit animal and the meaning of it and how it Associates to your power at that time yeah definitely and they can also vary in shape form and pattern and theme so this one I have is the Southern Gothic Oracle K you gifted me the literary witches Oracle deck MH which is beautiful but there's no rules that deck we realized is kind of less of an oracle deck and more of just here's some cards about these literary women but here's the thing so they it is an oracle deck but that one is I think a more advanced one where it is heavily dependent on your own intuition and your own meaning that you take away from each card so like the Gothic Oracle deck that we have that a listener gave us has a guide book

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and it talks about the imagery on the card and how it could connect to a reading yeah which is helpful but as you get more advanced in Oracle you kind of don't follow those guide books it's you look at the card and so with the literary witches one or authors I think having an understanding of those authors and their histories plus the imagery on the card itself would help in War the message okay so even Oracle like there's a spectrum of how much skill you can have and what Decks that you can use totally but you could also say hey I don't know anything about these authors but this image is invoking this feeling in me or this message got it that's reading an oracle card this is making me so tempted to grab that deck and I just want to after we finish this episode I'm going to I'm going to just dabble I'm going to see what comes out today it's a nice rainy afternoon what better to to dabble in some

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Oracle see what's in your cards and like I said unlike in Tarot an oracle deck there's no set of universal number cards and some of the other biggest differences are the structure and interpretation tarot has structured and documented meanings with some flexibility of course and I think we've said this many times but it takes a lot longer to learn tarot whereas Oracle is more approachable and just like Witchcraft and spirituality is it's a very personal practice so whatever speaks to you is what speaks to you and you can do what feels right to you you can even use the cards in tandem there was like a whole website about how you could use oracle cards to like set the intentions for a tarot reading so basically at the beginning of a tarot reading instead of pulling one tarot you pull an oracle card to understand the general theme interesting and then at the end you can also pull another card to kind of understand what like the tarot reading was trying to say a final you know a period at the end of a

Personal card readings

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reading right I have so many thoughts just like swirling in my head about what are your thoughts share them with us Oracle and Tarot I'm tempted to dabble in some of the Oracle too but I'm just thinking about all the times I've gone and gotten readings and now like you just saying that Oracle could be what you do in the beginning of a tarot reading this all is starting to make way more sense because I think part of my confusion was that every time I've ever gotten a tarot reading or what I thought was a tarot reading never was it the same like number of cards in the spread or the way that someone went about it like it just always felt different and so I think that's where I had a lot of confusion and now understanding that it's like very specific to the person and that you can layer all of these other different things onto the reading it's starting to make sense because I I just like never really understood because I'm like well how come sometimes when I get a tarot reading I'm also getting a past life reading and then there's a spirit that comes through and then there's vibration in the hands but then other it'll be just like straight up cards straight up meaning and

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messages sure it also depends on who's pulling the cards for you and doing the reading for you and so dependent on the practitioner right cuz we did that one in Salem when we got our the first time we did our Aura photos and she I'm pretty sure was using oracle cards and I had no idea I was confused because I had never seen oracle cards I don't think not in that practice at least yeah I think anytime I had done readings it was with tarot card and so I was like what cards are these like are these made up and but it's personal so like when I do a reading if I do a reading for someone else I should use oracle cards that I really know and understand and have spent time kind of interpreting meaning from totally and then it's reminded me of when we went to was it the vampire Lounge in orle New Orleans and we all well the majority of us went up and got readings from this one woman but our friend Lexi had both the traditional like tarot reading and the Tea Leaf

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reading and that was kind of like stacked and informing right each other yeah there's no rules there are kind chill like this is just so much more intricate and beautiful than I already viewed it to be yeah it's magical it really is like I should be more impressed with anyone who can do these readings totally well I think it also speaks so highly to the power of our own minds yes these are tools that are connec us to the other side but we're relying very very heavily on our own intuition and our own gut instinct in order to do so but we're just we're kind of it's almost like a crutch to qualify and quantify and verify our intuitions it almost feels like um a more like awake version of meditation in a way if you're doing it for yourself I agree I don't know this is all interesting but I do have a email that is related to this okay and I think because I was more confused about Oracle than I was about

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tarot I pulled an email that is about oracle cards this is called my spookiest

Spooky deck stories

ghost story hello beautiful ladies I just wanted to start out by saying I absolutely love your podcast I love listening to it at work and it makes the days go by so much faster I started listening about two months ago and I am working my way through to the present from the very first episode oh my gosh you guys are adorable and super funny so anyway to my story my name is Julia and I've had many paranormal experiences starting when I was around 8 years old although I do think that I'm somewhat lucky considering most of the experiences have been good or neutral and a little bit scary but nothing bad ended up happening these experiences range from a ghost comforting me when I was a sad kid to getting visits from pagan gods in my dreams to even predicting the future once or twice with my tarot cards and a lot of other things too what this is that's a lot that's you're

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clearly a super connected yeah however I want to tell you about my scariest experience and I apologize in advance because there is a little bit of a backstory that I need to explain before getting into the spooky love backstory yeah we need context whole life story how long do we have we'll therapize you or become therapized in the process oh we have learned a lot I've grown a lot because of all of you so I grew up Roman Catholic but when I was around 23 I left the faith but because I've had so many experiences growing up I knew spirits in the afterlife did exist I just didn't know what religion was right so I did some exploring into the occult and I started practicing Witchcraft and Tarot which I still do to this day and I fell in love with tarot and I do believe I have a special affinity for it but I would not go as far as to call myself psychic because I really can't control it but anyway I quickly became obsessed and I bought many tarot and Oracle decks oh sorry I was saying that I picked out an

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oracle story this is a Tarot story okay see I was already confused in the beginning my collection of Oracle and Tarot decks is now 22 decks that's quite the collection wow one deck that I got has had a bit of controversy surrounding it even my tarot teacher warns all of his students to stay away from this which I unfortunately heard a little too late I met my teacher after already buying the deck wait is it a spefic specific deck or like okay I'm curious yeah okay I'll listen this deck is called the occult Tarot deck it is very powerful it was created by connecting to the RS I'm I definitely said that wrong Goa which are the 72 demons detailed in the Lesser key of Solomon so this deck can be used like a normal Tarot deck or it can be used to summon these 72 demons which I've never done by the way this deck is very powerful it's very spooky and I bought it on

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Amazon yeah you can buy it on Amazon for $11.36 cents wow oh why am I tempted you know what it gives me it gives me Vibes of that one place that we walked into in Salem oh oh yeah I hated that place immediate pressure on the top of our heads and we were just like we got to we got to go that's the energy I'm getting from this my teacher also has this deck but he hates even touching it because whenever he does a lot of paranormal activi start starts up for him so a couple days before I received the deck but after I purchased it I had a dream that I'm convinced was not just a dream it started out as a super Vivid dream so vivid to the point that I can feel what is happening to me in this dream in this dream I woke up in my parents house and by the way this seems significant because when I was visited by other Spirits in my dreams they also take place in my childhood home and I had a fresh tattoo circling my stomach like a hula hoop and it was so fresh that I could feel the swollen skin from the T so I head downstairs and in my parents living room is a tattoo shop set up and

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there are about three people in there one spoke up and said I owed them $1 million for this tattoo excuse me I hear this I start freaking out because I can't afford that so I'm mid- freak out I'm trying to figure out how to pay them and then something clicked and I realized I'm dreaming and this is the stupidest thing I told them I knew I was dreaming and that this was all F they immediately said this is real and I said a little smug no I know this is a dream because of this and this and this and as soon as those words left my mouth the dream instantly changed everyone disappeared the setting changed and all I could see was pitch black darkness with rolling black smoke and a big leatherbound black book hovering in front of me oh a big black book the book had gold lettering in a language that I couldn't understand understand it said book

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L and I don't really remember the last word but I do remember it was the longest that's okay I don't think we should say it out loud anyway yeah I know think well it wasn't all spelled out so I didn't I don't remember the last word but I do remember it was the longest of the three and it started with a lowercase a while I was looking at this book I heard a growling non-human voice speak to me it said some profanity so I apologize in advance for quoting it but it was some kind of demonic growl and it said go out make an altar and pray to me or I will make your [ __ ] rot what now at this point I knew this was not just a wait say that say that last sentence again I will make your [ __ ] wet rot oh oh okay I was going to say what's wrong with getting it what no no no this is scary this is scary this is terrifying okay now at this point I knew that this was not just a dream so while I was still asleep I am trying now desperately to remember everything the only reason I remember this dream so clearly is because I wrote everything down as soon as I woke up also when the

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demon was speaking to me and when it said go out the local Cemetery vividly came to mind this dream also just happened to take place about a week after I was visiting the cemetery so I knew he wanted me to go there to the cemetery obviously I did not do what this demon said to do because [ __ ] that but one week later the demon followed through with its threat because I got a pretty bad yeast infection which is very unusual for me oh my gosh luckily it hasn't visited me since and the Occult Tarot deck is just a normal deck now although it does have a [ __ ] personality if you ask me well that's my spookiest story stay spooky I will see you on the other side Julia Julia I hope you never use that deck again like you can keep it amongst your collection but that yeah I wonder if Julia has any guesses as to which of the 72 demons this was I wonder if there's any associated with yeast

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infections yeah or just like the female reproductive system or something I don't know huh but that's so wild because it's like the deck was coming to Julia Julia knew it was purchased and just before even having it physically in Julia's hands it still can make contact and that her teacher that this is like a common commonly known concerning Tech yeah so what did the teacher exper too to warn all of the people that he Wasing in his class to say you can do tarot but you just can't do it with this one deck it's also common practice for people to like cleanse their decks when they first buy them or do some type of initiating ritual before utilizing them because yeah you don't know I mean especially if you're buying used ones you have no idea what's happened to them before where they've been same with brand new ones you don't know where it's passed through who's touched it like yeah everything has energy and Carries energy so it doesn't hurt to set

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intentions and to kind of ground the deck to you and your energies right you're reminding me maybe I'll read this last one it's a it's short but when I was looking for some stories I did find one that does have to do with kind of cleansing or the lack of cleansing a deck okay go ahead and read it okay I'll

Final stories and wrap-up

read it it's quick okay it's called grandma grandpa is that you hey loves I just want to say I finally found the podcast and I love it and I can share my spooky weirdness with you people at work give me weird looks from my facial expressions that I have while listening to you I've witnessed and experience the Paranormal and Supernatural since I was little especially working in a funeral home and being a crime scene cleaner I have so many encounters I could share but this was the most recent so last Saturday my cousin and I went to a farmers market and there was a store called witches and stuff and they have everything from crystals to oils so I bought an oracle deck in hopes to get guidance from my loved ones who have passed on when you get a new deck of any sorts tarot or Oracle you do have to

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bond with it Saturday I didn't really have time but I was curious to see the cards so my cousin and I we sat on her bed and we went through the cards and we began talking about my grandparents we didn't do any readings or anything as we were getting ready to go out when we went out we came home later around 5:00 a.m. and she watches my dog from time to time and uses her ring camera so that I can check in she left her ring camera on and we went to bed normally and we both kept tossing and turning and I kept waking up but I am a light sleeper so I didn't really think anything of it we woke up and we went on about our day and later that Sunday I was curious as to how we slept being drunk LOL so I logged into that camera and something caught my eye I watched it three times before confirming that there was an orb shooting out of the fire place you can see the motion behind the camera catch it as it flies it was this big big bright huge white ball clearly not dust

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or a fly it went to where we were sleeping and then into the wall 10 minutes later or so that same orb comes flying back out of the wall back into the fireplace and I was absolutely shocked it gave me goosebumps did I just witness my grandparents come to visit us in our sleep so I slow it down to get a better look because I'm sure I'm just going crazy when the orb goes into the air a face appears in the orb and it appears to be a middle-aged lady who looked very upset definitely didn't look like our grandmother so did I open the door for someone else's loved one since then we've been waking up at 4:41 every day which is really rare for me to do especially on the dot and I want to know what the correlation is I have full proof of the video footage off of the Ring camera I also feel like a lot of people who were SLR skeptical that have ring cameras have now seen and experienced Paranormal Activity and captured it thanks to the ring they now

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believe in spirits MH love you guys XOXO stay spooky Alexis wow well we need an update Alexis yeah we need an update but like to your point like you're supposed to Clans the decks Alexis is like you're supposed to bond with the deck and so it makes me wonder is this a spirit in the house that is upset that this deck has been brought in and maybe there's something attached to it or is this someone from the deck right who's attached to the deck and is like what's happening why don't you know how to use this right so that's the thing about Oracle Decks that I was so curious about is we've heard of haunted paintings where like the artists it's such an expression of self that there's a part of them almost haunting the paintings that how is that not true for oracle cards does it only translate to The Originals or does that then travel with all the replicated documents or versions of it as well great questions great questions but if you have haunted or Oracle deck or if you have experiences with either or just generally with the

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Paranormal please email them to us at two girlsm GH podcast gmail.com or you can also join us live every Tuesday on patreon we have campfire stories where you can come join us live and share your ghost stories with us sometimes we have tarot red yeah exactly shout out to Jamie Ryan who edits and produces our podcast thank you thank you and thank you to all of you who continue to come back every week we love you and we will well see you on the other side very spy