In my experience, the eighth chakra is a bit vague to define. My experience is that it is a sort of divine drunkenness from which spouts an endless flow of oracular poetry, sacred geometrical translinguistic threads, and a profound sense of living, waking dream. I like to call it the Rumi Chakra. While each chakra is a vortice, this suit got the title of Vortex because it is a deep penetration into the Vortex field of incarnation from which we emerge. This chakra heavily influences the entire deck and book.

As the suit took form with the rest of the deck, I began to feel that this suit was a challenge to grounding the deck. The concepts it held had two problems. One, they represent very subtle understandings of the dream of reality, which were difficult to put into words and even more so to try and position them in a deck that was supposed to speak clearly on oracular subjects. I think some of my audience would have gotten them, but most people who would be into the deck would likely struggle with having any idea of what to make of them.

The second issue was that the deck itself was already a collection of very subtle ideas, and adding these Vortex notes seemed to make all the other ideas less coherent. Again, some would have gotten it, but likely far more would have less of a sense of the deck as a whole with the inclusion of the Vortex suit. So I dropped it, but I didn’t just throw it away. Many of the cards merged with others elsewhere in the deck. Some stepped their energies down an octave or more and found other suits. Of course, some simply moved to the background as guides for the deck. The Shadow suit emerged, and the deck took the form published quickly after that.

I had not looked at the Vortex cards in years, but I recently came across them and thought others might enjoy the gallery of wyrdness that they are. The art and names on these were all WIPs, so they don’t have the same finished feeling as the published deck. But you can get an idea of where they might have been going. Enjoy!

Expanding Capacity

This card was sourced from a chakra initiation practice I have taught for years wherein one reclaims their energetic space, access to more energy, and an expanded sense of capacity for life, such as improving resilience and enthusiasm. This card is related to the Root chakra.

Reclaiming Meaning

A card representing how empowering ideas have been coopted and demonized to either turn people away from them or trap their meanings in watered-down versions of what they indeed are. The perfect example of this is the symbol of the pentagram. The pentagram has come to mean devilry, especially in its downturned form. Even upright, it is commonly considered a dark symbol one ought to avoid. This is why those who attempt to reclaim the atavistic and chthonic, such as many forms of modern witchcraft, take this symbol on as a prominent mark of their path. Yet even this understanding of the symbol is missing the deeper truths, the powers it contains. Breaking the pentagram down into various logical sections reveals it is constructed of the golden ratio. This ties in with the golden spiral. When put together, the pentagram is a linear, staff-based image of the most potent curve of Creation itself. This card is related to the Throat chakra.

Mysterious Process

The deck was always an attempt at a fusion between the occult mysteries and the new age mysteries. I am the result of a ruthless inquiry into both, and the deck is my expression of where the common ground had been found. And it is a lot of ground. The original cards had a lot more witchy elements to them, and over time, I filtered these out and opted for more of the psychic/energetic ideas. The elemental lattice of the deck was proving witchy enough to relay the teachings, and I felt that too much overt witchcraft aesthetic was somehow pandering.

This card was largely based on the stories of Cerridwen’s Cauldron. In a brief and to the point version of it, though leaving much of value out, the cauldron is used to distill “Awen,” which is the divine inspiration or touch of the gods. When it reveals the Awen, the cauldron cracks, and the world around it is poisoned. In my mythic mind, this describes how once we distill our divine nectar, our Awen, and regain our clear-sightedness, the world is revealed as it truly is: riddled with poison and decay. And this is where the journey of the divinely anointed one begins. Of course, the card was meant to represent the alchemical process in general as well. This card is related to the Sacral chakra.

Strange Council

This card was the one that said either it goes in the deck or the whole Vortex suit is out. I still laugh when I recall the conversations I had with it. It represents all forms of “other” ways of knowing, including trance work to talk with entities and other layers of self, channeling, and psychedelics. It was a heavy card, not in a weight sense but in a gravity sense. It asked me to take what I was creating seriously even though I was required to stay light-hearted about it throughout. The card is a sort of council of teachers helping with the deck overall. And it was a very strange gathering. They certainly all did not see eye to eye with each other! This card is related to the Crown chakra.

True Enough

This card is based on Wittgenstein’s idea of “true enough,” which I first heard from the very eighth chakra-inspired words of Terrence McKenna. It represents that we cannot base our choices on absolutes, for we do not find those in reality. We must learn to see what is true enough to act upon. From such ideas, this entire deck was born. This card is related to the Heart chakra.

Occult Understanding

This card holds the image of what many refer to as “Hekate’s Wheel” or Hekate’s Strophalos. It is a symbol found on an ancient Greek ruin’s pillar with no verifiable origin or association. I think it is common for those new to Hekate to cling to it, but as one progresses and learns it has no known connections to the goddess other than hype-driven fanboys, they leave it behind. This symbol came to me before I knew about Hekate directly. I found it while looking into old symbols we know little about. To me, it came to represent a symbol of going beyond, for it came from out of the mists of time. I later encountered Hekate, and the symbol seemed to have that in common with her symbols, in that Hekate is very much about going beyond. I have sat with this symbol for years, and it keeps telling me more about it. One of my favorite lines, of course during my early time working with Hekate, is that it is Hekate’s Labyrinth and that only witches get in and only dragons come out. I am not saying that is what it is. But isn’t it? This card is related to the Third Eye chakra.

Personal Eschaton

This card attempts to speak to what was and is by far the most pivotal experience of my life. Not to the details I experienced myself but to the nature of such experiences. It is a difficult topic to relay without a campfire to sit around and stars above to guide the words. Let’s just say that it had a lot to do with how we describe reality changes what we experience of it. Then, when we take that to narrate a crisis point of radical departure and transformation, well, you get something like what this card is inspired by. This card is related to the Heart chakra.

Effortless Effort

I suppose this is a real Zen card, but perhaps more directly, inspired by the Toltec teachings of “not doing.” It represents, in a general way, getting out of our own way to allow the life force, the creative energies, to do their magic. The arrows are pointing down because this is a card about embodying something, making something come to be through not doing it. This card is related to the Root chakra.

Petty Tyrant

The following two cards were the first of the Shadow cards that came into being when the Vortex suit was intact. This card represents how other people can play the role of our shadows and reflect them to us by wielding some form of power over us. It is a Toltec teaching wherein you use such situations to temper your resilience and hone your empowerment by waiting for just the right moment to take the reigns back and topple the tyrant. It is not a victory that can be found through obvious battles. It is an inner battle to master oneself in the face of adversity and then a critically-timed and intuitively found emergence of the warrior’s spirit that takes the practitioner through the veil and into the reclaiming of their power. This card is related to the Crown chakra.

Internal Conflict

This card came to mean too many different things to contain it in one card. It broke apart and became many of the published Shadow cards. But it is still a valuable reference point for me to gather them all up and realize what they all have in common. All internal conflict is a preoccupation with the mirror of the self. This is a mirror we must shatter to reclaim Inner Silence. This card is related to the Heart chakra.

Prepared Vessel

This card represented the process of working with one’s alchemical vessels to promote the aims of one’s process. The image was inspired by a dance-yoga photo I once saw where a person was showing how they could make their body into a sort of Celtic knot. I didn’t quite reach satisfaction with the image I was making, but I still love the idea. Whether it is our body, mind, home, community, or work, these are all bodies that need preparation and refinement as we go so that they can contain not just what we have achieved but what we want to create. It is the alchemical teaching that the substance will take on the form of the vessel. This card is related to the Sacral chakra.

Humble Offering

In a way, this card became the Shadow of Inflammatory Response. It is the remedy of that card in that as we encounter extreme irrationality, we must be willing to sink in and make compassionate concessions to work with the situation and eventually raise its inclinations. It is not just a “make peace” card but a profound alchemical approach for dealing with things that have gotten out of hand.

Secret Knowing

At one point, this deck had a lot of pentagrams in it. See “Reclaiming Meaning” above for some reasons behind the fixation. In the end, I could reduce it to just one, in Collective Insight. Of course, the hexagram played similar games with me, and I could only get it down to two of those. This card represented the secret knowing of the equilibration of the elements, which was what the deck was about as a whole, and so this card emerged one day only to dissolve into all the others the next. This card is related to the Throat chakra.

Creative Harmony

This card was what later stepped itself down into Holistic Synergy. Early on, it had a lot to do with pan-dimensional assistance. As it became Holistic Synergy, it took on the more local, earthly forms of collaboration. It also lent itself to the inspiration behind Infinite Expressions. This card had to do with the Crown chakra.

Spiral Return

This card later became Creating Sacred and Spiral Time, but initially, it was an expansive reclaiming of all we are. This card didn’t seem to speak clearly enough about the different sides of the situation that it represented. So, it split off and took on two forms to better relate.

Abstract Synergy

This card is pretty tricky to talk about, so it was a big part of the unseating of the Vortex suit. On the Psychic Path, even as the path becomes more and more discernable, that to which we relate becomes less and less describable. For example, in dreamwork, we may begin with recollecting and writing our dreams. As we gain traction, we can explore all sorts of approaches to teasing wisdom and meaning from them. As we progress, we find ourselves learning to simply sit with the psychic image of a dream as a whole, as though it were one big moving painting taking place all at once. I think I will just leave it at that for this post. This card holds the image of a sort of Dharma Wheel and how it interacts with gears from beyond the borders (of the card and reality). It also has an eight-pointed star, which points to endlessness.

The post Vortex – The Lost Suit of the Wild Harmonic Oracle appeared first on Wild Harmonic.

“Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”

—Antoine de Saint-Exupery

The overall execution of the art in this deck is very intentional. Here is a bit of the backstory on why I illustrated the cards as I have and what it took to get there.

Most oracle decks lean heavily on their art. I would suspect that the majority of oracle decks out there began as an artist’s body of work, to which someone said, after the fact, “hey, these paintings would make a great oracle deck.” While this has produced some beautiful and even powerful decks, it seems rare that the art in oracle decks is explicitly created for the deck and specifically for oracular purposes.

I intend that the art of the Wild Harmonic Oracle serve as an oracular commentary to the same degree that the concepts, words and symbolic structure (elements and chakras) do. I did not simply have a bunch of art sitting around and then retasked it as a deck. All of the art in this deck was created only for this deck, after the conception of each card itself.

It took me about nine years of working on the deck before I could get anywhere with the art on the cards. But not for lack of trying. About a year into the deck’s creation, I came up with some art. I completed about 20 cards worth of art and realized this art was not a good fit for the deck. This communication seemed to come from the deck itself. Clearly, I had more to learn about the deck before I could ground the art into existence.

At two other points in the process, I set out to put art to cards, and the same thing resulted from each time. At about five years in, I got as far as illustrating 14 cards, with an entirely new direction than my first attempt, and then was informed this was not the direction for the art of this deck. Around seven years in, I went at it again, getting nine cards illustrated, and again was stymied. Between these attempts, I had a giant process of giving up on the deck as a deck and returning to using it purely as the magical language from which it originated.

It wasn’t until the 9th year of working on the deck’s purpose and structure that things came together. It was a bit of a whirlwind, but looking back, it went something like this. First, the notion of expanding the deck from 25 cards to 49 cards suddenly unfolded before me. Something in this formula caused the concepts for each card to come rushing to me. I could barely keep up each day as the card ideas and their correspondences flooded in. As this happened, I saw vivid images and an overwhelming impulse to illustrate these ideas.

The first card I experimented with, using the new art direction I was inspired by, was “Ground of Being.” I was happy enough with the results, so I took a stab at a few more. I went in order from there, illustrating the following four cards in the Earth suit. A couple of weeks later, Nourishing Roots, Primal Pulse, Shared Breath and Visceral Listening sat before me with the first card and seemed to be saying, “yes, this way.” I ordered a sample deck with the five cards to see how it felt to hold and read them. When the sample arrived and was in my hands, I knew this was it immediately.

The basic idea of the art style I took was to keep things as simple as I could. The quote from Antoine above was my guiding light in the process. Each piece started with a basic idea, upon which I would layer many possible other ideas (seeking the wild harmonics in the art) to see how they might integrate. From there, it became more like sculpting, where I removed as much as possible until it felt like the image held just the vibe that would clearly transmit the energy behind the card.

I also did not want to hit the diviner over the head with my symbolic choices. I am not sure how successful I have been in this intent, but I aimed for an understated result. The reason for this is twofold. First, I wanted the let the user sit before the art as they might in a gallery and just let it speak to them. I did not want to give them an instant answer visually. I wanted them to make an effort to let the answers in. A truly lofty agenda for a foolish artist like myself to have, but I held it anyway.

The second reason is similar, but I feel it is also quite different. While I wanted the images to be a specific symbolic commentary on the card’s meaning, I also wanted the shapes and colors in the cards to allow the viewer to see things beyond the symbols I put there. I wanted the images to be conducive to, or even to inspire one into, the dreaming awareness that is at the heart of the deck’s purpose.

I love hearing stories from people using the deck of how they didn’t see a symbol in a card until suddenly it jumped out at them and how that experience was meaningful and useful in the moment. I love it just as much when I ask someone what they see in a card’s art, and they describe something I neither intended nor saw myself. Both of these kinds of experiences reflect important ways in which I learned to read cards for myself and others, and it was my aim to create a deck that was synergistic with this.

The post Oracular Art – Origins Of The Wild Harmonic Oracle, Part Four appeared first on Wild Harmonic.

The Dream Sutras reading spread given here is a way of constructing what I call an Oracular Mantra. This short phrase contains the keys to a given situation wrapped in the form of a linguistic enigma to ponder and peruse as one continues on with their life situations. Such a practice of carrying an oracular mantra with oneself gives us an ongoing reference point to mine our experiences for insights and empowerment using the mantra as a reflective surface to bring new perspectives, and new light, to an otherwise ordinary situation.

Of course, a Dream Sutra spread is just as potent, if not more so, when applying it to non-ordinary experiences.

Using The Dream Sutra Oracular Mantra Reading Spread

The basis of the reading is to draw four cards, place them in order in front of you, and turn them over.

You then use this template to construct your oracular mantra dream sutra.

The (FIRST CARD)
Of (SECOND CARD)
Opens the (THIRD CARD)
Of (FOURTH CARD)

For instance, when I first dreamed this spread up, I drew these cards to clarify for me the purpose of such a reading:

The cards Watercourse Way, Self Creating, Ineffable Delight and Always Already became this Dream Sutra:

The Watercourse Way of Self Creating Opens the Ineffable Delight of the Always Already.

When I first read this, I felt instantly altered by the engagement of a deep process. It was like reading this passage accessed and set in motion an as-yet unknown force of nature in my being, and I could feel it rippling out from me into my life almost immediately.

From this initial reading, I gathered this basic idea of what the Dream Sutras held for me and others. The Watercourse Way of Self Creating showed me that using the Dream Sutras was a practice of creating myself, choosing who and how I am, but in a way that follows a natural course through life (rather than a bulleted list of self-improvement paradigms). Such a practice not only opens a sudden full-being joy but reveals that such ineffable delight is something that is already within us, just waiting to be acknowledged, accessed and expressed. I was sold.

Working with Your Oracular Mantra Dream Sutra

You will find your way of working with these, but I will offer some of my approaches here to give you an idea of how they can be used. The first thing I do is to read the mantra a few times until I have it memorized. I also take a picture of it to refresh my memory on the fly. Often I will come across an experience after a reading like this that triggers a sense of “ah, this is what those cards are speaking to!” That said, I just as often can only recall 3 of the cards, and the 4th sits in the dark, taunting and tantalizing me with the potential keys to my enigmas that it holds. Once I have had enough sense of impenetrable mystery, I look up the photo and get on with the penetration.

Sitting with the mantra and bringing it with me as I encounter and reflect on my life is my main approach with these mantras. When I have a moment, I may recite it to myself to invoke it into my Awareness. At some point, something triggers an association. I then repeat it as a means of superimposing the mantra to describe what is occurring in my life and see what insights it can tease out for me.

Sometimes the insights are about how best to orient me, on the inner planes, to an experience. Other times they clarify the attitude or type of action that will best serve. Often the first case leads to the second.

Playing with these mantras engages our aptitudes for dancing with the enigmas of Awareness. They can be both a receptive invocation of what we nurture and an active willing of what we wish to create. Though I am not sure how far removed, they are a cousin of the Zen Koan. While their form and use are entirely different than the Koan, the not-doing of how we work with them falls between fairly similar and identical.

Further Possibilities With The Dream Sutras

Of course, it wasn’t long before I put these into play. I encountered a deeply disturbing, overwhelmingly negative psychic experience just around the bend from their discovery. It is difficult to describe it in detail without sounding pompous or tragically hip, so I will leave it at that. Suffice it to say I wanted some guidance and went to the Dream Sutras for their counsel. I drew this mantra:

The Shadow Guardian of Subconscious Reflection opens the Dream Speaking of Chaotic Return.

Again, just reading this mantra dropped me into a deeper dreaming awareness, and I could feel a process of unfolding begin.

My initial take on this, which was very helpful, was along these lines. What I was facing was a deep shadow having to do with how I reflect life and how my life reflects me. Because of the shadow element here, I presumed it had to do with projections and deflections as much as reflections. By engaging the shadow with clarity, I would then open the ability to change my narrative. It was key to knowing that this shadow was here to serve my unfolding by playing the role of a guardian that would not let me pass until I solved the riddle of what it was showing me about myself. It promised me the opportunity to tell my story in a new way that opened my heart to embrace all I had denied. It played out just like that.

A few days into seeing this play out, I felt a shift and so drew a new mantra for the new energy position.

The Ineffable Delight of the Dreaming Layers Opens the way of the Creating Sacred of the transmutation of Self Destruction into Tantric Trust.

Again, it was true to my ensuing experience and provided an empowering perspective from which to navigate my non-ordinary experiences. By approaching the Awareness of other levels of being with joy, I open the path to restoring sacred consciousness to the realms where self-destruction can be healed into a path of engagement and trust.

This mantra shows how you can play with the presence of shadow cards in a Dream Sutra spread. Wherever a shadow is drawn, you will draw another card to remedy its transmutation. If a shadow is drawn to transmute a shadow, it indicates a deep shadow, and you keep drawing the transmutation card until you get a non-shadow. Of course, you will also pile up all the shadows drawn, building a powerful mantra addressing so much healing at once that you will need your big dreamer shoes to engage with it. But oh, what an adventure you have before you!

Word Play

A mantra will take shape differently depending on the cards drawn. When building the mantras, always let your inspiration help align the words and how they fit together. Using the format above is somewhere to start and gives you a structure to construct an alchemical formula for refining your situation into a higher and/or more expanded awareness.

When integrating the shadow cards into a mantra, which implies using five or more cards, use the above example as your guide, and let your inspiration in the moment guide you. The more shadows that appear at once, the more complexity, trauma, and/or wounding there is presenting itself, and the more healing/empowerment promised through the course of the inquiry.

Final Thoughts

Please post your Dream Sutra Oracular Mantras and let me know where I can find them. If you would like any help building your mantra, please message me in some fashion, and I would be delighted to play with you.

The post Dream Sutras Spread – Crafting Oracular Mantras With The Wild Harmonic Oracle Cards appeared first on Wild Harmonic.

The post Elemental Play – Origins Of The Wild Harmonic Oracle, Part Three appeared first on Wild Harmonic.

While I addressed this briefly in the book that accompanies the deck, space limitations kept me from going into details. This article aims at going a bit deeper than print publishing restrictions allowed.

To be clear of where I stand on cultural appropriation, let me say I think everyone is free to do what they want in the privacy of their own home (only with total consent and no harm brought to the ecosystem, of course). If you want to adopt cultural activities that are alien to your own upbringing and keep it private, more power to you. Explore your bad self. When we make it public, when we claim to represent, and especially when we charge for it, it becomes problematic.

Bold misbehaviors aside, which are pretty easy to discern, there is also a less clear, gray area where portions of cultural ideas are borrowed and integrated into other works by people outside of the originating culture. As a general rule, if this is done with honesty, giving credit where it is due and is done so as to not intentionally misrepresent the original nor claim knowledge or authority one does not have, it is a good thing. It is akin to the idea of fair use within the realms of quoting passages from books. You cannot simply publish someone else’s words nor claim them as your own, but you can reference bits of them to help bring to light your own words. This is a beautiful form of co-creation, in my opinion, and a way that the interwoven play of life reveals and perpetuates itself.

The Wild Harmonic Oracle arises from my attempt to understand the human experience and communicate a variety of ways of talking about it without making specific cultural or traditional references. Of course, I succeeded in some places and failed in others. Much of the deck draws upon universal images of nature, geometry and trans-cultural objects like swords and bodies. Yet, in other places, some cultural symbols, ones that were so influential in my psyche at the time, insisted on being in the cards. For the most part, I think their inclusion will go unnoticed, being so worked into the art that they do not stand out. But some do stand out, at least to me, and to these, I would like to speak now.

Perhaps one of the most problematic cards in the deck, at least in my sense of this context, is the card Tantric Trust. It not only uses the word “tantric,” which comes from cultures not my own but also features a symbol resembling an Egyptian Ankh. If any card strikes me as being naively referencing cultural ideas with the reckless entitlement of a white male American high on his own gnosis, it is this one.

The reason I allowed it to pass is in part because, in my experience, both the word tantric and the symbol of the Ankh have taken on pervasive modern meanings to virtually everyone I have ever discussed spirituality with. Misguided as the process has been, these two symbols have somehow become almost mainstream placeholders for extremely powerful ideas. Having them at my disposal in a reading, in a communication, was too useful to pass up.

The other aspect of why this card got a pass is that the card itself represents pushing my own limits. It felt right to allow a piece of art that I felt was edgy (even if others never do, lol) to represent the inquiry into the edgy sides of life. I allowed the poison inherent in the art to be present to see if it could help facilitate the transmutation which its place in the deck represented. We shall see.

Two other instances of symbols I think might stand out are the Yin Yang symbol in Negation Trance and the strange, vajra-like object in Talismanic Access. In both cases, they are not the traditional versions of the images but merely based on them. As with Tantric Trust, I feel that the root images lend their mainstream, western-version concepts to what I then have done with them in order to make my points (enigmatic as they may be!). In the instance of Talismanic Access, I explored so many other non-vajra versions, and none of them fit with the deck. So it is either a case of the mystical insistence by the spirits behind the cards or the naive inclusion of this symbolism by a lazy artist who can’t be bothered to do better—also, publishing deadlines.

A perhaps garish use of another cultural symbol is the Sri Yantra on Infinite Expressions. I suppose to me this symbol has become so present in my world, via the propagation of western Yoga culture, that I subconsciously thought it would go unnoticed, just as the chakra banner on the back of your accountant’s door doesn’t seem out of place any longer. This symbol has been so vital for me in my journey, it simply had to be in this deck. I don’t think I have an excuse for it other than it is again a shorthand for a wide-ranging set of ideas for which I could not find a better way to portray. Or lazy. Or publishing deadlines.

The rest of the deck is peppered with images of meditators, which I feel are universal, and various knot patterns, which I draw from my Celtic Ancestors, and so don’t cost me any sleep at their inclusions.

There is one instance, however, where I straight-up took someone else’s idea. This is on the card Self Creating and it is a blatant rip-off of Escher’s hand drawing a hand drawing a hand. It baffles me that I can think of no better symbol for this card to this day, and in a way, I think I consider Escher’s drawing a cultural symbol rather than one person’s unique expression. This is, of course, not true and unfair of me to try and justify this bold departure from originality, and no amount of clever narration could ever convince you that Escher came to me in a dream and told me I had his blessing to use it.

Of course, the irony of using someone else’s idea on a card called “Self Creating” is something I couldn’t remove from the deck. Perhaps it is my sense of humor, but it seems appropriate to use this act of irony to illustrate such a bafflingly ironic concept as creating oneself.

The post Cultural References – Origins Of The Wild Harmonic Oracle, Part Two appeared first on Wild Harmonic.

“Curiouser and curiouser.”

—Alice (in Wonderland)

Creating the Wild Harmonic Oracle Deck was far from a straightforward experience. The process began some 20 years ago when I created a magical language for use in sacred rituals and dream walking. The language, which I call Dreaming Tongue, is based on a cross-relationship between the five elements of Earth, Water, Fire, Air and Spirit, and where, inside the mouth, different sounds arise, how they resound and the elemental attributions that go with each. Suffice it to say, it was a deep dive into strange chanting practices that took years of perceptual de-arrangement to discern what sounds fit where.

From these 25 sounds, I constructed a magical alphabet, and from that, a magical language, a language I continue to use today as a key element of my own sacred path. Early on, in addition to the sounds, it occurred to me that the 25 sounds could be translated into 25 symbolic concepts as cards in a deck which I could then use for divination. What followed from that idea was 10 years of madly mapping, remapping, and remapping, again and again, various ideas to the cards.

The first stumbling block was the art. I have a background in traditional art, yet had spent many years as a digital graphic designer, which had made my approach a fusion of both. I played with different styles, looks and feels for a long time. More than once, I hit on an idea, proceeded to make a few cards along those lines, and then got the very lucid feeling that this was not the direction I wanted to go. So I would set the deck aside again until I had a new inspiration. At one point in such a cycle, I had even gotten as far as creating 16 cards to completion before realizing this was not the direction to go.

Years later, I hit on an idea for the deck style, as I had numerous times before, and sat down to work it out. I finished the art of three cards and knew, in some strange overwhelming way, this was the direction to go. I was excited, thinking I was pretty close to done with only 21 further cards to make! Little did I know that was going to change quickly.

Once I had the first ten cards made, I saw into another layer of the deck’s architecture of correspondences. I realized I needed to expand the deck’s numbers to include seven elements: each being in relation to each other, expanding the deck from 25 (5×5) to 49 (7×7) cards. The symmetry of this expanded scope of meaning was too profound for me to ignore, and the prospect of more card art and meanings to make was exciting, so I set off on the path as it appeared before me.

After working with the seven elemental schematics for a time and making the cards to fit it, I began to play with an 8th element called Vortex. This element represented something beyond-beyond in each case and suddenly, I found myself juggling a deck of 64 (8×8) cards. This 8th element, however, didn’t last longer than one test printing, which I was ordering from time to time so I could physically play with the cards in hand. Upon seeing the Vortex element in actual use, I knew it had to go.

What I found was that in almost all cases, the Vortex cards were highly abstract and I was concerned that their inclusion would unground the deck’s communications in a reading. So I removed the Vortex element. Some of the card ideas from the Vortex element were strong and found their way into informing some other cards that did make it into the deck, but for the most part, the Vortex cards are like a lost suit that only I and a few others have ever seen.

Yet this idea of an 8th suit stuck with me, partly because of the symmetry of the 8×8 lattice, which the deck would have if I had eight suites. Of any number, eight is likely the most personally meaningful to me in my life, so I was fixated on the idea though at first, I had no idea how it would happen, for I had seen the Vortex suit was too ephemeral to use here.

Then one day I started playing with the idea that maybe not all the cards would be positive in their basic idea. In my basic concept for the deck, each card could take on a shadow form of itself, and so I wondered, what if I had an 8th element to represent some of these shadows as cards themselves. Would it make the deck too dark for my liking? Would it confuse people by having to understand this deck-within-a-deck? Would I be able to discern what these shadow cards would be?

After a few rounds of shadow play, I became hooked, and the 8th pseudo-element of Shadow was born. It not only satisfied my craving for the number eight to play a significant part in the geometry of the deck, but it also gave the deck numerous ways (I keep discovering more!) that it can play with itself. It also brought the deck much more down to earth, quite the opposite of what the Vortex suit had done. The inclusion of the Shadow cards brought in a vital aspect of Soul-Work into the deck, and the exclusion of the Vortex cards trimmed away the temptations of spiritual bypass that reside in any over-emphasis on the Spirit.

From there, the cards had their way with me. Discerning the meaning of each card, in some cases, even where each card fit into the elemental lattice, was a non-ordinary journey. Cards often came to me in dreams with art instructions, research directions (to reveal their meaning), or told me they didn’t belong where I had put them. Some would communicate I had their location wrong, so I would move them to where they indicated. Then they would tell me that no, I had it right the first time. So I would move them back. Such wily cards!

There were many strange crossroads, experiments, and hidden paths I was guided to take along the way. At one point even, I had a run-in with Enochian magic that would provide, albeit I would say reluctantly, some key understandings about the nature of this deck I was creating. The Faerie realms were far from silent on this project too, which brought a welcome mix of chaos, creativity and nature. The star tribes as well kept showing up to audit my work at odd hours. It was a process that asked me to change reality paradigms at a moment’s notice or miss the blessings of inspiration and understanding that the non-ordinary was offering up.

My aim is that this deck reflects such fluidity in perspective yet simultaneously maintains coherency of empowered interconnectivity throughout, which is what I discern is the very stuff a waking dreamer is made of.

“Art is never finished, only abandoned.”

—Attributed to Leonardo Da Vinci.

The post Wiley Cards – Origins Of The Wild Harmonic Oracle, Part One appeared first on Wild Harmonic.

I have set out to create expanded writings on each and every card in the deck. These writings are in addition to what will be printed in the book/deck set, but entirely integrable with them. Why didn’t these writing make it into the book? In part, that had a lot to do with page count limitations for a guidebook that can fit in a box with the deck. I had to be pithy.

Yet in another very real way, I needed to sit with the deck for some time to attempt to put the expanses I can see into words, the expanses I have had and continue to experience, in each card directly. So every card in the deck comes from a process of identifying an aspect of my own experience, which I then do my best to distill down into a more universal meaning and teaching.

As I sit with a card in one hand and a pen in the other, I am compelled to invoke the card’s energy into my life to reflect on it with ruthless sincerity. For most cards, this is a joyful dance of a play of fractal wisdom pouring through my all too eager astral hands as I try and grasp at a glimpse of what I might manage to ground into words and deeds from beyond.

For the shadow cards, however, this is rarely a process of blissful cosmic trips. Instead, it is, more often than not, a painfully reflective reminder of how immature I still am. While I start my reflection in each shadow card, as any rational spiritual bypasser would, by clarifying how others in my life demonstrate a given shadow, that is only an outline, a sketched out table of contents, for the hyper-personal process that comes next.

Being with a shadow card in this way doesn’t so much invoke it into my life, as if it wasn’t already there. Instead, it reveals it by amplifying it. The revealing part is great, of course, as it is the way forward. But, the necessary amplification is the tricky part, the trial by fire, the gauntlet that I must undertake to earn the self-respect I need to write and teach about it.

And so I set out to get through as many shadow cards in a row as I can stomach! I burn the midnight oil and hope that my denials can play themselves out before dawn. I’ve got to pace myself, though, as there is only so much one can integrate at once into a day, a career, a family. I quip to a friend that I hope my marriage survives the process. Of course, I jest, and it will survive and thrive, but it will definitely be the result of being made stronger by that which does not kill it.

And that is the nature of shadows. They seek to tear down the strength of the light by beguiling us into thinking their denial is where the power resides. But such denial reigning supreme will never build a world worth living in, much less get my online card guide written up.

Clipart licensed from Adobe Stock.

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