Creating an oracle deck?

Hi there,

I'm interested in creating my own oracle deck. I've never used one and only used the tarot but I'm thinking an oracle deck may be a good start in creating a deck of sorts.

The trouble is that I've suddenly hit my first stumbling block - how does one know what the cards should be? Due to the varying amounts of cards and meanings, how do you decide what should be on the cards or even how many there should be?

My first entry into oracles is a block.

Thanks for any help!

Your first step is to decide if they are going to have divisions, and how many cards for each area. You can browse through some numerology books or websites to see what is associated with the various numbers.

Most of the oracle decks I've purchased have 44 cards in them. Not sure if this is framed by how many cards are printed per sheet. Maybe you could look at it as being 4 elements x 11 cards. (11 is a Master Number.)

Personally, I like to use the 5 elements: spirit, fire, earth, air, & water. At a minimum, I choose 9 per "suit" so that I can have a card for each of the single-digit numbers. (even if I don't note the number on the card itself)

Just to be ornery, I assigned my own "planet" rulers to the numbers like this:
1 ~ Sun
2 ~ Mercury
3 ~ Venus
4 ~ Mars
5 ~ Jupiter
6 ~ Saturn
7 ~ Uranus
8 ~ Neptune
9 ~ Moon
*See the polarity thing going on there? 1 to 9: Light- radiate or reflect, 2 to 8: Speed- fast/surface or slow/depth, 3 to 7: Energy- attract or repel, 4 to 6: Force- expand or restrict. When I look at 5 on a pip die, it reminds me of a bloom or an explosion. But you could also view it as an implosion or black hole too.

You could choose to show different types of beings, animals, and items.

ETA: I grab my thesaurus and look up keywords. Then I choose opposites for them. A pack of blank index cards works well for jotting down notes as you develop each card.

Thanks for your reply! That's certainly a lot to think about and plan. Certainly something to organise my thoughts with.

Thanks again.

Just don't treat your structure as some unchangeable thing- that's why I like to use the index cards. If things start going wrong, I can keep the few I like and revamp the ideas.

That is some excellent advice. I took a slightly different approach when creating my deck....

I just started a list of things/objects/people events that held deep meaning for me or my life...things that resonanted with me...made the list without worry of meaning etc....this took a couple weeks as things seemed to just "pop" into my head

Then I took the list and jotted down what emotions or ideas popped into my head about each card....I also illicited ideas from my daughter and neice since many of the cards were family/history etc related.

Then I looked at the list and thought about what was not represented and added a few archetypical cards for those things like Death, Creator etc.

Now I am in the process of writing short paragraphs using the strong words that came to mind for each card and rounding out the meanings a bit. AFTER I do that on each one I do a search (if there is info avaialble) and see what symbolism that object or thing has throughout history. I pick anything that seems to "fit" with my card and use it to round out the meaning BUT I do not change my original "idea" about the card. There are a few that do not have symbolism associated with them...but many do so I can get more ideas for meaning if needed. It is amazing how much my original thought meshes with symbolism information available.

When I finish with that I will again look over to see if common or needed themes/emotions/ideas are all represented in the deck...and make adjustments as needed.

Obviously this deck will be a very personalized deck for myself/family although I see no reason someone else couldn't read with it. Currently I have the ideas on idex cards with any meaning s that have been developed and have been using it some to see how it flows....so far it has given VERY accurate readings...and it has the added bonus of almost instant knowledge about the card since the images are personal and I don't have to "learn" the meaning.

I suppose you could say the creation of the deck was more intuitive than "thought out" but it seems to have worked pretty well.