love this...drool...be prepared for a gush
This is qualified w/ 'it's only been a week since i've had this.' However, it is a deck geared for healing through dark and troubled times, and that is what i'm currently in. Normally i would have expected to find myself agreeing w/ Happy Squirrel's take on this not being a v. deep read of kuan yin heritage, and something about how it's new age spirituality vibe is perhaps a little canned. But i've never had a deck where it felt like a divine presence was speaking directly to me. (and it kind of makes me shudder and roll my eyes to say that.) For the few readings i've done, there has been a paragraph in the several pages Alana Fairchild writes for each card, that felt specifically for the question i asked. I got chills up and down my spine. Now in my more typical, more wary, and therefore more usual mode of assessing i deck, i probably would be like, isn't she trying to do too much for each card, making it too 'same-y' making it apply to all situations and saying the same types of things over and over again? But i don't know. Between the nuanced titles, and that she does address why those titles were chosen, I think there's enough here for good oracle work; Mind you, i dont have many oracles, but the few i have i use to death. I either keep them and use them bunches or get rid of them fairly quickly.
But i've never had this sort of enchanted feel-- primarily probably because i'm quite in love with the artwork. Also, like the true walking hypocrite that i am, i love this shiny Blue Angel cardstock. Nine times out of time, if i'm complaining about a deck i'm complaining about the shiny cardstock, but this feels just perfect. I also expected to have the issue w/ the landscape formatting mix, but i think the art would have been butchered if just one format was chosen. Love the neon-red hues, as if the kuan yins are flying into sunset. love basically everything. I will say, i think this would be a hard deck to read for others with. Or it would take some time to whittle your read on the titles into something succinct that could be conveyed that gives the same feel that those opening italicized paragraphs do for each card-- i liken them to that voice in sufi poetry, although, i am not likening Alana Fairchild to Rumi; lol. It's, you know, that voice of the beloved, the supplicant talking to the divine and hearing the divine in constant communication. It's very tender writing. These days i am an anxious, paranoid person who needs a lot of reassurance to make the tiniest steps as i drag myself out of a cleft in the earth. A crevasse i seem to have made all on my own. This is exactly the right balm for now.
I've done the healing rituals associated w/ the cards of the reading. They're not bad, they take v. little time and usually no props. I tend to get my spiritual needs met through yoga and mantra work w/ my mala. So usually i would be geared up for something more... i don't know if more in-depth, or tradition-rich is the right descriptor. But this provides something different. The fact that several times during a v. hectic hellish day i recalled the ritual and the card and 'the voice' assuring me that what i had heard that morning when i drew it still holds a place inside of me, is a sort of validity for me that this is a beautiful beginning w/ a deck. any deck.