Wicca Pack / The Witches’ Oracle

[Marina]

I recently found out that the good ol' “Wicca Pack”, by Sally Morningstar and Danuta Mayer (the illustrator) has been… rebranded (?)… as “The Witches' Oracle”.

 

The art seems to be same, but the cards have borders now. Here is a picture of the new version. 

Anyway, I have always kinda liked the art of this deck, but I never read about anyone using really using it, even though it's been around for ages!

 

Does anyone here have this oracle (either the old or the new version)? What are your experiences with it? Any comments are welcome!

 

 

 

[Tanga]

Oh...

I don't have that deck.

 

I wonder if it existed at the time that I thoroughly read Sally Morningstar's "The Wiccan Way - a path to spirituality and self-development".  This was the 1st Wiccan book I bought, which had beautiful photos of a Wiccan lady dressed in a decent looking robe, with beautiful minimalist modern looking altars (i.e. not thoroughly jammed full with all kinds of stuff/clutter, and with simple modern every-day items).  I loved this bit about this book.  It looked "normal" and professional - if you get my meaning.

The whole presentation is soft, and IMO healing to the eye & therefore, the Spirit.  A beautiful introductory book for beginners.

 

The pack sounds familiar - so perhaps I looked at it in the past or even had a copy.... hmmmm.

But - looking at the photo you have posted now - I don't like the artwork that much, so if I had a copy - I moved it on somewhere.

 

I think... that I also did a Wicca course online with Sally Morningstar...

Fancy thinking of this now.

 

Thanks for this!

I've taken down my copy of The Wiccan Way and am enjoying again - the beautiful composition of the photographs within it.

Edited 22 hours ago by Tanga

[DanielJUK]

There are new publisher details on the decks, the original deck was published in 2003 by Godsfield Press Ltd (an imprint of Hachette) and the newly rebranded "The Witches' Oracle" in 2023 by OH! Life (Headline Publishing Group, which is part of Hachette UK). Original was 42 cards and 128 page book, new one 42 cards and 128 page book. Some of the outside the UK / EU decks have the publisher as Eddison Books which was bought by Hachette in 2022.

 

Seems to be just a rebranding, reprint and new imprint divisions of Hachette. The original is OOP (out of print) but still available on Amazon and much cheaper than the new edition! Not sure why they added borders.

[Marina]

3 hours ago, Tanga said:

I wonder if it existed at the time that I thoroughly read Sally Morningstar's "The Wiccan Way - a path to spirituality and self-development".  This was the 1st Wiccan book I bought, which had beautiful photos of a Wiccan lady dressed in a decent looking robe, with beautiful minimalist modern looking altars

I didn't know this book but now I'm positively curious about it!! I know the original "Wicca Pack" came with a book that taught some basic on wicca-inspired paganism, perhaps the new edition still has the same content.

 

2 hours ago, DanielJUK said:

Seems to be just a rebranding, reprint and new imprint divisions of Hachette. The original is OOP (out of print) but still available on Amazon and much cheaper than the new edition! Not sure why they added borders.

Thanks for all the fact checking, @DanielJUK! It seems nothing changed except the name and… the borders. Now, why borders? I never heard anyone say they prefer their decks with borders (in fact, I recall there was a trend in the past that involved trimming the borders!).

 

It's interesting to me that this deck is still around but I never see anyone use it or talk about it! I may have to buy a copy just change this  But the cards I see online are quite pretty and look like “hand drawn art”, which I personally prefer.

[Tanga]

4 hours ago, Marina said:

1) I didn't know this book but now I'm positively curious about it!! I know the original "Wicca Pack" came with a book that taught some basic on wicca-inspired paganism, perhaps the new edition still has the same content.

 

2) Thanks for all the fact checking, @DanielJUK! It seems nothing changed except the name and… the borders. Now, why borders? I never heard anyone say they prefer their decks with borders (in fact, I recall there was a trend in the past that involved trimming the borders!).

 

It's interesting to me that this deck is still around but I never see anyone use it or talk about it! I may have to buy a copy just change this  But the cards I see online are quite pretty and look like “hand drawn art”, which I personally prefer.

 

1) 2nd hand copies of it are available here on Ebay (UK) for c.£4.  It's a thin book - whizz through it in an evening.

Sally was (or is) a Wiccan High Priestess in Glastonbury.

(My happy new Wiccan Oracle pack purchase - is The Witches Wisdom Oracle by Phyllis Curott - a Wiccan High Priestess in New York. It has a matching Witches Wisdom Tarot deck!  Woohoooo!.  *You can find Phyllis on Social media - she is quite a public figure).

 

2) Weeeellll - there's one deck that I de-bordered - which I now regret. LOL. It was better with them on.

Decks these days are printed without the original border - at the same size. While I like no borders, mostly - what was great about de-bordering decks - was they shank a bit, to a size that more comfortably fits in my hands. I can't get that effect now.

And... perhaps I'm getting toooo old to go through the amount of painstaking time needed to de-border a deck by hand with a pair of long sharp scissors, and a corner rounder - and THEN, spend loads more time colour staining the edges 🤪 (usually has to be done 2-3 times to get an even colour on each card). I'm loosing my younger self precision eye-sight too. Sigh.