How to use oracle cards as writing prompts

Hi Witchy Writer,

I need a lot of variety to keep myself motivated in my ongoing writing practice. This is the writing I do when I show up regularly to the page to play with thoughts, characters, and story. It’s when I engage my inspiration with no agenda. It’s when I play around to keep my writing life active and thriving.

To create variety, I love using writing prompts, and in today’s Witchy Writers’ Podcast episode I teach you how to use one of my favorite kinds of prompts, oracle cards. In this show, you’ll learn what oracle cards are and how they can stretch your writing by helping you explore topics you never would’ve thought to write about.

Want to share your thoughts about writing with oracle cards with me? Email hello@enchantedwriting.com.

Emma

P.S. Join the Dark Moon Free 5-Day Writing Challenge to experience the quietude and self-reflection of the dark moon with five witchy writing prompts. The challenge starts on Saturday September 9, 2023.

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Disclaimer: This blog is a resource guide for educational and informational purposes only and should not take the place of hiring a life coach, a therapist, or of seeking medical attention. No information on this blog creates a coach-client relationship between us. You are fully responsible for the decisions and actions you take in regard to your life and affairs.

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Transcript

Hi everyone, and welcome to the Witchy Writers Podcast, where you will learn about witchy tools, mindset tips, and creative practices to empower your writing life.

I am Emma Veritas.

I am a writer, writing coach, and creative witch.

Today, I'm talking to you about what is empowering my witchy writing life right now, and I'm sharing a witchy tool you can use to develop a writing practice.

But before we get into that, I have a really fun announcement for you.

I'm starting this September 14th.

The doors are going to open to my brand new membership for witchy writers called Pen and Hearth.

Pen and Hearth helps witchy writers like you develop a daily writing practice so you can feel inspired in your writing life.

Yesterday I talked to you about how the heart of Pen and Hearth, the heart of what we're doing in the membership, is responding to daily, really fun, witchy writing prompts that you can use not only to inspire your writing, but also to create a sense of connection with other writers who are just like you.

There are people who are kind of witchy.

There are people who want to write something that is meaningful for them, that feels inspiring for them, that is something that is probably from their heart.

So when the doors open to Pen and Hearth on September 14th, that is the new moon.

We will be starting a writing cycle where the theme of that whole writing cycle is going to be lunar magic.

So when we open the doors to the public, we're going to really experience and tap into and get to know and understand lunar magic all together on top of doing our daily writing prompts.

So that I think is a really fun part of Pen and Hearth.

Not only are you developing this daily writing practice, but we are also adding some magic into your life every day.

So the writing prompts will help you tap into that lunar rhythm and that lunar cycle magic.

Okay.

So if you are interested in joining Pen and Hearth for now, I encourage you to join my newsletter at enchantedwriting.com on the homepage.

There's a signup link for my newsletter.

When you are a part of my newsletter, you will be one of the first people to know that the doors to Pen and Hearth are open on September 14th.

And I would just love for you to join us and be part of this fun, vibrant, and kind group of witchy writers.

Okay.

So now it is time for our next segment, which is what is empowering my witchy writing life right now.

So yesterday I talked to you about how I'm doing a pilot program of Pen and Hearth writing, using the daily writing prompts and how I am feeling so connected to my voice in a new and interesting and cool way.

So if you want to hear about that, I encourage you to listen to the episode right before this one.

But today I want to tell you about something else that is empowering my witchy writing life right now.

And kind of has been for the past few months.

And that is a program that I run called Enchanted Writing Coven.

So you might notice a theme in the programs that I put together, which is that whatever I put out into the world is usually what I need to be doing.

Right.

I usually run programs for others and it's always also for myself.

Like I need a daily writing practice.

I want to be connecting with community in my writing life.

And so I want to do this membership program, Pen and Hearth.

And I also run the seasonal writing program called Enchanted Writing Coven, which it's not as much a writing program as much as it is a healing journey.

So at the beginning of each season, we set an intention for our writing life, the direction we want to go.

And over the course of nine weeks, we work through different witchy and energetic healing practices to help release the blocks that are standing in the way of the direction we want to go.

And we look to empowering our authentic flow that will help us to move in the direction we want to go in our writing lives.

If that sounds interesting to you, Enchanted Writing Coven is open only to folks who have done at least one month of participation in Pen and Hearth, because Enchanted Writing Coven really is kind of like an advanced magic school.

It's an advanced healing journey school.

And so if it's something you'd like to do, get the foundations going so that you can join Enchanted Writing Coven at the beginning of each season.

Anyway, I did not mean for that to be an ad about Enchanted Writing Coven, but it is something you need to know about me when you're in my world.

This is a thing I'm always doing.

And at the beginning of the coven this season, so in summer, at the beginning of summer, I set my intention all around this really big, intense, fiery energy I had been feeling in my body.

Like I just was feeling very focused, very fiery.

And I knew there was something I needed to create, but I didn't know what it was or what it was going to be.

I just knew that I wanted to create room for that fiery energy to have its place in my life.

And so what I did to do that was I created essentially a lot of boundaries around my time.

I set very specific office hours.

I told the people in my life that I didn't want to be interrupted or disturbed during those office hours, that this was my time for getting into that focus zone to see what would happen.

And it ended up being a really interesting summer.

Lots of things happened.

Um, particularly I ran a 30 day writing challenge in my free online community called the Witchy Writers Club, and that inspired the pen and tarth to come into being.

And all of this stuff happened and like, I wasn't super focused on my writing projects, but all of a sudden by the end of the summer, I had like this beautiful and interesting and sustaining writing practice that I did not have before the beginning of the summer.

So that fiery energy really changed my writing life for me in a very cool way.

And how I feel empowered in my writing life because of that is now what I feel the season is over, the season of the coven is over.

And now how I feel is that I can trust my own sense of my own energy and what is needed at any given time or any given season for that energy.

Like I felt that fiery energy.

I knew it needed a space to be in the world, to have a container for that fiery energy to create something.

And I did it and followed through with that.

I was like, wow, that was worth it.

That was great.

And now what I want is to really trust like the elemental energy going on within me, my own rhythms and patterns.

We have these times where we have lots of fire.

We have other times where we might feel a lot of air energy, lots of whimsy, lots of, you know, going in every direction, but maybe in a cool way right now at the end of summer, at the end of that fiery energy, I'm kind of feeling a return to like watery energy.

I'm kind of getting into a slower flow.

Like I feel like the kind of water that feels like kind of heavy, right?

My energy has shifted and changed and what I want to remember and to bring into my life so I can continue to empower my witchy writing life.

They want to honor that, create space for that new energy to see what that watery energy is going to do in my life.

And at the beginning of the phase where I feel watery, I don't know, like, I don't know what's going to happen next, but I know that I want to create room for that and to let myself return to like from that intense fiery focus to more of like a cooled down watery sense of blow.

And so we'll see.

And maybe at the end of autumn, I'll check back in about how things went and what happened with all of this water energy that I'm feeling, but that is empowering my witchy writing life right now, just through the coven.

I was through setting my intentions at the beginning of the season through releasing blocks and empowering my flow, like through the healing process of the coven, I was able to be supported in that intention.

I had set to create containment for the fiery focus.

And so the coven as support along with what I actually did with my writing life is empowering me and my witchy writing life right now.

Okay, so time for our next segment where I am sharing a witchy tool with you today.

And that is how to use Oracle cards as writing prompts.

So this is something I'm doing in pen and heart.

At least twice a week, we have an Oracle card prompt.

It's super fun because reading how people respond to these Oracle cards are everyone has a whole different take on it.

This is one thing I love about writing prompts and writing in community with other people like this is to get to see how different we each respond to what is there and what is present.

Okay, so Oracle cards, if you don't know, they are decks of cards that you would use when you need like a wisdom message, when you need a little like spiritual connection, they're something you use when you might have a question about your life and you're kind of looking for other input other than like your own mind and maybe the circular thoughts your mind is going through over and over and over again.

Essentially when you get an Oracle card deck, you might go to a fun witchy shop, they might have a whole case of Oracle card decks.

And you will see that each one has a different theme, a deck of fairy Oracle cards or animal spirit Oracle cards, or you might see ones based on flowers or herbs, like they're just a huge variety of different themes people use to create an Oracle deck.

And then usually each card of the deck essentially has a different message to impart to you.

So there will be usually on the card, there'll be an image, like a lot of times they're just beautiful paintings and illustrations.

And the image will have a meaning and a theme, you know, you might pick a card that's about power, or courage, or being heart centered, connecting to your heart, you know, who knows, there's just an infinity number of different kinds of Oracle cards.

And then what you do is you'll ask a question, you'll shuffle your card deck, you'll pick a card, and you'll see how that card inspires you.

Usually decks also come with a guidebook so that each card has a description from the author and creator of the deck about what message this card might have for you.

I love Oracle cards.

Oracle cards are the first witchy practice I ever did ever.

I went to a witchy shop once.

I lived in New Hampshire at that time and this really cool little shop in the woods and I got an Oracle card deck from them, the goddess Oracle.

And it was really the first thing I ever did that was like a different spiritual practice other than Christianity because I grew up like in a very fundamentalist Christian home.

So it was a huge stretch for me to do anything witchy at that time when I was in my twenties and I just got hooked.

I loved it.

I loved playing with Oracle cards.

So there's something you can use in your spiritual practice, but also they can be really fun to use just as writing prompts.

So if you were going to use an Oracle card as a writing prompt, what you would do is you would pick an Oracle card from one of your Oracle decks.

You don't have to ask a question.

You don't have to make it super spiritual.

You can just pull a card at random, see what there is.

And then instead of looking at the message of the card or reading the description, you would just use the image on the Oracle card.

So what you would do is you would shuffle the deck, pick a card, gaze at the image and start writing just with what you see.

Here's what I see happening in this card.

Here's what this animal is doing.

Here's what I think this animal might be feeling.

You might write about what you feel drawn to.

I'm really drawn to the colors.

I'm really drawn to this thing happening.

And you just start your writing by saying, this is what I see happening in this card.

And then you keep writing, keep writing to see what comes out.

It's a great way to help clear the channels of your imagination, to engage the part of you that can kind of go anywhere with your writing and just see what comes up.

You might end up surprising yourself.

You might write a poem, a story might come out, a personal reflection or aha moment or realization might happen.

So you just explore and just let anything flow onto the page and let yourself be surprised.

So this is a writing practice.

Like if you want an ongoing daily writing practice or regular writing practice, even if it's not daily, that's totally fine, you might use an Oracle card to do that.

So you could get an Oracle card deck.

So if you don't have an Oracle card deck, um, ones I recommend for beginners are the wild unknown animal spirit deck by Ken Kranz or the illustrated herbiary by Maya Toll, which I'll link to these in the show notes.

I am not sponsored by them.

I've never talked to them, but they are great decks to use.

They're simple, clear and beautiful.

And I think they're great for beginners.

So you can get your Oracle card deck, you can start shuffling and pulling cards and using them as prompts.

And you can find yourself having that beautiful, sustained, regular writing practice that we talked about in the previous episode.

All right.

So if you would love to have even more support in developing your writing practice, then I want to invite you to join me in my upcoming dark moon five day writing challenge, which goes from September 9th to September 13th.

So the dark moon is the phase, the part of the lunar cycle that happens prior to the new moon.

So September 14th, the day the doors open for Pen and Harth is the new moon.

And so leading up to that day, we're going to be doing this five day writing challenge where you will definitely experience at least two Oracle card writing prompts for you to get into that, that dark moon magic energy, which is very quiet energy.

It's about releasing what no longer serves you.

It's about rest, rejuvenation, kind of letting yourself spend time clearing your mind before we begin again at the new moon.

So if you're interested in that writing challenge, you can join us at enchantedwriting.com forward slash dark moon.

And that is my show for you today.

So tomorrow I'm going to be sharing with you another example of a writing prompt you can use as you are developing your writing practice.

And until next time, may your writing life be enchanted.