We’ve already had a look at how oracle and tarot cards are different, but now we’re about to jump into the world of combining the two! Yes, that’s right, you can use oracle cards AND tarot cards at the same time for a detailed and intuitive reading.
There are a few different ways to do this, but to start you off, I wanted to introduce you to my personal favourites and beginner-friendly ways of using oracle cards with tarot.
*Before you get started, make sure you know how to cleanse your Tarot and oracle cards correctly!
Adding an extra level of understanding
One of the main reasons to add an oracle card to your tarot reading is to offer an extra level of detail and understanding. Oracle cards are messages from the universe on what we need to know. Each card is filled with a unique narrative that can really help you to figure out the tarot a lot easier.
Some people will mix in a few oracle cards with their tarot cards, however, I prefer to use just one oracle card in my readings, to give it more influence and meaning. The more oracle cards in a spread, the more diluted the messages are… in my experience anyway!
The perfect way to start using your oracle cards with your tarot cards is by following along with one of my workshops or workbooks
Universal guidance for your reading
We talked a lot about how oracle cards work in my previous blog post (see below), so I won’t go into too much detail about that here, but I will reiterate that oracle cards hold a lot more detail and story than that of tarot cards. I find that tarot cards work best when they are paired with each other to create a narrative. Oracle cards can do that all by themselves, hence why you often get fewer oracle cards in a deck than you do tarot cards.
When it comes to readings, adding in an oracle card can provide a more rounded universal message than the tarot. If you’re finding it hard to put all the tarot cards together, adding an oracle card can help give you context and bind everything together.
You can of course do this just using the tarot by picking out a shadow or light card, but using oracle cards is a lot more fun and beginner friendly.
Oracle cards with tarot spreads
I’ve created two little spreads for you to get you on the road to using oracle cards with tarot. Both use just one oracle card as a signifier card, helping to provide more detail and narrative to your readings.
Oracle Wisdom
The Oracle Wisdom spread uses five tarot cards and one oracle card. In this spread, the oracle card is here as the message that binds all the tarot cards together. For example:
Oracle deck: Work Your Light Oracle Deck. Buy the deck here >>> Shop Now
In the above reading, we’ve got the following cards in the following positions:
Past – Eight of Cups
Present – Ten of Cups
Bridge – Six of Pentacles
Future – Page of Swords
Block – Four of Swords
Oracle – Birthing a New Age: Birthing new creations. Dreaming a new world into being.
If we got these cards in a general reading I would say that we’ve come from a place where we’ve had to make a big decision to walk away from something that we were emotionally invested in. It might have been a project that just didn’t work or maybe even a relationship.
In the present, we now feel more emotionally fulfilled because of this decision, walking away from what was no longer serving us, has helped us to reach a place where we feel happier, more supported and more optimistic for the future. We’ve managed to get to this point by asking those around us for help and accepting what we received.
In the future, we are aiming for a lot more mental clarity around what it is that we need in our lives to make us happy. We may be in a good place right now, but it’s only temporary and we need to start planning for the future and how we can maintain this positivity. The way we can get to that point is by taking some time out, revelling in this 10 of Cups energy for a while and allowing ideas and thoughts to come to us naturally.
The Oracle Card helps by telling us that this process is going to be a big turning point in your life. It’s going to put you on a completely new path than what you were expecting and that decision you made to walk away from where you were, was one that was always meant to happen. Taking this 4 of Swords time to just allow yourself to figure things out in your own time, will help you to really delve into your subconscious and uncover deeply rooted dreams and goals that you’ve been suppressing.
The addition of the Oracle Card gives us that extra level of comfort and universal support, showing us that the path we are taking is one that was meant to be and written in our destiny. It helps to uncover even more detail from the cards as you move along.
Divine Guidance
The Divine Guidance spread uses the oracle card in a slightly different way, giving you a present narrative to which all the other cards revolve around. Let’s have a look at it in action:
Oracle deck: Work Your Light Oracle Deck. Buy the deck here >>> Shop Now
In this example, we have the following cards in a general reading:
Mindset – Nine of Pentacles
Subconscious – Ace of Swords
Past – Three of Cups
Future – Queen of Cups
Oracle – Get Grounded: Empaths, Highly Sensitives. Connect with Nature.
This spread gives us more information about what’s going on internally. It’s less about your circumstance and more about your emotional and spiritual wellbeing. In the middle of the spread we have the Oracle Card, which tells us to get back to nature and find a way to ground yourself right now. You are feeling overwhelmed by both your own emotions and those around you. In order to improve your state of wellbeing, you need to figure out a way to feel more in control and gain a more grounded mindset about where you are right now.
The conscious card of the 9 of Pentacles tells us that we are thinking a lot about our material world right now, how much money we have, or how much money we lack. This can also be about wanting material possessions that you can’t justify buying or you simply can’t afford. You think that having these things will make you happier, and so the lack of them is making you miserable.
In your subconscious, there is a deep need to be able to see things for how they are. You want to be able to get rid of this constant material thinking and start using your brain power for more intellectual things like planning your future and thinking about the important things in life.
This is all coming from a place of comparison, the 3 of Cups has us thinking about how happy others are with what they have and how we want to be like them. We are watching as these people celebrate all they have, this can be caused by comparing our own lives on social media. This comparison is causing us to live in this daydream where we have all we desire and when we get hit with a dose of reality, we come crashing down.
The future promises that we will be able to grab a hold of these wayward emotions, but that the grounding energy from the oracle card is what we need in order to get to that point. We need to stop the comparison and practice gratitude for what we have, in order to see things in a clearer light.
The oracle card in this spread allows us to link each of the tarot cards back to one singular point. For the above reading its about grounding. We can link each card to this subject of grounding and how it will support or unblock the tarot card’s energy.
Using oracle cards in your tarot spreads doesn’t have to be confusing, keep the amount of cards you use to a minimum and you’ll find it a lot easier to get to grips with this form of divination!