From the Garden to the Cards
Since I was young, the need to cultivate plants, to feel the soil in my hands and the warm sun gleam through the sprinkle of the hose, to watch in amazement as seeds turn to sprouts, then to plants and blooms, has been essential to my personal growth. Being amongst plants is where I am most at peace, most evergreen, most purely myself. This is a most cherished part of my world, where botanicals and divination meet, from the garden to the cards.
Something magical happens when we fuse Tarot and intuition with all that grows green. From a deeper awareness of the plant life around us, a bond between Mother Earth, the body, the spirit, and our intention is born.
The Pythia Botanica Oracle, Ophidia Rosa Tarot & Viola Lux Umbra are sister works through love, loss, yearning, and learning, each card compelled by a journey of self-discovery, from the depths of despair to the heights of ardent self-care. They are works meant to flourish amid the garden, to bring a deeper connection to the flora around us, to strengthen our intuition and to welcome the wisdom plants so selflessly provide.
Through these Sister works, I have found a way to transform my practice into an all-encompassing experience, grounding my roots in the botanicals I hold so dear and setting a path where my passion for flora arrives as a form of divinatory guidance from above and below the ground.
Bring these cards into your garden, and let the garden bring the meaning of these cards to you.
How to Read with the Botanical Sister Decks
The Ophidia Rosa Tarot and Pythia Botanica Oracle deck both took root around the same time, inspired by the intersection of my life with plants, mythology, art, and a myriad of energies I had yet to fully understand. While the Oracle deck connected my ancient Hellenic heritage closer to an enchantment with botanical mythology, the Ophidia Rosa drew on a broader timeworn truth I've received from the Tarot.Â
For reading these cards, I would suggest embracing the openness that a Tarot and an Oracle deck uniquely offer, bringing an open mind, heart, and pure intentions to the table. I always spend time with my decks, and get to know the cards on the one-on-one level that one might meet a person or group of individual energies.
Oracle cards can be read alone or in unison with a Tarot deck; they can be read in many spreads (one-card pulls, three-card spreads, traditional Tarot spreads such as the Zodiac). The advice I tell close friends is to follow one’s intuition and trust in oneself, especially when you first start reading and it can feel a bit overwhelming. You hold all of the answers, and the cards can serve as a window to peer inward, a prism of truth, or a reflection to glare purpose back upon oneself.
Pythia Botanica grew from the garden, Ophidia Rosa of timeworn truths, and now the Viola Lux Umbra has grown its firmest root in fertile soil. A humble garden journey, hands smudged in soil, has thus far brought me here. Viola Lux Umbra completes a trilogy of floral searching, a quest left standing tall among the fruits of labor, among all that's crawled before and all that will forever grow.Â
The Pythia Botanica Oracle instills the ancient mythological lineage of plant magic with present-day personal meaning to guide readers through fate. Beyond its initial intentions, the deck somehow springs with elements that remain a mystery even to me. This gives it an amorphous power where others can find light that is uniquely their own.
The Ophidia Rosa Tarot is about transformation: the conversion of seed into bloom, the movement of crescent bodies into full moons, and the renewal of youthful wonder from weary, full-grown forms. It's a very visceral form of Tarot, and one that required digging deep into the garden, with all the twists and turns and dirt one might encounter among those thorns and worms and seeds and leaves.
Viola Lux Umbra vined up from below, seeking Sunlight to grow, the Moon to nourish, intentions to protect, and our hope to bloom. From memories of the past to fantasies of futures yet cast, our botanical fates are fed by light. But what of the shadows? They cast magic, as well: From dusk to dawn, where morning greets night, to trees projecting leafy patterns on our dreams with boundless potential, and everlasting height. Viola Lux Umbra explores the nexus between the Tarot's timeworn truths, plant symbolism, and hues that bloom from green to violet through the illustrated prism of the mind's eye.Â
Our Botanical Quest
Here, we seek self-reflection in the garden, vine and grow within the mysteries of each season, and cultivate a bond with the plants we draw upon.Â
