Created by Kara Simons and illustrated by Mari in the Sky, The Song of the Grandmothers Oracle was a successful Kickstarter campaign that first came into production in the summer of 2022. Featuring sixty-six fortifying messages from a range of botanical, elemental, and animal Grandmothers, this deck is a bright, beautiful, and rather charming nature-inspired collaborative effort from Kara and Mari that has very quickly become one of my all-time favoured decks to accompany daily Tarot readings.
About Kara Simons
Kara is a stay-at-home Mom and works part-time as an attorney. Back in 2017, Kara felt the urge to explore more creative outlets thus Joyful Resonance was launched.
Kara has created and published a number of oracle decks over the past five years including The Heart 2 Heart Oracle, The Prairie Majesty Oracle (which was originally launched as a Kickstarter project but soon took off into the mainstream, later being published by Hay House), and her latest collaboration, The Song of the Grandmothers Oracle.
More about Mari In The Sky
Nature-inspired illustrator Mari creates hand-drawn tarot and oracle decks influenced by her life spent in remote Alaska.
Mari has a firm belief that our mental health is very much influenced by our connection (or lack of connection) with our ecosystem, her work is an attempt to bridge this gap and remind her readers of the power and love which can be found within nature.
Mari’s ‘Gentle Tarot‘ is a world-popular Tarot deck designed, produced, and published in numerous sizes and formats. She has since teamed up with Kara from Joyful Resonance to carry out the artwork for ‘The Song of the Grandmothers Oracle’ which is similar in style and structure to her gorgeous Gentle Tarot.
Perfect Packaging & Presentation
Beautifully boxed in a pretty purple, sturdy, stylish cardboard container, the Song of the Grandmother’s Oracle deck is perfectly packaged for display and storage purposes.
The packaging itself is evident that each and every aspect of this deck has been designed with great thought and love. Both the exterior and interior of the packaging feature incredible imagery and I rather appreciate the thumb-raises in the packaging to enable easy access to the cards.
The Guidebook
The Song of the Grandmothers Oracle comes with a full colour-printed 174-page guidebook that includes Karas’s story, information on Grandmother’s energy, a guide on how to use the deck, suggested spreads, a double-page explaining each of the cards, and a page detailing information upon the author and artist.
The Song of the Grandmothers Oracle is split into colour-coded sections: Self Love, Harmony, Growth, Possibility, Service, and Destruction. The guidebook is also colour-coded with a thick-coloured strip along the side of each page to aid the easy location of specific sections and cards.
The Cards
The Song of the Grandmothers is a sixty-six oracle card deck that is printed on sturdy, high-quality 3.5 x 5 inch cardstock.
With bright, beautiful, rainbow honeycomb-style card backs, The Song of the Grandmother’s oracle has plain edging with full-colour, borderless cards that include white-italic titling and a colour-coded information strip highlighting number indexing, keywords, and messages.
Alongside the sixty-six oracle cards, Kara and Mari have also included several guidance cards (one of which clearly explains the colour-coding system within the deck) and six blank cards that may be used however the reader so wishes. I personally will most likely use these as stationary cards in the future
Though this deck is slightly larger than a standard deck, it looks great when placed against other Tarot and oracle decks including the Gentle Tarot and The Prairie Majesty Oracle.
Walking Through The Song of the Grandmothers
I have created a short video to further illustrate and explain The Song of the Grandmothers Oracle, this video is a walkthrough guide of the deck for information purposes.
I’ve spent the past week reading and working with The Song of the Grandmother’s oracle on almost a daily basis and it’s very rapidly become one of my most favoured decks.
Whilst some oracle decks can be quite to the point, The Song of the Grandmothers is softer, gentler, and incredibly nurturing to read and work with. The imagery is quite simply stunning, I love each and every inch of these cards as not only is the imagery stunning but the colour selections are bold, bright, and cheery making for a positive vibe when reading.
I adore Mari’s artistic style and particularly appreciate that the cards are borderless, celebrating and making the most of the awesome artwork. I also like that the titling and keywords are softly presented, easy on the eye, and like the deck itself – gentle to the soul.
Whilst this oracle deck can be used independently, I personally tend to carry out readings by combining Tarot and oracle cards in order to gain further clarity.
Combining Cards
Being a big fan of both Kara and Mari’s past work, I already had a copy of the Gentle Tarot and The Prairie Majesty Oracle and thus couldn’t wait to combine these cards with their latest collaboration.
The Song of the Grandmother’s oracle combines really well not only with Kara and Mari’s previous work but I’ve also found that this deck can be successfully paired with numerous other Tarot and divination decks.
Purchasing & Pricing Information
The Song of the Grandmother’s oracle retails from £59.97 and is available to purchase online via the Joyful Resonance Etsy Store with an additional cost of £12.06 for delivery within the UK. For customers outside of the EU & UK, The Song of the Grandmothers is currently retailing from $58 on the Joyful Resonance online store.
Given that this is a collaborative effort, Mari also has The Song of the Grandmother’s oracle available to purchase via her online store, Mari In The Sky for £51 (as of January 2023) though this price does not include shipping and postage fees.
To Summarise
There’s nothing better than combining two of your favourite things, whether that’s cheese and crackers… or Kara and Mari’s work, thus The Song of the Grandmother’s Oracle has swiftly become one of my all-time favourite decks to read and to work with.
Suitable for all ages and abilities of readers, The Song of the Grandmother’s oracle deck is bright, bold, and beautiful in every which way. Whilst I understand that with postage this can be a rather costly deck to acquire for those of us within the UK & the EU, I still thoroughly recommend either adding this to your wishlist or saving up your pennies as this is one of those decks that is simply worth it!
For further information on The Song of the Grandmother’s oracle of alternative decks by either Kara Simons of Mari in the Sky visit both www.joyfulresonance.com and www.thegentletarot.com
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Product Rating
Disclosure: I was sent the above product for the purpose of this post however all opinions are my own.