Several years ago – actually 3 years ago to the DAY {how amazing is that} – I did a review of an oracle deck by Tori Hartman called the Color Wisdom Cards.  You can go back in time and see that review on my very defunked tarot blog from my Rowan Pendragon days right here.  Then a few months later, after doing a few posts a week with her cards, Tori posted a video on YouTube talking about my work with the cards {that was nifty!}.  Today I get the honor and privilege to share with you a review of the recently re-released version of the deck, now known as the Chakra Wisdom Oracle Cards.

 

The Chakra Wisdom Oracle deck consists of 49 cards and comes in a lovely thick cardboard box with a cloth pull out tab for a little drawer like section that holds the cards and guidebook when you’re not using them.  I love this because it makes keeping track of everything easy and makes it feel like the packing wasn’t wasted.

The only problem there is with this set up is that on the bottom of the “drawer” the compartment where the cards go isn’t sealed up so the cards slip under the fitted space they are kept in.  It’s not a big problem because it’s easily fixed with a little tape.

 

 

The deck consists of 7 groups or suits of cards, one for each of the 7 major chakras. The cards have a colored border representing their chakra association and a title taken from a keyword for that card.  The art on the card is bright, colorful, and whimsical.  These aren’t what I would call a serious set of cards, but some of the cards do have a darker or more somber tone to them, especially ones that deal with the topics of loss and death.  The beauty of that is that it balances the deck appropriately.

 

 

The 96 page book is divided into sections for each set of cards in the deck.  At the beginning of each section there is a summary that color and chakra, what it’s energy does for us, and how we can use it to manifest things in our lives.

 

 

For each card you get a single sentence summary, a short story about the image and the card itself, questions to ask yourself to dig deeper with the card, ideas and inspiration for working with the card’s wisdom, and keywords for your readings.  You also get a short meditation prompt with each card which is awesome and helps turn the cards into true spiritual triggers and not just a reading tool.

This is a far cry from the original book which was close to 400 pages!

 

 

In the back there is a section with reading layouts to use with the cards.  Many of these layouts are called Intention Layouts and cover everything from love to health to money and career.  The cool thing is you could use these in two ways – just use them like divination layouts and do a reading, or do the layouts and then work through the cards and their positions, working with the meditations, questions, and inspirations one at a time, to really create some powerful changes in your life.

This is a great deck that can be super simple to work with or it can take you really deep into spiritual growth and transformation.  It all depends on how you want to approach it.

I personally find this deck much better for simple, single card pulls or used as a deeper spiritual tool rather than as a traditional divination deck. I tend to find that doing readings with them feels a big jumbled but when used with either an Intention Spread, as a way to create a road map for spiritual work, or pulling only one or two cards for a message the guidance that comes through it much more clear.

 

Now let me share a few of the changes between the Color Wisdom Oracle cards and new Chakra Wisdom Oracle version of the deck, mainly for the curious.

I love how the new version uses a keyword and incorporates a colored border corresponding to the chakra energy it represents, which wasn’t a part of the previous version.  In the Color Wisdom Cards the color work was more focused on chromeotherapy and color vibration as a whole and not specifically on chakra energy.

One thing that I love about the original deck over the new one is that the cards, while maybe grouped into larger color sections like Red also broke down further into shades of red and the variations of that color spectrum, like raspberry, pink, and salmon.  Given the change in format not having that makes sense, but it’s a shame because the attention to color vibration in the first deck was wonderful.

The biggest thing that I love about the new version of the deck is that the guide book is much shorter.  One reason that I didn’t use these cards all that much was that they really do beg to have the guide book used with them.  Especially the original version because the cards were named for the characters depicted on the cards.  There was no way to really know what the message of the card was without reading the book.  Unlike the new booklet the old one had stories that went on at length for 2 or 3 pages.  Now it’s a short, concise paragraph that coveys the message simply.

There are a few differences with the cards.  A few were changed to suit the new format…

 

 

And a few got the axe completely.

 

 

I’m not a fan of these changes, personally, especially the art changes to the two cards.  Maybe it’s because Gretchen Raisch-Baskin, the artist of the deck, passed away in February of 2010 and it feels a little disrespectful {if that’s the right term} to change her art, especially given the very special and seemingly intuitive way she helped bring Tori’s stories to life.  As for the eliminated cards, I just like the Bernie Banana card and the story it carries so not seeing it in the deck was a little sad.

 

I definitely dig the Chakra Wisdom Oracle Cards but I don’t see this as being a complete replacement of the Color Wisdom Deck for me.  If it sounds a bit like I have mixed feelings, I do, but I think anyone who is into working with color and chakra energy will really love working with this new version of the deck, specially if you are coming to it fresh for the first time.

You can find out more about Tori Hartman here and you can stay up to date on all things Chakra Wisdom Oracle related on Facebook right here.

 

FTC Disclosure: I received this book and deck for free from Watkins Publishing for this review. The opinion in this review is unbiased and reflects my honest judgment and opinion of the product.