A Guide for Working with the Literary Witches Oracle Deck
By Claire Bowman
If you’ve been part of the Typewriter Tarot community for a little while, you might already be familiar with the Literary Witches book and Oracle Deck, co-created by two of Austin’s dearest and witchiest artists, Taisia Kitaiskaia and Katy Horan. But in case you haven’t come across them yet, I highly recommend these essential works of art and divination!
The Literary Witches Oracle Deck is a potent magical tool with a format that’s unique among oracle decks, inviting an imaginative approach to communing with the cards. I’ve explored many ways to use the Literary Witches Oracle, and feel this deck has become a dear friend to me over time. But before I share a few of my favorite spreads and techniques to help you tap into its oracular powers, here’s a little bit about the Literary Witches project and how it came to be.
Literary Witches book and oracle deck, shown with a rosebud, several flower blossoms, stones, and “witch queen” annointing oil from House of Intuition.
The Literary Witches Book: Origins & Arrangement
Literary Witches originated as a book celebrating magical women writers — reimagined as witches — through a series of full-color portraits painted by Katy Horan and accompanied by poetic biographical entries for each witch, written by Taisia Kitaiskaia.
Katy Horan’s portraits are lush and haunting, infused with talismans of the literary and the occult — mushrooms growing from a pair of severed feet beneath the portrait of María Sabina; Octavia Butler depicted with one mantis arm, thoughtfully piercing the effigy of a ghost-white man; black liquid running from an overturned teacup in Shirley Jackson’s hand.
Combined with Taisia Kitaiskaia’s poetic, dreamlike vignettes, which read like clairvoyantly channeled visions, Literary Witches offers mystifying insight into the lives and work of these magical women writers that can’t be found anywhere else.
This book has not only captivated my literary-witch imagination, it’s expanded my reading list to include many of the author-witches honored in its pages. A few witches I discovered through this work quickly became some of my favorite writers, including Shirley Jackson, Alejandra Pizarnik, and Octavia Butler (truly life-changing discoveries!)
“This coven of literary witches was curated with so much intention and care, and the witches therein are diverse across country, language, and era. This book is a celebration of women writers for their magic, creativity, and empowerment. ”
Each entry in the book transports the reader into the artistic brain of a different literary witch, with descriptions that are mysterious, accurate, and full of the myth and lore of each writer. These portrayals also offer another kind of insight, something research might never be able to produce; these vignettes capture a glimpse into the particular magical spirit of each witch, the spirit of her writings. Ineffable, hidden knowledge, radiant, haunted portraits, and a breadcrumb trail of information to lead you into the dark forest of each witch’s spellbinding oeuvres. What’s not to love?
Two witches cards from the Literary Witches Oracle Deck — Emily Dickinson (The Soul) and Yumiko Kurahashi (Transformation).
This creation is beloved by many a literary witch, such as author Carmen Maria Machado, who wrote of the book: Gorgeous illustrations accompany profiles of female writers from every genre, identity, and era conceivable. As necessary a project as I can imagine in this day and age, this is art, poetry, and history marshaled together in tremendous, joyful celebration.
The Literary Witches Book Becomes an Oracle Deck
A few years after the Literary Witches book was released, the creators came together again to create The Literary Witches Oracle Deck in 2019, and it has become a wonderful companion in my Tarot and divination practice.
There are two components to the deck, which contains a total of 70 cards: The Witches and The Witches’ Materials. The Witches cards represent each of the 30 writers showcased in the book, “figures wandering and brooding over an enchanted landscape,” as the guidebook so hauntingly puts it. The Witches’ Materials are composed of 40 talismanic images — a ghostly white dress, a cauldron, a braid, a black cat — “creatures and objects haunting the landscape.”
Two cards from the Literary Witches Oracle Deck — Sandra Cisneros (The Body) and Hedgehog.
I love the interplay between the Witches and her Materials, and in some ways it reminds me of the way a Tarot deck is structured with its Major and Minor Arcana. The Literary Witches deck uses a unique structure and offers a fresh take on the oracle deck, allowing for new approaches to working with the cards for personal, spiritual, or creative guidance.
Creative Ways to Use the Literary Witches Oracle Deck
Below are a few of the spreads and approaches I’ve used with this deck. For each one, you’ll need to keep your Witches and Witches’ Materials in separate piles to draw from.
Witches as Guides
The Witches are always guides in this deck, but with this approach, we are calling upon them as we might upon our ancestors, angels, or other members of our spiritual team to speak directly to us. Like calling out into the thick, dark forest, summoning the witch who has the most sage wisdom to offer us in a particular moment of our lives.
You can begin by holding the Witches cards in your hands and visualizing a dark forest at twilight. Imagine yourself coming to the edge of this forest, to these cards, to seek the wisdom and guidance of a Literary Witch, though you don’t yet know who she is. Hold your query in your mind, and in your own words (internally or out loud), say what you have come to seek guidance for. Then draw as many cards as befits your needs.
For my daily creative practice, I like to draw one Witch card as a guide and model for the kind of creative energy I can meditate on, and even try to channel, as I display the card on my desk where I work. You could also draw witches as guides for two- or three-card spreads. Here’s one I like:
New Season Spread: This spread can be used at the start of a new month, a new zodiacal season, or any new phase of life where you want to seek a little direction.
Card 1: My Teacher for this Season - the Witch who appears here does so to tutor me in this season with her spirit and the tenor of her magic.
Card 2: My Creative Guide for this Season - The Witch who appears here does so to spark my inspiration and to help keep me close to my powers of intuition and creation.
Three cards from the Witches Materials’ section of the Literary Witches Oracle Deck — cat, lantern, and tree.
Witches’ Materials as Guides
It can also be fun and enlightening to work with the image system of the Witches’ Materials alone. This subset of cards reminds me of Tarot’s Minor Arcana cards, which I find to be more instructive or even practical than the Majors, as they speak more to our day-to-day lives.
The Witches’ Materials are physical, often tangible objects, yet they are imbued with the kind of enchantment that gives talismans their power. For spreads using only the Witches’ Materials, I think we can get more specific and grounded in our queries. Here are a couple of examples:
Creative Tools Spread
Card 1: What tool can I use to get clarity in my creative project today?
Card 2: What tool can I call upon when I’m feeling stuck?
Card 3: A morsel of creative inspiration, please?
Centering Spread
Card 1: Where can I focus my attention at this moment?
Card 2: What can I use as a balm for my hurt/anxious places?
Card 3: What tool can I use to find a little ease even in the midst of overwhelm?
Witches + Their Materials
I would argue this is the “classic” approach to working with the Literary Witches Oracle Deck — drawing one witch as a guide, and two (or more!) witches materials cards to expound on how to work with the energy and magic of that particular witch. For this spread, I like to place the Witch at the center, and one Witches’ Materials card on either side of her.
Three cards from the Literary Witches Oracle Deck — House, Toni Morrison (Power), and Knife.
Unlocking My Desire Spread
Card 1 (center): Who is showing up as my tour guide in exploring the hidden depths of my desire?
Card 2 (left): What tool can I use to become more intimate with what I yearn for the most?
Card 3 (right): What appears as an enchanted surprise to be stirred into my cauldron of joy?
Witch + witch’s Material + Tarot Cards
I love mixing oracle cards and Tarot cards to make a collage-like spread, and the Literary Witches Oracle Deck is a perfect companion for the Tarot. With this three-card spread, including one Witch card, one Witches’ Materials card, and one Tarot card, each position in the spread is drawn from a different deck, offering three unique refrains in the music of its guidance.
Support for Imposter Syndrome Spread
Card 1 (center): Which Literary Witch is championing me from beyond the veil?
Card 2 (left): What tool can I use to receive that encouragement in my day-to-day life?
Card 3 (right): How is this witch inviting me to celebrate myself right now?
Anchor + Witches’ Materials card
This approach allows you to look through the Witches cards (perhaps reading about each Witch in the guidebook if you want more mystical details to inform your choice) and selecting the Witch you feel most connected to, or would most like to seek guidance and wisdom from as an “anchor” for your current moment. (For more on anchor cards, check out the teachings of the brilliant Lindsay Mack who originated the idea!)
Once you’ve selected your Witch, you can meditate on the imagery of her card, read about her in the Literary Witches book, or turn to one of her written texts to become better acquainted with her spirit.
Then, draw two (or more) cards from your Witches’ Materials pile:
Card 1: A message from this Literary Witch.
Card 2: How is she inviting me to trust my inner wisdom?
Bonus Card: What gift is she offering me right now?
The Literary Witches book open to the pages dedicated to Octavia Butler, alongside Parable of the Talents, from Butler’s Parable series about a highly sensitive and empathetic young woman living in a gated community in California during the 2020s, when economic collapse and climate change have created desperate living conditions for much of the population.
Divinatory Reading for Writers
As writers, one of the most important things we can do to sharpen our skills in the craft is to read. Reading the work of brilliant writers is what drew many of us to put pen to paper in the first place, and I think it can be radically inspiring to read the work of writers in genres other than the one in which your current project lives.
If you’re up for a reading adventure, I suggest letting the Literary Witches Oracle Deck select your next read for you. Here’s how you do it: Draw one Witch from your shuffled deck, and seek her work from your bookshelf or your local indie bookstore, making it your next read.
It’s so exciting to embark on this kind of divinatory reading journey, something I’d never even considered before encountering Literary Witches. But I’ve found it so illuminating, as it has widened the circle of the women writers I read, and nourished my writing practice deeply.
The reading experiences that have unfolded for me, thanks to this deck, have been profound, as I’ve cherished the words of these writers as though they are messages penned just for me — to inspire, encourage, and sustain me as a writer. I’ve found such kinship in the books written by the literary witches.
I hope you get a chance to try out a few of these spreads, and I hope they bring you illumination and deep insight. Feel free to share with all the literary witches in your life!
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About Claire Bowman
Claire Bowman is a writer, editor, and Tarot reader living in Austin, Texas. A Sagittarius with a deep love for poetry, she is always up for long conversations about jellyfish, poems that shake you to your core, or the shape-shifting nature of consciousness.