on getting to know the native fauna

For some time now I’ve been on the cusp of purchasing the Druid Animal Oracle.  My desire for a similar oracle using animals native to Australia has stopped me so far.  Unfortunately no such thing exists.   There is a long out of print set called the Wisdom of the Australian Animals Deck which was later re-worked into the Australian Animal Tarot Deck, also out of print.  Both were created by Ann Williams-Fitzgerald.  I have been fortunate enough to get a copy of the latter and have recently dug it out for another look.

It is quite a beautiful deck, although I can’t imagine using it as a tarot deck, for me it has more potential as an oracle.  I have discovered that the companion book is impossible to find but was lucky enough to be able to purchase an e-book through the creator’s web-site.  I’m looking forward to spending some time with this deck and the accompanying e-book.  I love what has been done in the Druid Animal Oracle and would like to work with this set in the same way. 

The cards are published by AGMuller and are a fairly standard size, albeit slightly wider than usual, and the cardstock is fabulous.  The artwork takes up a disappointingly small percentage of the card face and around the border are the title, keywords and a corresponding crystal.  The borders are two different shades of purple, or lavender, one for the majors and the other for the minors and courts.  The back is a gorgeous Southern Cross design which I absolutely love.

The artwork is by artist Tracy Hinschen and is quite stunning.  I have included some cards as examples.  While the usual ‘favourites’ are included there are also many less well known natives that I’m looking forward to learning more about.  There are quite a few non-natives as well such as the cat, camel and cattle dog.  

 

 

For those wanting to use the set as a tarot, the suit/element correspondences are rather unusual.  Wands are earth, Swords are fire, Pentacles are air and Cups are water.  In the e-book the explanation given for this is to allow for Southern Hemisphere influences but no further information is given to explain how that is so.  I can’t even begin to imagine how it could make sense and it is one of the reasons that I plan to use this set as an oracle and focus on the animals and their meanings, rather than any traditional tarot meanings.  In saying that, despite the changing of elements, the suit meanings appear to be quite standard to traditionally accepted meanings and I don’t think the new element is factored in much at all.

The e-book also provides a brief summary of the authors Auz Astrology system which allocates an Australian native animal to each month of the year, a little like the Chinese Zodiac system.  I’ve been working on something similar myself for the past year or so and was very interested to see many of my choices were the same as Ann’s.  In some of the cards you can see the Western Astrological Glyph that is associated with the particular animal as well.

 

I think this set is a useful starting point for developing a good relationship with my native fauna.  It’s very easy living in the Southern Hemisphere to default to Northern Hemisphere systems and it certainly takes a lot more effort to break new ground on this side of the globe.  Between this and my Australian ‘Ogham’ project I should be kept quite busy in the year ahead.