Deck Review: Oracle of the Hidden Worlds

 Hi everyone! Let's have a look an oracle deck that I feel don't use that often but can provide quite insightful readings no less: Oracle of the Hidden Worlds by Lucy Cavendish and artwork by Gilbert Williams. This deck was published by Blue Angel Publishing in 2019. The box is typical of what you can expect from Blue Angel which is a nice sturdy box to store you cards in. When I purchased this deck it did come with a random black white paper. Not sure why that was necessary but something to keep in mind when purchasing this deck.

Cardstock: Sturdy with a smooth matte finish.

The guidebook: The guidebook contain information on the Hidden Worlds, how to work with the cards, 4 spreads unique to this deck itself as well as Lucy Cavendish's unique take on the Celtic Cross spread and of course, the card meanings with a thumbnail of each card, their keywords, a few paragraphs about each card and an illumination for each card.

Whilst this deck mentions reversals, Lucy Cavendish does not provide reversals for each card itself. This is due to 34 out of the 44 cards being landscape whilst only 10 of the cards being portrait. Personally, this is something I really don't like oracle card decks doing. Just pick one format and stick to it. I get that it might not have been possible to do so but this inconsistency throws off the deck slightly. Especially, you do want to use reversals.

With that being said, Lucy Cavendish does give a heads up on how to tell if a landscape card is reversed in the reversals section.

Can you read this deck without having to rely on the guidebook? Yes, there are enough keywords on the card itself to make it accessible for those who want to read it directly out of the box.

Beginner friendly? Yes, this deck is absolutely approachable to beginners and the guidebook will only enhance their readings. The guidebook's illumination can even expand on the reading by giving it an affirmation to strengthen it. 

Diversity: There are 18 out of 44 cards that portray only locations without people, fairies or angels. The characters that aren't portrayed with a transparent white colour are very clearly white people. There are no obvious non-white people portrayed at all in this deck. Whilst there aren't really any depictions of couples in this deck, apart from maybe The Path of the Gods card to indict any couples let alone LGBT+ characters. If this is crucial factor for you in determining whether or not to purchase this deck then keep that in mind.

How balanced is this deck? Out of the 44 cards in this deck, here is how it can be broken down to:

Positive: 17

Neutral: 27

Negative: 0

This deck tends to lean toward neutral. You could read reversals to help bring balance to this deck by having negative aspects of each card. Otherwise, this would work great alongside a tarot, lenormand, kipper, vera sibilla, other fortunetelling deck or with another divination like Runes.

Specific theme: The Astral Plane's Hidden Worlds (Ex: Afterlife, In-Between, Faerie Lands, Angelic Realms, Dream Worlds, Galactic Worlds (especially if you are into Star-Seed ideology) and Beyond the Veil). This deck's aim is to get answers to best life your life by connecting to these Hidden Worlds.

This deck is definitely not one of my favourites when it comes to Lucy Cavendish's abundance of oracle decks. As someone who is NOT a New-Ager nor works with the Star-Seed archetype (I did explore it way back in 2017 but it ultimately did not resonate with me and my beliefs). If the Star-Seed archetype and exploring galactic realms is your thing then you may actually enjoy this deck. Some keywords were incredibly weak and I didn't feel like I could necessarily get it to fully relate to specific circumstance without it sounding vague. The guidebook wasn't as in-depth like previous (and subsequent) decks done by Lucy Cavendish. Whilst the artwork is gorgeous and very evocative I just feel like it just wasn't enough to be used effectively as it could have been. I feel like there could have been more information added to the guidebook to help solve this issue.

Overall, this deck can be used a great clarifying deck in a reading, for ritual or meditation use as a daily affirmation. This is especially great for those who like to connect to the astral realms, identify with the Star-Seed (or similar) archetypes and perhaps for those who specially work with the Akashic Records.

On to you: What do you think of this deck? Do you like it? Do you use it often? Do you use it for specific types of readings? If so, which circumstances is the deck best used for in your opinion? Let me know in the comments below!