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The Black Bird Oracle Deck

The Black Bird Oracle Deck



From the world of Deborah Harkness’s A Discovery of Witches, The Black Bird Oracle Deck brings the mysterious Proctor family oracle to life as a beautifully illustrated 52-card deck for divination, reflection, and intuitive practice.

$30.00
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Inside the Black Bird Oracle

The 52 cards are arranged into eight families: Elements, Birds, Covens, Tools, Principles, Alchemical Processes, Moon Phases, and Magics. Together they create a symbolic vocabulary that moves between the natural world and the magical one.

Each card offers several paths into its meaning. Alongside its central themes, the guidebook provides an affirmation and a collection of correspondences that may include colors, trees, plants and herbs, stones, metals, animals, birds, insects, and other symbolic associations.

Cards are also connected through relationships that can amplify and clarify their meanings. Rather than treating each image as an isolated message, the system encourages you to notice how symbols meet, reinforce one another, and shift within the context of a reading.

The result is an oracle that can be approached intuitively through its imagery while offering a deeper structure to discover over time.

Reading with the Black Bird Oracle

A reading can begin simply. Draw a single card as a message for the day, sit with its imagery and themes, or use the accompanying affirmation as a point of reflection. As your familiarity with the deck grows, its correspondences and relationships offer additional layers to explore.

The guidebook also introduces ways to bring multiple cards into conversation, including a classic Past, Present & Future reading. Here, meaning develops not only from the individual cards but from the patterns and relationships that emerge between them.

There is room to work instinctively or to follow the deck’s underlying system more closely, making the oracle accessible from the first draw while leaving plenty to discover through continued use.

The Art of Hester Aspland

British artist Hester Aspland works primarily in ink, drawing upon nature, history, folklore, and mythology—an approach beautifully suited to the world of The Black Bird Oracle.

Her finely drawn figures, birds, plants, celestial forms, and magical objects recall old engravings and illustrated manuscripts, lending the deck the feeling of an oracle that might have been passed from hand to hand across generations. Selective fields of turquoise, violet, green, gold, and rose move through the predominantly black-and-white compositions, adding depth and distinction while preserving the deck’s old-world character.

That visual approach is central to the deck’s fictional history. The cards feel less like newly invented images and more like artifacts from an established magical tradition, which gives the oracle much of its atmosphere and charm.

About Deborah Harkness

Deborah Harkness is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of A Discovery of Witches and the All Souls series, including The Black Bird Oracle, the novel in which the Proctor family deck plays a central role.

A historian as well as a novelist, Harkness is Professor Emerita of History at the University of Southern California and has received Fulbright, Guggenheim, and National Humanities Center fellowships. Her longstanding engagement with history, scholarship, magic, and the transmission of knowledge provides a natural foundation for the richly layered world of The Black Bird Oracle.

Specifications

  • 52 oracle cards
  • Guidebook Included inside Box
  • Author: Deborah Harkness
  • Illustrator: Hester Aspland
  • Card finish: Textural graining with rounded edges
  • Packaging: Deluxe clamshell box with ribbon pull
  • Box size: Approximately 4⅞ × 6⅜ × 2 inches