Few storytellers wield magic quite like Dr Kate Forsyth. An acclaimed author, scholar, and lifelong lover of folklore, Forsyth has spent her career uncovering the deeper truths hidden within the world’s most enduring fairytales. Now, she brings that rich storytelling tradition to life in a new form: Fairytale Oracle, a beautifully imagined card deck designed to offer guidance, reflection, and healing through the timeless power of myth and metaphor.
Whether you’re seeking clarity in the present, understanding of the past, or insight into the future, Fairytale Oracle invites you to draw on the age-old wisdom of stories that have shaped cultures and hearts for centuries. Each card unveils a fairytale with fresh meaning, helping you navigate life’s challenges and transitions with strength, courage, and purpose.
A journey through this deck is a conversation with archetypes, a dance with symbolism, and an invitation to reconnect with your own narrative. With Dr Forsyth’s signature blend of depth and enchantment, these oracle cards become trusted companions for anyone seeking truth through story. Kate shares how she uses her oracle cards below.
Fairytale Oracle
Fairytales are amongst the oldest human narratives, invented by our ancestors to help us understand the world and to teach us how to live with courage, kindness and hope for the future.
They offer us a window into the human psyche, and into our own thought processes. Because they speak in archetypes and symbols – the same language that we find in art and dreams and our subconscious – they are a perfect pairing with oracle cards, the newest craze in tools for self-reflection and mindfulness.
Oracle cards are not the same as tarot cards, which are primarily used for divination and fortune-telling, with a long established system of interpretation. Instead, think of oracle cards as a collection of inspirational images and messages designed to help you connect with your intuition, inspire you to be your best possible self, and help you gain new self-understanding and wisdom.
I like to draw a card once a month on the night of the new moon, simply asking myself, what do I need to know now? Sometimes I may be troubled by some kind of difficulty dilemma in my personal life, and then I will do a three card pull for insight and guidance, finding new ways to think about what lies behind me and what lies ahead. And, once a year, I do a seven card deep delve and then write my thoughts and memories down in my diary, reflecting on where I have come from and what I hope for the future.
People do not just turn to oracle cards to seek answers to a problem, or to see what lies ahead for them. They also make wonderful prompts for art, journalling, and slow stitching. I also use my oracle cards in my creative writing, to explore characters and plots, generate new ideas, and help me solve problems.
Oracle cards can also play an empowering role in a daily self-care practice. To light a candle, sip a comforting cup of herbal tea and lay out a series of beautiful, evocative images is such a calming and therapeutic ritual. The best oracle cards also teach us and broaden our horizons, drawing on deep scholarly expertise that has been distilled down to its quintessence, emboldening us to explore further and learn more.
Photo by Camille Robinson
Fairy tales are usually the first stories we encounter in our lives, and they are filled with vivid haunting images – poisoned apples, towers without doors or stairs, dancing slippers made of glass, bloody keys and forbidden rooms, mirrors that speak the truth, spinning wheels whose sharp spindles have the power to cast a whole castle into sleep. These fairytale motifs are like secret codes, full of hidden meaning, designed to help us grapple with some of our deepest fears and longings.
Carl Jung believed ‘myths and fairy tales give expression to unconscious processes, and their retelling causes these processes to come alive again.’ And so a set of oracle cards that draws on the archetypal figures of these ancient tales also have the power to connect us both with our inner child and our ancestors, and to help us safely reconnoitre harm done to us in our past and find a way toward healing and recovery.
Oracle cards are not just for personal growth and self-exploration. They are a wonderful way of bringing people together and building community. Use them to break the ice and start conversations within a group of strangers, to facilitate the sharing of memories and reminiscences with family and friends, or to spark interesting discussions and shared insights at a group reading. Fairytale oracle cards are a particularly brilliant way to begin a creative workshop, encouraging participants to connect with their inner feelings, find new ways to express themselves, and prompting a multitude of ideas for stories.
Another possibility is a fairytale-themed cocktail party, where everyone chooses a cocktail and is given the associated card to read and share (and it might give you some new insight into your friends, knowing who chooses the Poisoned Apple cocktail over White as Snow!)
However you choose to use them, fairytale oracle cards are designed to bring a little enchantment into your everyday life – and who doesn’t need that?
Photo by Zayceva Tatiana
About Dr Kate Forsyth
Dr Kate Forsyth wrote her first book at the age of seven and has since sold nearly two million copies around the world. Her novels include Bitter Greens, a retelling of Rapunzel, which won the American Library Association Award for Best Historical Fiction; The Wild Girl, the story of the forbidden romance behind the Grimm Brothers’ famous fairy tales, which was named the Most Memorable Love Story of the year; and Psykhe, a reimagining of the ancient Greek myth from a feminist perspective. Kate has a BA in literature, a MA in creative writing and a doctorate in fairy tale studies, and is also an accredited master storyteller with the Australian Guild of Storytellers. She runs creative writing and literary tours in the UK and Greece.
Few storytellers wield magic quite like Dr Kate Forsyth. An acclaimed author, scholar, and lifelong lover of folklore, Forsyth has spent her career uncovering the deeper truths hidden within the world’s most enduring fairytales. Now, she brings that rich storytelling tradition to life in a new form: Fairytale Oracle, a beautifully imagined card deck designed to offer guidance, reflection, and healing through the timeless power of myth and metaphor.
Whether you’re seeking clarity in the present, understanding of the past, or insight into the future, Fairytale Oracle invites you to draw on the age-old wisdom of stories that have shaped cultures and hearts for centuries. Each card unveils a fairytale with fresh meaning, helping you navigate life’s challenges and transitions with strength, courage, and purpose.
A journey through this deck is a conversation with archetypes, a dance with symbolism, and an invitation to reconnect with your own narrative. With Dr Forsyth’s signature blend of depth and enchantment, these oracle cards become trusted companions for anyone seeking truth through story. Kate shares how she uses her oracle cards below.
Fairytale Oracle
Fairytales are amongst the oldest human narratives, invented by our ancestors to help us understand the world and to teach us how to live with courage, kindness and hope for the future.
They offer us a window into the human psyche, and into our own thought processes. Because they speak in archetypes and symbols – the same language that we find in art and dreams and our subconscious – they are a perfect pairing with oracle cards, the newest craze in tools for self-reflection and mindfulness.
Oracle cards are not the same as tarot cards, which are primarily used for divination and fortune-telling, with a long established system of interpretation. Instead, think of oracle cards as a collection of inspirational images and messages designed to help you connect with your intuition, inspire you to be your best possible self, and help you gain new self-understanding and wisdom.
I like to draw a card once a month on the night of the new moon, simply asking myself, what do I need to know now? Sometimes I may be troubled by some kind of difficulty dilemma in my personal life, and then I will do a three card pull for insight and guidance, finding new ways to think about what lies behind me and what lies ahead. And, once a year, I do a seven card deep delve and then write my thoughts and memories down in my diary, reflecting on where I have come from and what I hope for the future.
People do not just turn to oracle cards to seek answers to a problem, or to see what lies ahead for them. They also make wonderful prompts for art, journalling, and slow stitching. I also use my oracle cards in my creative writing, to explore characters and plots, generate new ideas, and help me solve problems.
Oracle cards can also play an empowering role in a daily self-care practice. To light a candle, sip a comforting cup of herbal tea and lay out a series of beautiful, evocative images is such a calming and therapeutic ritual. The best oracle cards also teach us and broaden our horizons, drawing on deep scholarly expertise that has been distilled down to its quintessence, emboldening us to explore further and learn more.
Fairy tales are usually the first stories we encounter in our lives, and they are filled with vivid haunting images – poisoned apples, towers without doors or stairs, dancing slippers made of glass, bloody keys and forbidden rooms, mirrors that speak the truth, spinning wheels whose sharp spindles have the power to cast a whole castle into sleep. These fairytale motifs are like secret codes, full of hidden meaning, designed to help us grapple with some of our deepest fears and longings.
Carl Jung believed ‘myths and fairy tales give expression to unconscious processes, and their retelling causes these processes to come alive again.’ And so a set of oracle cards that draws on the archetypal figures of these ancient tales also have the power to connect us both with our inner child and our ancestors, and to help us safely reconnoitre harm done to us in our past and find a way toward healing and recovery.
Oracle cards are not just for personal growth and self-exploration. They are a wonderful way of bringing people together and building community. Use them to break the ice and start conversations within a group of strangers, to facilitate the sharing of memories and reminiscences with family and friends, or to spark interesting discussions and shared insights at a group reading. Fairytale oracle cards are a particularly brilliant way to begin a creative workshop, encouraging participants to connect with their inner feelings, find new ways to express themselves, and prompting a multitude of ideas for stories.
Another possibility is a fairytale-themed cocktail party, where everyone chooses a cocktail and is given the associated card to read and share (and it might give you some new insight into your friends, knowing who chooses the Poisoned Apple cocktail over White as Snow!)
However you choose to use them, fairytale oracle cards are designed to bring a little enchantment into your everyday life – and who doesn’t need that?
About Dr Kate Forsyth
Dr Kate Forsyth wrote her first book at the age of seven and has since sold nearly two million copies around the world. Her novels include Bitter Greens, a retelling of Rapunzel, which won the American Library Association Award for Best Historical Fiction; The Wild Girl, the story of the forbidden romance behind the Grimm Brothers’ famous fairy tales, which was named the Most Memorable Love Story of the year; and Psykhe, a reimagining of the ancient Greek myth from a feminist perspective. Kate has a BA in literature, a MA in creative writing and a doctorate in fairy tale studies, and is also an accredited master storyteller with the Australian Guild of Storytellers. She runs creative writing and literary tours in the UK and Greece.
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