Visit the oracle in Abercrombie Lane, Sydney. You’ll be met by a large video monitor with a cute pink furry ghost wearing a crown and snazzy green shoes. Near the base of the monitor is a motion sensor button. Wave your hand in front of the button to activate the pink ghost. She’ll draw an oracle card from her deck and presents it to you.
The oracle card can be left hanging as a strange portentous riddle, to be intuitively understood and applied to your own experience. You can also read the interpretations below and listen to the oracle’s soundtrack.
A bejewelled collar
Nicole's interpretation:
You have inherited greatness, now wear it with pride. Bring your brilliance to the party dear one and all those you meet will hold you in high esteem.
Carla's interpretation:
Symbolic object: something worn that looks flashy and seemingly of value, but is ultimately restrictive or possessive; something to be shed. What have we outgrown, and no longer need to carry?
A broken arrow
Nicole's interpretation:
Something you aimed for did not go as expected. Take the time and care needed to repair your intentions. Ask yourself if they serve more than just you? Do they take your communities’ need into account? Re-aim with your mended arrow. If your intentions are genuine and needed for the good of all, your arrow and aim will, in fact, be stronger than before.
Carla's interpretation:
A symbol of stunted attempts or intentions misunderstood. How can we keep our eyes on the game and accept these many trials as part of the greater journey?
A burning fortress
Nicole's interpretation:
The larger powers that be are crumbling, capitalism is on its knees and the empires are disintegrating. What a fucking exciting time to be breathing. This card, however, is about your own fortress. The walls that you have built within yourself, for protection and safety. They too are on fire. How will you prepare to emerge from the ashes of this structure that no longer serves you dear one?
Carla's interpretation:
A brooding climatic event in which a site of defence is in a state of transformation and decomposition. The fortress may be another’s source of defence, or it could be defending you; you may feel triumphant, or threatened.
A coin wrapped in a handkerchief
Nicole's interpretation:
If you will it hard enough, what you need will arrive. But only if it is necessary in your life. Take the time to weed out the unnecessary distractions that keep you from receiving the genuine goods. The universe wants to provide to those who take only what they need and are ready to redistribute the wealth.
Carla's interpretation:
A secret weapon, an object of good fortune; saving up your lucky stars, or hoarding a talisman, to use on an upcoming journey. What can you protect and hold close?
A gold clasp
Nicole's interpretation:
There is an important relationship that needs your care and attention. Who have you been meaning to call, visit, repair and reconnect with? Make your re-entry into their life meaningful and special. Bring them flowers, make them a gift, sing them a song. You both deserve it.
Carla's interpretation:
A precious object, perhaps inherited, as part of something greater that was lost.
A handful of diamonds tossed into the sky
Nicole's interpretation:
It’s time for you to sparkle dear one. Put yourself out there with humility and show the world your brilliance. You are being called to dwell in higher places. Step up and don’t look back. We will watch you with awe.
Carla's interpretation:
An event of risk and chance; having long gathered our precious gems, we throw them to the wind and let go of our control. We know that the things that are right for us will return in the end.
A hurricane lantern
Nicole's interpretation:
Your resilience is real. You were built to withstand some of the greatest efforts to bring you down, to turn out your light. Your persistence and refusal is what is needed now. For you and for the rest of us. Stand strong, no matter how much fatigue tries to convince you that you’re hers. Rest is around the corner.
Carla's interpretation:
An object that symbolises the presence of a guide or teacher to lead us forward and light the way.
A mountain and a rabbit
Nicole's interpretation:
You are called to seek perspective on something of significance. If you are just comfortably sitting on the fence, you need to get up and be running up that hill. Now! What do you see when you arrive? Take a moment to lie down and listen carefully. Feel the mountain air on your face, what messages has it delivered? Don’t get too comfortable because you are also being invited to burrow down into the depths of your being. Your spirit needs some time underground in order to find the wisdom to re-emerge. Journey with care, respect and gentleness.
Carla's interpretation:
A character of innocence, energy, and brimming curiosity. The beginning of a call to adventure.
A picnic under a friendly tree
Nicole's interpretation:
You are being asked to find a safe and welcoming place to land for a moment. You have been moving and unsettled for too long now. Stop and enjoy this moment to rest, rejuvenate and nourish yourself to wellness.
Carla's interpretation:
An innocent setting of play and safety. What are our places of safety where we can receive joy and peace?
A port with strange customs
Nicole's interpretation:
You are arriving to a place, within yourself, where everything you thought you knew, is now unfamiliar. Relearn your words, study the sound of your inhales and exhales. Be generous and forgiving to the unknown. It is your ally.
Carla's interpretation:
An event in which communication is desired, yet goes unanswered. Can we accept that our messages are received and being processed, even if we don’t have that evidence?
A sustained note sweetly held
Nicole's interpretation:
You carry the knowledge, experience and understanding of many many generations. You hold your ancestral wisdom within you. Listen carefully for the messages from your lineage and apply them with care.
Carla's interpretation:
A friendly and diligent character inspires the protagonist. This character offers wisdom: Can you enjoy your work by not becoming attached to the outcome?
All our grief is crowned
Nicole's interpretation:
This is a time for acknowledging our collective pain and suffering and honouring a path to healing, together. You are not alone, you are held in community. Move towards your people and together, you will emerge from the heaviness.
Carla's interpretation:
An event of reckoning and resurrection. The protagonist returns home from the unknown lands wiser, and wears scars with pride on their sleeve.
All these abandoned windows
Nicole's interpretation:
Turn around. Keep turning … What do you see? Look outwards dear one in order to find true perspective. You have spent enough time looking inwards and you are now ready to see beyond your place of comfort and safety. You will be held and supported. Go ahead, we are ready for you.
Carla's interpretation:
A spooky setting, perhaps unsettling or forlorn.
An orchid grows out of a corpse
Nicole's interpretation:
There is a profound and lasting beauty emerging. Have the wisdom to lay to rest that which must come to an end. The sweet perfume of the future is wafting into the room. Follow the scent and you will be led to the balm your wounded spirit is longing for.
Carla's interpretation:
There is a resolving event of completion: from loss and bitterness comes elegance and new life. How can we move through grief with ease and grace?
Ancient women knitting
Nicole's interpretation:
A new world is coming to fruition; it has been in the making since the beginning of time. We are all being called to realise the hard work of our ancestors into action. There is an urgency, the time is now. Listen and act for all.
Carla's interpretation:
The protagonist meets a wise mentor character offering ancestral knowledge. Their wisdom relates to a long-held practice about process.
Balanced on a ball
Nicole's interpretation:
You are being invited to believe in your extraordinary skills and abilities. Your fear of failing unfairly dominates. Stand strong and proud in your brilliance dear one and you will not fall.
Carla's interpretation:
A setting of no-man’s-land where we are in-between worlds, neither here nor there. Can we trust our timing and hang out in the unknown temporarily?
Beasts without names
Nicole's interpretation:
This is an invitation to identify the parts of you that have caused or are currently causing harm for others. Take responsibility for your actions and intentions, acknowledge their pain and hurt, make amends, emerge lighter.
Carla's interpretation:
A shapeshifter character that appeals to our fears. The character’s role is to tempt the protagonist into disillusionment.
Bones unburied
Nicole's interpretation:
You are being asked to reclaim your structure. You have lost yourself in the bendable unknown of the now. Reunite with your frame, it will return to you willingly and no longer rigid.
Carla's interpretation:
Event: unfinished business is resurfacing. What we complete this time will never have to be repeated in the same way again.
Briskly walking in sturdy shoes
Nicole's interpretation:
This is a call to action and you absolutely must be prepared. There is an urgency to a personal or a collective matter. You have been asked to act and you do not have a choice. What will you do to prepare yourself? Who do you trust to accompany you? You will do a good job if you take the time needed to be ready.
Carla's interpretation:
The protagonist is of a practical and determined nature. This character is well prepared for the expedition and focused on the finish line. This offers a wise message in the story about pace and presence.
Come in from the lake
Nicole's interpretation:
You have spent enough time alone, contemplating your purpose and self worth. It is now time to be less self-indulgent and move towards your community. What will you bring with you? What role can you play now among others? Don’t barge in, stand at the door, make yourself known and wait to be invited.
Carla's interpretation:
The atmosphere foreshadows coming storms, motherly worry and fear in your gut. Our fear is an act of care for ourselves, a call to come home to ourselves, regardless of whether the fear is warranted.
Crossroad offering
Nicole's interpretation:
Take your time to acknowledge and honour where you have been and where you are heading. Stop and pay your respects to the Peoples whose land and water you have been journeying on. Give gratitude to your own ancestors for supporting you and leading you to this time and place. Invite your curiosity to help you choose your next move.
Carla's interpretation:
Key event: A decisive meeting of two or more parties. Something is presented: a gift or peace offering. What can be offered, or received, to move forward?
Dressing for a party
Nicole's interpretation:
You are being asked to show up… for yourself! What needs to be celebrated and honoured within you? Throw yourself a grand party. Fill your table with abundance and invite your community to share in your deliciousness.
Carla's interpretation:
An event of celebration and community. There is a pause in the action of the story to enjoy play, to reflect on our achievements thus far, and regenerate for the next step.
Faces sticky with honey
Nicole's interpretation:
Be aware of those who approach you with offers that are too good to be true. There is a merchant of deceit who is on your path. Don’t stop to chat, don’t make eye contact. Keep moving, your integrity is bigger than their greed.
Carla's interpretation:
Characters in a moment of lavish abundance, playfulness and mess. Can we accept the feeling of messiness that comes with receiving joy?
Flies washing in milk
Nicole's interpretation:
Acknowledge that part of yourself that you know is annoying or irritating. Give yourself the chance to cleanse your spirit of this trait. Neutralise and start again.
Carla's interpretation:
A drawback event that halts progress, such as an unpleasant encounter that stirs doubt. Can we welcome these imperfections and fear, and take them along under our wing?
Flowers wilting in our laps
Nicole's interpretation:
Children and young people are struggling. There is no gentle way to say it. Pay attention to the young folks in your world. Don’t sugar coat the realities of today. They know exactly what’s going on and their spirits are scared. Trust their wisdom and embrace their imaginations. Clear the pathways to their elders. Support them to lead but remember to keep enough space for them to play and just be. They carry the past close to their hearts and hold the medicine we need, now.
Carla's interpretation:
A symbolic object of nature is in the process of death and decay; we are watching a process of change unfold before us. We are invited to caretake the grief that arises.
From their homes they dream
Nicole's interpretation:
You are being called back to your first home, not your ancestral home or the place where you were born. But the place that birthed you into existence. Take your time in remembering and returning. Once you arrive, give yourself permission to imagine beyond the edges of your most outrageous dreams. Find new ways of being, dream new blue prints for the world you want to live in. We all need you.
Carla's interpretation:
Character: the protagonist/s have a sense of hope and longing; unfulfilled potential.
Ghosts in a hallway
Nicole's interpretation:
Your path may be obstructed by your fixation and obsession with things from the past. Clear the air in the best way you know how, make space for the fullness of yourself to travel unimpeded.
Carla's interpretation:
The appearance of a ghostly object on the journey calls up, at worst, unprocessed fears or memories and, at best, clarity of purpose. Can we acknowledge their presence and continue forwards?
I too am falling in
Nicole's interpretation:
You are being asked to find an ally, a consort, a mutual mutineer. A person, animal, plant, flower, raindrop… with integrity. Hold hands on the bus, laugh out loud, speak your own language. Re-gather, re-member, resist …
Carla's interpretation:
A character passes a threshold of no-return towards unknown lands.
Life forming underground
Nicole's interpretation:
It has taken a very long time to arrive in the place where you are right now. Your spirit formed long before you were born.
This is an invitation and a reminder to return underground when necessary. There you will find a place for growth and rebirth. You will convene with those who know you best, you will be reminded of who you are and will be held with the highest love.
Carla's interpretation:
Action: A seed has been sown and is starting to grow roots; there is potential energy in its early stages. What is being built is not yet visible.
Lovers share some sandwiches
Nicole's interpretation:
You are being asked to have fun! Shake off the heaviness of responsibility and loyalty to that which brings you and those around you misery. Break up the routine and cycles you may have become lodged in. Invite your loves to join you. Break bread, get drunk, run naked in the street if you want to. Flash the colonial cis hetero patriarchy and then burn it to the ground. Just make sure you have fun doing it dear one.
Carla's interpretation:
A lighthearted setting: an everyday event where parties come together to rest and re-energise in the midst of their journey.
Messages transmitted, received
Nicole's interpretation:
You are being invited to listen. Now is the time to put your feet on the ground, to listen with your hands, to receive vital messages through your body. Stop speaking. Really, stop. Everything you have needed to say has been said. It is time to listen.
Carla's interpretation:
An event in which communication is desired, yet goes unanswered. Can we accept that our messages are received and being processed, even if we don’t have that evidence?
Nobody’s garden
Nicole's interpretation:
You are being called to tend and nurture that which has been forgotten or abandoned by others. You have the skills and ability to care for this vital cause, space or indeed, garden. Put all your love into it and it will show you the meaning of abundance.
Carla's interpretation:
A setting that reflects the character’s internal world. We are in an empty garden: do we see a forlorn spooky setting, or do we see democratic public land freely available to enjoy?
Now you know better
Nicole's interpretation:
You are being called to trust your wisdom and your higher self. What you hear is your truth. Your reluctance to believe yourself is easily undone. Give yourself permission to be your own wise being. Start right now.
Carla's interpretation:
An event with a defining moment of self-realisation. Something sparks us to reflect on how far we’ve come and the lessons learned.
Pigeons choose their queen
Nicole's interpretation:
You have been gifted the opportunity to lead in a role that you may not have ever imagined for yourself. Be careful not to be dismissive or underwhelmed by this appointment. This is a chance for you to grow and develop important insights into your abilities that have been sitting just below the surface. Accept the crown, but lead with humility and care for your people.
Carla's interpretation:
A decisive action for the community before the story’s apex. There is a gathering of adaptable and resilient folks who commune to distribute roles and responsibilities.
Putting on red lipstick
Nicole's interpretation:
A bold reminder to honour the femmes in your world. Who are the brilliant bitches that hold you up? What have you done for them lately? Take the time to also find your own femme power (we all have it), allow them in for a while, pour them a cold drink, spin some Nina and listen to what they have to say. Let them stay a while, they get your bed, you take the couch.
Carla's interpretation:
A character dresses to make an impression. What object do we call upon when we intend to make a statement? What is our red lipstick?
Ribbons in a bird's mouth
Nicole's interpretation:
There is collective work to be done. Find out what it is that you do best and offer it to your community. Bring your best self forward and share it. You need it, we need it.
Carla's interpretation:
A symbol of cheek and fancy, of something wonderful being gathered behind the scenes; a secret messenger that heralds good fortune and bigger forces at play.
River water in a bottle
Nicole's interpretation:
You cannot be restrained any longer. You are being called to release yourself from the tether that has supposedly kept you safe for some time. Your destiny is to move, to ebb and flow and be free. Follow the tides dear one and you will be led into your own sea of liberation.
Carla's interpretation:
A gathered stockpile of items to ration in the coming days; a special, nourishing object symbolising preparation and survival. How can we prepare ourselves with nourishment for endurance?
Someone else’s jacket
Nicole's interpretation:
A little while ago, you carried home someone else’s jacket (not literally). You’ve been trying to fit into it, but you know it’s not yours. Return it to its rightful owner and allow yourself to ease into your own jacket. You will soon realise that it was made just for you. It will comfort and protect you in all the ways you need it to.
Carla's interpretation:
A symbolic action: we receive anonymous gifts or selfless acts of support and care. The protagonist is invited to usher in support from those around them.
Stretched past comfort
Nicole's interpretation:
Now is an expansive time. Jump right in! Do not fear the temperature or the undefined borders. Take a leap with your eyes wide open. Sing as you stretch out your arms and sail through the sky. You will land where you need to be. I promise.
Carla's interpretation:
A character is outside of their comfort zone. Things can feel prickly just because they are new: not necessarily because that something is bad.
Symbols appearing on our palms
Nicole's interpretation:
You can no longer pretend that you don’t hold exceptional gifts dear one. You’ve known of them for too long now to continue to ignore them. The truth is that we need you, we need what you have to offer. Have the will and the confidence to share what you have been given. It will sustain you.
Carla's interpretation:
A character’s body communicates to them or speaks for them; embodied knowledge.
That one time you cried
Nicole's interpretation:
You are being asked to accept your vulnerability or to remember and honour the vulnerability of someone close. There is an immense strength in allowing your softer, uneasy side to come forth. You will be embraced and respected.
Carla's interpretation:
A flashback for character information: a gentle remembering from a tender time; reflection on a hidden feeling or forgotten past. An inner child is longing to be held.
The great calming evening
Nicole's interpretation:
There is an era of rest upon us. A long sleep… Don’t try to resist. Let yourself be amongst it. You deserve every moment of peace dear one. Once you surrender, you will never be able to return to the pace you once believed defined you. That is the plan. Start with your next exhale …
Carla's interpretation:
A quiet setting with underlying tension; the calm before the storm.
The palm of your own hand
Nicole's interpretation:
Everything you need is within you. Let go of fear, self-doubt and the belief that what you need is external. Listen carefully, feel the weight of your power in your own hands. You’ve got this, you always have. Now is your time. Go! We will be cheering for you.
Carla's interpretation:
At the apex of the story, the protagonist utilises a tool or skill in a significant event. The tool may involve remembering something forgotten, using something already owned in a new way, looking at ourselves in a different light, or trusting our bodies’ knowing.
Things hidden in your pocket
Nicole's interpretation:
You are carrying a small collection of treasures within you, some you picked up unknowingly while others were slipped into your deep pockets when you were not paying attention. It’s time to pull them out and lay them on the table. How will these fine gifts support you on your way to finding rest, pleasure and power? Study them carefully and allocate them wisely.
Carla's interpretation:
Atmosphere or action: Potential energy, a secret weapon. The autonomy to take out something you own and wield as needed. You are supported. You can rely upon yourself.
Warm wind lifts an unrolled flag
Nicole's interpretation:
This is an invitation to move with the current of a subtle change in your world. There has been stagnation for too long. This shift may not be what you expected or bold enough to notice immediately, but if you pay close attention, you will find its flow. Follow it and you will set a bigger transformation in motion.
Carla's interpretation:
Atmosphere or action: Potential energy, a secret weapon. The autonomy to take out something you own and wield as needed. You are supported. You can rely upon yourself.
We are all astonishingly wise
Nicole's interpretation:
You may have just come into your own power or perhaps you’ve been aware of your brilliance from day one. It’s time now to remember that those around you have their own knowledge, wisdom and experiences. Don’t patronise. Listen and respect those around you who you may have low expectations of. They too need the space to step into their own power, on their own terms.
Carla's interpretation:
A resolution event: something is remembered from deep inside; things come together and begin to make sense; a sense of collective respect and deep peace. We already have the knowledge we are seeking inside.
Your soul’s own shoes
Nicole's interpretation:
You have journeyed long and hard dear one. It’s time to hold yourself with kindness and be gentle to your tired self. It’s time to rest, to sleep in, to make yourself an elaborate breakfast. It’s time hydrate and breathe deeply. When you’re ready to go again, your shoes will be polished anew.
Carla's interpretation:
A symbolic object to communicate a message from inside. Our soul desires something greater and has the determination to see it through.
Your wrist grasped at the door
Nicole's interpretation:
You need help dear one. You are being called to allow folks in who have been offering to support you in genuine and caring ways. You know that you are unable to move forward alone. Let them in, they come with gentleness and love. You won’t regret it.
Carla's interpretation:
A conflict occurs around being stuck, caught or trapped at a gateway. There is a perceived block or threat to the protagonist.