Thirty-three cards, and a 256-page companion book to go with them. Most oracle decks give you a paragraph per card; this one gives you seven or eight pages each, with the myths attached to that tree or plant, the deities and nature spirits associated with it across several cultures, the folklore, and the oracular message. Buy it as a deck and you also own a working mythology reference on trees, which is a genuinely useful thing to have on the shelf whether or not you ever shuffle it.
What you get
- 33 art cards
- 256-page softcover companion book
- Lift-top rigid box with magnetic closure and ribbon pull tab, 9 x 6 x 2"
- Weight 1.7 lb
- ISBN 9780764343216
- Sealed in publisher shrinkwrap
About the deck
Each card is a tree or plant, painted by Sandra Stanton, with a nature spirit, deva, dryad, or deity present in the image. The deities are drawn across cultures — Greek, Egyptian, Celtic, and others — and Jenks and Stanton deliberately blend and cross gender in how those figures are rendered, so a shopper expecting a single-pantheon deck or fixed gender presentation should know that before ordering. What holds it together is the botanical subject rather than a pantheon or a tradition, which makes it usable alongside almost any practice.
There is no suit structure, no numbering, and no fixed order. It reads as a pure oracle: draw, find the entry, read the myth, take the message. With only thirty-three cards you'll meet the whole deck quickly, which suits daily practice and makes it a good deck to actually learn rather than to admire.
The cover carving is a green man — the foliate head found in medieval European church and cathedral stonework, where leaves grow from or spill out of a human face. The disgorging type, with foliage issuing from the mouth, is the most common variety in surviving English and French carving. Its original meaning is debated among architectural historians, and the modern pagan reading of it as a vegetation god is a twentieth-century interpretation rather than a documented medieval one.
Provenance & tradition
Kathleen Jenks holds a PhD in Religious Studies and taught graduate courses in mythology and ritual for nine years. Sandra Stanton spent two decades researching and painting the series that became this deck, tracing nature-centered roots underneath classical mythology. The academic footing shows in the book, which cites and contextualizes rather than asserting. Published 2013 by Schiffer Publishing of Atglen, Pennsylvania.
Who this is for
Green witches, herbalists, and anyone whose practice runs through plants. Druids and tree workers. Readers who want a small deck they can genuinely learn rather than a hundred-card set they'll never master. Students of comparative mythology, since the book earns its place independent of the cards. Nature-based ritual and seasonal work. Anyone who wants an oracle grounded in research instead of channeled material.
