The Low Vibe Oracle: Official Guidebook: An Awful Guide to An Awful Oracle Deck

By Joshua D. Peterson and May Peterson

The Low Vibe Oracle is a horrible deck designed to help you embrace your flaws and look at them proactively and from a class-conscious, anti-consumerist standpoint. Hand drawn and created by a queer, disabled creator with 20+ years experience in human rights activism and 18 years experience as a tarot reader and occultist, this quirky, irreverent deck is nothing like your Aunt Kathy's angel cards

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Jun 14, 2021
• ISBN: 9781304646484

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The Low Vibe Oracle Guidebook

Copyright © 2021 Joshua D. Peterson

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

ISBN: 978-1-304-64648-4

Imprint: Lulu.com.

First printing, 2021.

Broken Wall Publications, LLC

303 B Hamilton Avenue

Coshocton OH, 43812

Find more on TikTok @lowvibeoracle

An un-thank you to...

All those in the spiritual community who gaslight, gatekeep, and girlboss their way to dominance. To those that think all of spirituality is a buffet where they can consume whatever they want, whenever they want it. To those that emphasize building platforms and profits over building community. And specifically, to anyone who was ever mean to me, about anything, ever, but especially to those who said I was low vibrational and full of dark energy. You were right, of course, but I’d still like to say fuck you for saying so.

To my sweet husband.

What the Hell Did I Just Pick Up?

The Low Vibe Oracle is a deck of cards used for cartomancy, both in the more modern self-reflective and traditional divinatory capacities. It’s a horribly drawn, incredibly crude deck but also one that puts a spotlight on issues most oracle decks will not go near with a hazmat suit and a ten-foot pole.

If you are the sort of card reader who gets their feelings hurt by gentle decks full of natural beauty and artfully depicted animals, this deck will definitely put you in traction. If you are here looking for a tool that promotes light and love, you are going to want to put this down, go home and smoke cleanse your aura, and forget all about this horrid little pack of cards. And if your spirituality comes with a healthy dose of pearl-clutching—RUN.

The Low Vibe Oracle is named specifically because I believe most of the issues a person will face and get stuck on come from those lower vibrational places—and that’s not a bad thing. A tree without roots is just a dead log waiting to be thrown on the fire, and this deck wants you to embrace those roots in all their dirty, wormy, fully alive goodness.

You won’t find any beautiful, Instagrammable cards to center in your altar selfie here, but if you are one of the folks in the woo-woo world of cards, crystals, candles, and other C-words, you might see a lot of familiar faces and concepts. Of course, you do not need to be a grizzled old mystic to appreciate the truth this deck delivers, either. The Low Vibe embraces the most wretched among us—it’s almost Christ-like in the company it seeks to keep. …Okay, that was bullshit. But admit it, you probably are at least a little bit wretched, when we really get down to it. And that’s okay.

Why I Made This Awful Deck

So, in order to fully understand this deck, I think it’s important to understand why and how I came to make it.

First of all—and this is absolutely not apologetic—it’s not this goddamn ugly because I am lazy and unskilled as an artist. I mean, I AM lazy and unskilled as an artist, but that’s not as relevant to this as you would think. When I created this deck, I did so with no intention of ever releasing it. In the fall of 2020—remember 2020? I feel like that year was notable for some reason—I decided I had reached my limit with the types of oracle decks on the market.

I am not primarily an oracle card reader. Tarot has always been my tool of choice, but over the years I’ve found supplementing my practice with oracle cards could be very rewarding, for both myself and my clients. The problem was, so many oracle card decks were just…well, I do not want to say bad, but…fucking bad? I’m at a loss here. Bad. They are just bad. But WHY are they bad? Is it the art? No, not at all, many are absolutely gorgeous. Is it perhaps the quality of the production? No, in fact oracle decks often sport some of the best card stock and all the foily, sparkly bells and whistles imaginable. Was it the world view or metaphysics espoused by the decks? Well, there certainly were a lot of stinkers but that’s not unique to oracle cards.

In fact, if you would ask most people why they do not like or use oracle cards, they will often say It’s because they are so fluffy and shallow. That’s a revealing criticism, and one I would like to break down.

If you’ve been in the occult world for more than a minute, you’ve heard the accusation of fluffy bunny bandied about as a pretty serious condemnation. To be fluffy denotes a lack of substance, a lack of gravity. I’m not sure what the fuck being a rabbit has to do with it—I’ve read Watership Down, and after that I’m not convinced bunnies ARE fluffy, but that’s neither here nor there. However, that assessment of fluffiness and shallowness suggests people feel many of the oracle decks out there do not go deep enough, or generally favor style over substance.

That’s been my general experience, but what does that really mean? Like, what separates a deck of oracle cards from a similarly designed tarot deck, with equal production value and aesthetic? Ultimately, the tarot counterpart, even with the gentlest decks, will include elements of negativity, challenge, and hardship. However, oracle decks often occupy an airier space, concerned with tasks of soothing, reassuring, and empowering. But like a child who is always praised and never taught to deal with criticism or correction, the users of these decks rarely address the issues in meaningful ways, instead just continually applying a balm to the surface issues. Many cardslingers see the difference as between a a more dimensional tool to solve problems and a tool that only offers general advice and encouragement.

This is not to say I think oracle decks are a waste of time—I own many and created one, after all—but there’s a genuine lack of utility there that many folks seem to recognize. I definitely did, but all the same loved using tools that extended my cartomantic vocabulary beyond the incredibly poetic language of tarot, and that created modern, relatable new symbol sets. I had a roster of decks that gave me those tools, but even those often felt filtered through the lens of cultural dominance—rarely did these decks create a space for queer people, disabled people, people of color, low-income people, and people outside of the broader neopagan and New Age community. It gets tiresome having to always go in and deconstruct concepts that don’t fit you or the people you know, do not represent you, or that sometimes actively hurt you.

Finally, on top of all that, I think all of us just want THAT deck that speaks in our language, and as a loud, colorful, sardonic person, I often felt like that was never going to happen. I am very much not the picture of the witchy-spiritual world person. I am brightly colored in attire and style, but at the same time my wardrobe is composed predominantly of button downs, ties, and jackets, rather than tie-dye and goth black shifts. I HATE being outside and in nature where there are bugs and mud and occasionally weird little lizards that have eyes that look at you judgingly. I love technology, big blockbuster movies, fast food and video games, and I don’t believe in concepts like the Law of Attraction orthe westernized take on karma. I am unapologetically fat, queer, neuroatypical, and nerdy. I’m so rarely ANY industry’s target audience, but especially so in regards to the spiritual and wellness world. That deck, pitched right to me? I did not need to shuffle up cards and do a reading to see it would be a wait before something like that would be considered marketable.

So, I waited and waited and waited for many years for someone to finally make a deck for me, and came to the realization that was probably never going to happen—that perfect deck that is NOT fluffy, that showcases the types of people and situations you see in your life, that uses symbols you don’t have to deprogram or disarm first. The deck that reflects those criteria, sadly, only existed in my head.

For a long time, it was a pipe dream. Someday I will make this snarky, awful deck. Once I have the money to hire an artist. Or, substitute that with when I have the money to launch a crowdfunding campaign. Or when I take some art lessons. Or when my business is doing really well and I can market it better. Or when Christine Baranski responds to my emails and decides we need to make a high camp gay dramedy film together. Or whatever excuse you can come up with to justify not doing it, I had it.

But then 2020 happened, and with it, many internal changes and things to examine, deconstruct, and use as lessons. So, long story short, I got to the place where I said fuck it. It’s probably never going to be perfect but it might as well be real in some way. So, first I wrote the deck, carefully visualizing the best I could. I wrote plans for the visuals of each card, with no fear of whether or not I could accomplish that depiction, I gave them what I felt were punchy titles, and mind-mapped the concepts and ideas I needed to be in the deck to feel useful to me. Then, I ordered a large pack of blank white cards, made the trip to the local hobby store to buy a bunch of alcohol ink markers that were on clearance, and took two weeks' vacation. I bought a fuckton of Taco Bell, a case of Arizona Green Tea, grabbed a couple of cheap bottles of rum from the liquor store and I had myself a good old-fashioned arts