Love Your Inner Goddess Oracle App, by Alana Fairchild, illustrated by Lisa Ferrante
Oceanhouse Media, Inc., 44 cards, 2018
Love Your Inner Goddess Oracle App is the second oracle app I have reviewed. Because it was written by the same author as the first app, Alana Fairchild, I came to it with high expectations. I assumed that Love Your Inner Goddess Oracle App would be as engaging and delightful as the Mother Mary Oracle previously reviewed here in Spiral Nature Magazine.
The download of Love Your Inner Goddess Oracle was easy and quick. And once the icon appeared on my iPhone I was excited to tap it. I like the easy accessibility and portability of a phone based digital app.
I appreciated the simple instructions included with Love Your Inner Goddess Oracle App. While I have used many divination tools and decks in my life, these instructions were accessible and welcoming, enabling anyone to use the app, whether or not they had ever used a divination deck before. I like when an author doesn’t make assumptions and presents their material so everyone can access it.
I elected to skim the profiles of the author and artist, Alana Fairchild and Lisa Ferrante, and the information about the sound company Beauty Everywhere, the publisher Blue Angel Publishing and the copyright information. I was eager to move right in to using the cards in the app for divination.
In the screen where I could “Begin a reading,” “Browse Cards,” “Load a Reading,” read the “Guidebook” or look at “More Apps,” I found that I was quickly distracted by the illustration on the top left corner of the page. Reminding me of a stylized Marie Antionette, the drawing of a woman was cartoon-like with gigantic eyes and pouty lips. I later learned that this card is entitled the Divine Bad Ass.
Opting to browse cards, I quickly flipped through the entire deck, looking at the illustrations. I was dismayed that many of them resembled Brats dolls and possessed unusually large eyes and lips. One doll face after another made kissy faces at me except for card nine, the Rock Star, and card 19, Spirit Warrior. Instead, these cards had abstract collage images and words.
Despite being distracted by the illustrations by Lisa Ferrante, I tried hard to like the deck. I had enjoyed such a profound love for the earlier deck I had reviewed by Alana Fairchild, that I felt determined to find the goodness in this one.
I clicked on “Begin a Reading” and was taken to a list of recommended spreads, each one conveniently illustrated with a small line drawing depicting the spread layout. I liked that the little line drawings showed me the exact layout of the different spreads. The choices included: One Card, Power of Your Heart, Power of Your Spirit, Power of Your Truth, Power of Your Beauty, and Power of Your Warrior. While Beauty and Truth were three-card spreads, the others were four-card spreads.
I tapped on Power of Your Truth and was taken to the graphic outline of the card three-card spread, with the first position entitled: “The Truth of What is Being Hidden.” I swiped through the deck, tapping Paeonia. For the second position “The Truth of Your Own Soul” I selected Angel of Truth. The third and final position represented “The Truth of What is Coming to Life,” and slid my finger across and tapped Psyche.
With the three cards spread in front of me, I returned to the card in position one and tapped the arrow to turn the card over. Each card reading contains three sections of information: In A Reading, Spiritual Guidance, and Sacred Ritual. By sliding your finger up you can scroll down the page to read each section.
I tried hard to read every word for the first card, but quickly found myself skimming to the bottom section: Sacred Ritual. Despite feeling overwhelmed by the pithy repetition of affirmations and statements about how spirituality and healing, the sacred rituals grounded me. Each of these three small, real actions were things I was able to do right then and there.
While I didn’t care if the faery folks were interested in me (Paeonia), I did feel empowered performing the sacred rituals which helped me to ground the information and associations listed in the earlier two sections. The rituals required no extra ingredients or tools, and were mostly physical actions combined with awareness and verbal declaration.
After performing the small sacred rituals in Love Your Inner Goddess Oracle App, I felt grounded in my body, in time and in space. What had been an alienating experience initially turned into the realization that physical awareness and presence in the moment really tuned me in to my own inner goddess. So while the images may not be something I want to use regularly or retain, the process of exploring the deck enabled me to return to my true inner goddess self, and in a sense to find me.