Celtic Tree

The Celtic Tree Oracle of 1988 is the deck that carried ogham, the early Irish tree alphabet, into modern oracle practice: Colin and Liz Murray's research and Vanessa Card's hand-drawn earth-tone artwork, twenty-five playing-card-sized cards built on the tree letters. The archive review's craft note, high-quality wax-coated cards built to last, suits a deck that has in fact lasted: it remains the reference point ogham decks still position themselves against. Ogham gives the deck what most tree oracles lack, an actual historical symbol system underneath the foliage: each tree a letter, each letter a cluster of traditional meanings, so readings work a real alphabet rather than an invented one. It suits students of Celtic tradition who want the scholarship in the cards, practitioners working ogham as a living system, and collectors of the foundational oracles of the 1980s revival. Readers wanting lush painterly trees should note the register here is scholarly line work; the depth is in the letters.