Review by Lalia Wilson
The two biggest reasons I like smartphone apps for tarot and oracle cards are that the images are super-easy to post online or send, and the app is way more cheap that the cards themselves. Other reasons are that with the price so reasonable, you can try complete decks before you pay ten times the price for the deck. Basically, if you like tarot, Lenormand, or oracle cards, you ought to be trying them out on your smartphone.
That said, I have a wonderful app to share with you, Phillip and Stephanie Carr-Gomm’s The Druid Plant & Animal Oracle, illustrated by Will Worthington. First, this app is a combination of two decks, so you are saving twice as much money: The Druid Plant Oracle: Working with the Magical Flora of the Druid Tradition, and [the] Druid Animal Oracle Deck. Both decks are created by the same team as the app: Phillip and Stephanie Carr-Gomm, and Will Worthington as the illustrator. To buy the cards themselves you will spend about $40. Plus, the Plant deck is not available until mid-September. But you can get both as ONE app today for $4.99.
Price is not the only reason to choose an app, of course. You want an app that uses cards that give insightful readings. You want an app that has beautiful, evocative, and meaningful card images. You also want the advantages an app has over the cards themselves: an integrated book with the card’s theme, symbolism, divinatory meaning, and additional explanation. With the app, you draw a card and then you can immediately tap the card and see what the creators have to say about that card. Usually, this is in two versions, a short version and a lengthy one, the equivalent of several book pages. These meanings include upright and reversed, the Celtic symbolism, the Celtic name and its pronunciation, the mythology of this plant or animal, and beyond.
For the Druid Plant & Animal Oracle, you are getting the card images and divination system… plus a book of herbal and plant lore… plus a book of Druid/Celtic associations with each plant or animal… and more. You can use this app like a dictionary of the natural world of the Druids. For Americans, we can learn about plants and animals we know by other names. (For years I have read British books that refer to "brambles" little knowing that they were referring to blackberries, or in the Southern vernacular, the "briar patch.”)
This app is so much more than just a divination tool. It is well worth your time.