January 11, 2025 11:11 am
The Ancestral Magick Oracle by Nancy Hendrickson and Stacey Williams-Ng is a divination tool designed to facilitate connection with ancestral spirits, enabling you to honor, communicate with, and seek guidance from your lineage.
Working with the Ancestor Communication spread (by Nancy Hendrickson)
It’s more than just a series of cards– it’s a sacred bridge built on love, the fierce protection and nurture of those who have come before you, whose legacy you carry, and most important of all, familial love.
Whether you’re seeking clarity on life’s challenges, offering gratitude, or requesting intervention, the Ancestral Magick Oracle empowers you, deepening your spiritual practice with ancestor veneration.
This is a photographic walk-through of the deck. The edition I received comes with a card-size perfectbound guidebook with a two-page spread explaining every card and a starter set of spreads for ancestral work with the deck. Fun easter egg: the deck creator, Nancy Hendrickson, is featured in the Storyteller card (see photo below) and the artist of the collage art is featured in the Creator card (see photo above).
The cards feature ancestral archetypes, cultural motifs, and themes of spiritual practice designed to resonate with diverse traditions and open-ended personal interpretation. This deck is particularly suited for those already well-attuned to the spiritual community, with cards such as Aura, Crystal, Chakras, Cunning Folk, Divination, Green Witch, Hedge, a red candle to symbolize Love, Magician, Medium, a skull and candle for the card Offering, Ritual, Sigil, and Spells, to name a few.
There are ancestor archetype cards, such as Father, Hero, Warrior, Visionary, or Trickster. Then there are magick cards, like Folk, Conjure, Sigil, Ritual, Poetry as a form of magick, or even Love, a card designating the magickal methods of attraction, enhancement, and manipulation of desire. Chakra is also described, per the guidebook, as a mode of magick. There are specific cards on witchcraft, such as Elemental, Cunning Folk, Hereditary, Hedge, and Green Witch.
Here’s how I might recommend using your Ancestral Magick Oracle deck. Start by creating sacred space. Fortify a boundary so that the space you’re in is a nexus between the temporal physical world and the spiritual ancestral realm. Candles and scent really help to set that space.
Set up a working altar within this sacred space, one that includes motifs and relics specific to your cultural heritage, or heritages. Light a candle or incense, invoke your ancestors with a simple recitation, such as:
I call upon ancestral spirits, wise and true,
through the veil and eras of time, I reach for you.
I invoke you now with love and grace,
to stand beside me in this space.
Then state your purpose for seeking their guidance. Your intent can be as simple as seeking to say hello and offering your gratitude for all they have blessed you with. Or it can be to petition them for help on a specific matter.
Page spread snapshot from the companion guidebook
Shuffle the deck, focusing on intensifying that psychic connection between you and the ancestral line. Then draw cards into any of the spreads recommended in the companion guidebook. I like the Ancestor Communication spread, as follows:
ANCESTOR COMMUNICATION SPREAD
Ancestor Communication spread, from the Ancestral Magick Oracle (Nancy Hendrickson and Stacey Williams-Ng)
When your divinatory reading is done, conclude with a closing recitation, such as “With gratitude and honor, I close this sacred space. To those who walked before me, whose wisdom and love guides me now, I give my thanks. May your spirit rest in peace and remain ever with me.” Then snuff out the candlelight.
In addition to recognizable historical figures (like Nannie Burroughs in the Teacher card or Laura Bullion in the Outlaw), the deck features contemporary personalities as well. You’ll see in the subsequent photographic walk-through of the cards several familiar faces, or at least they’ll be familiar to those active in the tarot and cartomancy community.
While the collage scrapbook-style art in this deck is beautiful, personally I find a deck that features living people I know to be distracting rather than amplifying for deep and sincere ancestral work. It’s more of a me thing than anything objective about the deck itself, but perhaps less personal, more universal pictorial references for an ancestor magic oracle deck would have been more powerful.
When you see people that you see online on social media in a deck of cards that you’re trying to use to connect with your ancestral line, it can be a bit distracting. So that’s the only thing that bars it from being a tool I can work with.
Overall, though, it’s a great deck. Use it for daily guidance by drawing a single card each morning to start your day with ancestral wisdom. Or use cards from this deck for ancestral meditation. Cards such as Aura, Beauty, Hero, The Holy One, Love, Medium, Moon, Mother, Muse, Poetry, or Survivor make for great focal points during meditative practices.
Select cards aligned with a specific request and incorporate them into prayer or altar work for petitioning rituals. You can also use the Ancestral Magick Oracle to facilitate inner work — explore generational patterns and wounds highlighted by a divinatory reading with the deck.
Named “Best Divination Deck of 2023,” the Ancestral Magick Oracle has the potential to become your indispensable companion tool for honoring heritage, tapping in to ancestral support, and carrying forth the wisdom of the past into the present.
I find that the more you use this deck, the more you weave your own energy into the cards, blessing it and further nurturing that sacred bond between you and your ancestral line. It’s also a great companion deck for working with Hendrickson’s book, Ancestral Tarot: Uncover Your Past and Chart Your Future.
FTC Disclosure: In accordance with Title 16 of the U.S. Code of Federal Regulations Part 255, “Guides Concerning Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising,” I received the deck set from the creator for prospective review. Everything I’ve said here is sincere and accurately reflects my opinion of the deck.
Posted by benebell
Categories: cartomancy, deck review, oracle deck
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My challenge with decks like this is that some immediate family members who have passed away did some pretty terrible things to me, and I never met most of their family, though I am sure some of them were lovely people. I do not want to ever be in touch with the ones who hurt me. How do I think about my ancestors and who do I attempt to contact?
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By Rabbi Aaron Bergman on January 11, 2025 at 11:16 am
I too would love to see an answer to this for I fully agree and understand. Most of my family were terrible and I carry a sense of dread about ever being in contact with them again.
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By Anonymous on January 11, 2025 at 11:43 am
I want to start by affirming that everybody has very different relationship dynamics in terms of family history. No one should feel obligated to connect with ancestor spirits or practice ancestor veneration. In fact, for some it will make more sense to engage in spiritual practices that sever those ties.
If a deck like this one is still of interest to you, one personal recommendation I might have is to reprogram it so it becomes a communication device with a particular patron deity or even more open ended than that, a particular pantheon.
You could also use a deck such as this one for connecting with local benevolent land spirits. Historical or legendary figures that inspire you can also become your ancestor spirits.
Also, instead of venerating the past, you can create a sacred space dedicated to the best version of yourself that you aspire to become, working with some of the archetypes, motifs, and emblems found in a deck like this. In such a case, the fact that this deck features contemporary people from our community might actually be useful.
Then, in general, and more broadly speaking, the spiritual practice is just going to be more focused on chosen family and chosen community.
These are just some of my initial thoughts.
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By benebell on January 11, 2025 at 12:34 pm
Thank you for your incredibly helpful, compassionate and beautiful response.
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By Rabbi Aaron Bergman on January 11, 2025 at 12:43 pm
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By tao on January 12, 2025 at 10:08 am
christopher.j.hogstrom@gmail.com
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By christopherjhogstrom on January 15, 2025 at 8:32 pm