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Rockpool Publishing sent over the Seasons of the Witch: Litha Oracle for me to review and share with you. I’m so excited for this one because I don’t have a lot of summer decks, and this is the first summer oracle put out in this 8 deck series. It's so gorgeous with a purple card back with a pattern of 4 butterflies, and the shimmering purple foil edging is divine! This is such an uplifting, empowering, and sunny deck! 

Litha is an ancient Pagan festival that celebrates the summer solstice, which typically occurs around June 21st in the northern hemisphere. It’s also known as Midsummer. Litha has its roots in ancient agricultural societies that heavily relied on the sun for their livelihoods. This festival marks the longest day of the year when the sun is at its peak power. So, it symbolizes the balance between light and darkness and is a time to celebrate the fullness of life and embrace the energy of the sun. 

For Litha rituals, those celebrating might gather herbs to be used for concocting tonics for health, abundance, and protection. These traditions usually include sunwheels where people decorate wheels with flowers and set it on fire before rolling the wheel down a hill. This signifies the descent of the sun and the turning of the wheel of life. 

One of the common practices to celebrate Litha or Midsummer would be bonfires where you could find the whole community gathered and dancing around the fire to honor the power of the sun’s energy and to call in an abundant harvest for the season. Feasts are often thrown in honor of this sabbat to celebrate community and the gifts and blessings that nature provides. They might also engage in rituals to help connect with nature, the energy of the sun, and the earth. In Norse traditions, the solstice was celebrated with bonfires, feasts, and ceremonies dedicated to Freyr, the fertility god. Now, in England, groups gather at Stonehenge, to watch the sunrise on this summer solstice. 

This time of year celebrates the longest day of the year and the shortest night and is a celebration of the divine masculine. Fun fact - the Sun card in the tarot is a masculine energy whereas the Moon card is a feminine card. Litha also celebrates the sun at its fullest power before it begins to wane through the rest of the year. 

This Litha Oracle deck has 44 cards that help us face our blocks and attract more bounty and abundance to us. There’s always an element heavily featured in each of these oracles in the Seasons of the Witch Oracle Series. That repeating element is the heart and soul of the deck and can be found throughout all the cards. For the Litha oracle, they chose butterflies due to the transformative work involved in the transition from a caterpillar to a butterfly. They highlight the “incredibly difficult journey they must endure to rebuild themselves as they release their identity to find freedom to expand into their fullest potential. Caterpillars melt themselves down to rebuild themselves as something magnificent.” By highlighting this as the repeating element, their hope is that we would use this deck “to release the blocks and crippling stories or habits that have prevented us from experiencing more abundance in our lives.” 

Here, in this vibrant deck, we see summery cards like citrus fruits, cloud scrying, country cottage, fruit wine, garden beds, green witch, hanging baskets, heat wave, herb crafting, rewild, stargazing, summer berries, sunbathing, sun magic, sun salutation, sunset dinner, sun tea, and wildflowers.

And look there's a Heather card! First time I've seen one with my name on it! Heather is the name of a flower/plant. You can see it woven into this wreath in the card below.

The color palette of these vibrant yellows, oranges, reds, and greens helps to lift our spirit and energy and leaves me feeling healthier, lighter, and brighter after working with them. This sabbat can be a powerful time where we feel a boost in our energy and mood, and we begin the work needed to tackle a new life goal as we have energy to spare to kickstart these projects we’ve been stalling on. Use this boost of energy to set the wheels in motion and push through any stagnation you’ve been stuck in. During this time, we may be feeling like we desire expansion and growth. Take advantage of this fiery energy to take action on the tasks you want to see movement on. 

These sunny scenes depict the power of light and of course the vitality we feel when basking in the sun’s glow. It reminds me of the energy I feel when holding a citrine quartz crystal that contains the sun’s energy, warming me from the inside out. 

Litha’s themes and areas of focus include: 

Abundance/Growth

Creativity/Inspiration

Fire Energy

Joy of your life

Light/Warmth

Power

Rebirth/Transformation

Self-Development

Success/Vitality

Of course, you can use this deck during Litha season, but really you can pull it out whenever these themes call to you. This deck was created to support us in finding more abundance, light, expansion, and blessings. But here are other times you could work with this deck outside of Midsummer. 

Natural times to work with this deck include:

When you desire to perform money conscious work

During a period of spiritual growth and evolution

When seeking an increase in finances or promotion

When you’re in a happy mood

When approaching life milestones

When desiring more confidence

When desiring more beauty and bliss in your life

And once you’re ready to manifest the life of your dreams

Along with card meanings in this guidebook, you may find recipes, spells, and self-care practices to implement. In this guidebook, you'll find an ignite your light ritual, a recipe for sun tea, a traveling self scan practice, cloud scrying practice, abundance spell, money spell, love spell, self-reflection mirror practice, and a grounding practice. That’s what makes this deck so unique and versatile. I love how they’ve put so much thought into finding ways to help us infuse magic and ritual into our daily lives. 

How To Use These Cards

There are many ways you can work with these cards. You could use them for a daily 2 or 3 card spread like the one above. Or just pull 1 card a day to assess where you currently are and to hear the message you most need to hear that day. You could pick out a card and display it in your home or office or carry it with you for the day to usher in that energy or to use it for manifesting something you desire. These cards are also perfect to display on altars during the season of Litha or in spellwork. 

On the card image, they offer a poetic mini message that captures the energy and themes of the seasonal artwork. This allows readers the option to read intuitively if they prefer. They also provide a more detailed message in the guidebook for others who want to dig further into the message this card conveys. I read both ways depending on what type of spread I’m pulling at that moment. These are great for quick spreads if I don’t have a lot of time but also if I want to dive deeper into the meanings of this season I can opt to spend a lot of time learning about each card and each tradition associated with this time of year. I’m learning so much about all the different sabbats on the Wheel of the Year and the more I learn, the more in tune I feel with the changing of the seasons.  I love that these oracles in this Season of the Witch series allow for both ways of reading, giving readers more options. Every reader approaches their divinatory practice uniquely so the more flexible the cards are, the easier it is for us to integrate them into our daily routines. 

Custom Spreads

With each installment of the Seasons of the Witch oracle series, the creators have provided some custom spreads to help us get the most out of these cards by tapping into the themes that each deck focuses on. For the Litha oracle, they offer us several custom spreads including the Hydration Spread, Farmers’ Market Spread, Insects Spread, Welcoming Summer Spread, and the Money Magic Litha Cross Spread. 

These spreads allow us to explore these themes further and show us how we can work with the natural energy of this season. I love seasonal work as it allows us to rotate the areas of our life and self-care that we put our focus on, keeping our healing practice fresh and always moving us forward to a more whole version of ourselves. 

Let’s put this deck to work, shall we! 

I threw the Hydration spread to work out why I’m having trouble with focusing on my writing recently and why I’m struggling with the creative process. This is only a recent problem as the first 4 books really flowed out of me. Book 5 is taking a lot more work to pull it out as I discover what kind of story I want to tell with this prequel to The Divining Sisters Series. I’d like to share this spread interpretation with you below.

My Hydration Spell Pull

The first spread prompt is “How are you currently viewing your situation?” 

The Rewild card flew out of the deck. This card reminds me that all of us have creative power and ideas that are waiting to be unleashed; however, to access this genius well, I must be willing to let myself and my creative mind run free. I do tend to have too much structure in my life as a life path 4 (Emperor tarot birth card). 

Perfection and rigidity could be getting in the way because my inner muse needs space to experience the process that's unfolding, including ideas that may pop into my mind out of the blue if I let myself roam. I'm being called to let my “soul’s garden grow wild,” and I'm being urged to not try to tidy up too much because that cuts off the ideas trying to come in. I might be too focused on pulling out the weeds at this time. Even the weeds can offer nourishment and guidance to help me better understand the process that’s unfolding within me. 

So, a shift is needed in how I'm allowing myself to think about this creative process, especially for this particular book which is different than the others I’ve written and published. This prequel takes place back in time in the 1640s during the witch hunts in England and requires a lot more research and is a heavier subject matter that I’ve got to balance with the themes of my series, which include healing and working through the witch wound. 

Allowing more freedom and joy into the process will offer my ideas a place to run free. I shouldn't question things too much. I should just hand the reins over to my soul to lead me on this one. 

When looking at blind spots, I pulled the Butterflies card, which talks about the process of a caterpillar becoming a butterfly which only happens by digesting itself by releasing special enzymes that dissolves its tissues into a soup of proteins that are then used to rebuild their new body, including their stunning wings. We never really think of the painful physical processes the caterpillar endures for their astounding transformation! The caterpillar’s willingness to completely break itself down is what leads to profound change. 

Since this prompt is asking about blind spots, I see this as saying that the difficult process I go through emotionally and psychologically in order to write the soul-stirring and gut wrenching stories for this series is necessary and cannot be rushed or under appreciated. I cannot block my ability to access the depths of my pain because that is the well I dip my ink pen into when penning these emotionally deep stories. It is crucial to give that pain and those wounds a voice and is the sole purpose of the books I'm trying to birth into the world. It's a profound spiritual breakthrough that I'm experiencing and sharing with others in order to represent what it truly feels like to experience a spiritual awakening and to heal wounds from past lives. This series has so many experiences from my personal healing journey that I share. 

There are times when I numb myself to protect my spirit from things that are going on in the external world. It’s just too painful and overwhelming at times. I just switch it off when I need too. And that's where I'm struggling to stay focused on my books because by numbing myself to outside events I'm also numbing myself to the emotional wounds I NEED to access in order to write these characters and their stories that so closely parallels my own. When you’re writing about healing, especially your own healing, it is so hard to express it accurately if you are emotional numb at the time. I see now what the cards are pointing out! 

Next, the 3^rd prompt asks, “How can you experience a deeper understanding of your situation?” 

The Horse card says that I may be feeling stuck, stagnant, and unsure how to break out of my cage to find more passion and excitement and that is certainly the question that I was asking wasn’t it. 

This Horse card says that horses are meant to be wild and free, which is exactly what my creativity requires as well. This card is urging me to dig deeply and to reconnect with my sense of freedom. I should remove the “shoulds” and “supposed tos” from my perspective and follow my heart and instincts. I'm also being encouraged to just experiment and go one way one day and then try something totally different the next day in order to find out what works. What worked for the past 4 books may not work for this 5^th book. I shouldn’t be afraid to change things up. Simply shifting directions could lead to a breakthrough in my writing process. 

The Wildflowers card came up for guidance on what action steps I can take to find a positive resolution to my creative slump. This card says, “When you allow yourself to imagine wildly, worlds of worlds are created.” 

That really resonated! My creativity is expansive. So much so that ideas fly in at all times of the day and night, and I do find myself shutting that creative flow down when it happens at inopportune times because I’m doing something else or trying to sleep when inspiration strikes. Now I see how that is problematic because it's hard to get back in that flow when I want to write. If I'm shutting off the faucet when it's inconvenient, that stop/start action has interrupted what is supposed to be a seamless outpouring of expression. So, it's time to allow my creative process to take up more space in my life if I want to make this more of a permanent change in my life path. I’d love to write full time. So my routine needs to reflect that. I may have to pull back on other projects like my tarot podcast to allow for more space to write, which is my biggest passion currently. 

I may have been restricting and restraining myself too much in this area. I’m being advised to open my mind and let my ideas soar! Just giving myself room to imagine what's possible could be enough to stimulate a reawakening of my creative process. It will be a time of blossoming when anything feels possible, and I may feel alive with vitality again just like when I first started writing the series back in 2019. If I follow what this spread says, I could find myself in a very fertile time, birthing fresh ideas into the world. In summary, I should give myself over to what's stirring within. It's yearning to be unleashed!

This Hydration Spread helped me see that I’m holding the reins too tightly on my creative mind. I spent the first 40 years of my life as a very analytical academic as I pursued my doctorate in psychology and when running a private therapy practice. It wasn’t until 2019, during my spiritual awakening, that I started writing my witchy book series, The Divining Sisters Series, so I’m still learning how to tap into my creative/intuitive side. These mindsets are completely opposite approaches to life so it can be a bit jarring as I make the transition. I’ve just got to experiment with this new outlet and see how I best work on this new writing path! Wow! That was such an impactful, insightful spread! 

I highly recommend this Litha oracle deck if you need a vibrant, sunny deck for the summer months or are just wanting to feel more empowered and energetic to get through the day. Thanks to Rockpool Publishing for sending this Litha Oracle! This one has AMAZING energy that I think we all need right now.

Deck Creators: Lorraine Anderson and Juliet Diaz

Illustrator: Tijana Lukovic 

Publisher: Rockpool Publishing

You can purchase this deck here! The Litha Oracle releases May 7, 2024.The next installment in this Seasons of the Witch oracle series will be the Lammas Oracle that releases on July 2, 2024 - another summer deck for those of us in the Northern Hemisphere!

Check out The Divining Sisters Series here.

If you're looking for a good witchy book, my fictional divination book series, The Divining Sisters, is perfect! Start with book 1 in the series, The Call of the Cards, and then catch up to book 2, We Divine Three and book 3, The Threads of Fate, that just released in Sept. 2023. Book 4 releases June 2024!

They're available as ebooks $4.99 and paperbacks $14.99 on Amazon. And the eBooks are also on Barnes and Noble, Apple Books, Google Play, Kobo, Scribd, Smash words, and more.

Find out more details on my novels on my author website author.heatherhardison.com - where I post updates on book releases, video book trailers, book blurbs and quotes, as well as fun things like my Spotify playlists for each book. I carefully curate those to express the energy of each book. 

This series follows a group of women (witches, healers, diviners) who reincarnate lifetime after lifetime and reunite with their coven so they can fulfill a mission of keeping their craft of divination, healing, and magic alive for future generations. 

Book Blurb for Book 1 in The Divining Sisters Series: The Call of the Cards 

Alexandra Steele, a clinical psychologist, stumbles upon a mystical store in downtown, Memphis, TN, where she encounters tarot cards for the first time. She doesn't realize it at the time, but this simple encounter will leave her life forever changed as she uncovers a world of past life connections to the cards and the craft of divination. This sparks an awakening that opens door after door of a long line of mystic and witch incarnations that run throughout her history. As she reconnects to these deep mystical ties, she begins to learn about her destiny, which is revealed as she starts to encounter coven sisters and foes from previous incarnations. Will her tendency to hide in the shadows and play small continue to hold her back or will the call of the cards lure her onto her destined path of a life full of magic and sisterhood?

Readers are raving about the series like these 5 star amazon reviews of The Call of the Cards and We Divine Three:

"Absolutely Unique! Resonated so much!" 

"Life-changing. I felt seen. I don't think I've had this experience with any other book."

“The metaphysical series I've been waiting for! I was hooked from the beginning and even found myself slowing down because I want it to last. The characters are so relatable and genuine, and the explanations of tarot readings and past life stories is spot on! I'm eagerly awaiting the next ones. Please please, Heather, keep writing.” 

Readers call it "Harry Potter for adults."

If you get a copy of any of the books in the series please leave a book review on whatever platform you buy it on if you enjoy it. That really helps me out and can help get my book in front of more readers. And if you love it please also review it on good reads. If you follow me on Instagram, you’ll see updates on the book releases there. I have 2 instagram accounts My tarot and podcast account - healingthrutarot My author account heatherhardisonauthor 

Watch the book trailer for The Divining Sisters Series

Podcast

And if you're interested in divination, check out my podcast, Healing Thru Tarot, where I teach how to use the tarot and other divinatory systems for healing, self-growth, and navigating stress and anxiety in a busy, modern world. 

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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 Litha Oracle from Rockpool Publishing for prospective review. Everything I’ve said here is sincere and accurately reflects my opinion of this deck.

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