Mason jars, alligators, pine cones, and black-eyed peas are just some of the images on the oracle cards in Stacey Williams-Ng’s “Southern Gothic Oracle” deck. The cards, 45 in total, are all illustrated with acrylic paintings, representing different aspects of Southern culture and history. Around 20 of the original paintings are on display at Jay Etkin Gallery.
Oracle cards are similar to tarot cards, Williams-Ng explains, “but they’re more open-ended.” While tarot cards typically have standard symbols in every deck that require prior knowledge to interpret the images, oracle decks can contain a myriad of images, usually appealing to a theme, and each card contains a clear, written affirmation or piece of advice, with no prior knowledge necessary.
For instance, in Williams-Ng’s deck, she says, “If you pull the copperhead card, it’s supposed to be warning against bad influences,” but it’s up to the user to interpret who or what those bad influences are. “Today, people who consume these kinds of cards are more likely to use tarot or oracle cards as their own self-help tool,” she adds. “They’ll draw cards and just read them and think about what it might mean to their own lives. People are seeing tarot [and oracle] cards as something that is for their own personal betterment, instead of ‘Oh, I’m gonna find out if my boyfriend is going to marry me or if I’m going to die this year.’”
Williams-Ng originated the images and interpretations of her oracle cards. She had been looking for a deck with a Southern theme but couldn’t find one; fortunately, she says, “I liked the idea of creating a card deck where I could define what the cards are.” So, at the end of last year, she began brainstorming and painting.
“It was kind of a pandemic project for me,” she says. “I had just moved back to my hometown [Memphis from Milwaukee], and I was stuck in the house and started thinking about things that interest me on a personal level.” For the past decade, Williams-Ng says, she has been researching the different spiritual practices and belief systems throughout the South.
We come from a really diverse region, so there’s a real diversity of belief systems.
“I wanted my deck of cards to represent overlapping spiritual traditions,” she says. From Christianity to Hoodoo to Celtic and Appalachian beliefs, she explains, spiritual systems in the South often share a lot of regional traditions and beliefs. (Though, in this deck, she omitted belief systems from Louisiana because “Louisiana is a world unto itself.”) “Of the 45 cards, there’s only five to six cards of any one thing, and that way there’s a real diversity. We come from a really diverse region, so there’s a real diversity of belief systems, and that way the user or reader gets presented with a democratic smattering of different ideas.”
The title of the deck, as well as the Jay Etkin exhibition, was inspired by the Southern Gothic literary movement in the 19th century. “[The Southern Gothic writers] were trying to show the way the South was hiding beneath this veneer of civility, but beneath it there was all kinds of trauma,” Williams-Ng says. “Not everything in my deck is an affirmation; you know, these cards have some shadow things, like the copperhead card. … I wanted to give people a sense of another side of the South — the more grotesque or esoteric or metaphysical side of the South — the shadow side.”
Even so, Williams-Ng hopes her cards provide joy and inspiration. “More and more people are trying to figure out how they can get in touch with their own local magic, if you will, or their own local traditions,” she says. “And as for people who are dabbling in witchcraft and the occult and even in just botanical healing practices and things like that, they are really trying to work with the authenticity of working with the land, meaning working with [the traditions and spiritual practices] where you’re from.”
One card that Williams-Ng thinks will enchant Memphians is the Crystal Grotto card, which is based on the Crystal Shrine Grotto at Memorial Park Cemetery in East Memphis. The image on the card is non-specific, labelled simply as a crystal grotto, but anyone who has seen the Crystal Shrine Grotto will recognize the inspiration. As for the card’s meaning, Williams-Ng says, “It represents the cosmos and getting in touch with the universe. It’s about ancient wisdom.”
This unique attention to regional detail in Williams-Ng’s deck has attracted a great deal of interest in customers wanting their own, especially after she launched a successful Kickstarter campaign. “I never expected it to have any commercial success. I’ve sold a thousand decks, and I just can’t believe this. It’s clearly hitting a nerve with some people,” she says. “I’ve had a lot of people evoke their grandmothers. There’s a lot of ‘This reminds me of my Memaw, this reminds me of going to my grandma’s house.’”
The opening reception of “Southern Gothic Oracle” at Jay Etkin Gallery is Friday, September 3rd, from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. There will be card readings, and decks of cards accompanied by books for interpretations will be on sale. The exhibition will remain on display until October 2nd. To purchase a deck of cards, visit Williams-Ng’s Etsy store.