Hello my darlings and welcome.
In this video I'm going to flip through three books written by Maia Toll and illustrated
by Katie O’hara.
Each of these books also include a matching deck of 36 oracle cards.
Let's do some magical crafting.
The books I am going to flip through are The Illustrated Crystallary, The Illustrated Bestiary
and the Illustrated Herbiary.
As you may have noticed from my other videos, I am left-handed.
And so it is my habit to initially page through a book with my left hand, from the back of
the book forward.
I will leave a link to all three of these books below, and if you enjoy this kind of
content from me, kindly leave a like on this video.
Each of these three Illustrated Books include 36 oracle cards illustrated by Katie O'Hara.
They are hardbound books with full-color covers and beautiful metallic ink on the cover as
well.
The covers are just stunning.
After receiving the Crystallary and Bestiary books for Yule, I loved them so much that
I bought the Herbiary immediately.
All three of the books have the same format.
These books are not Grimoires or books of shadow.
They do not tell all of the magical properties and spells for each crystal or herb.
What these books do is set out the oracle card meanings for each crystal, animal and
plant.
And then go on to provide a ritual and reflection for each.
Each of the 36 Stones, Animals and plants in each book have four pages.
The first page is a beautiful full page color illustration.
These illustrations are also featured on the oracle cards.
The second page provides the oracle meaning for each item.
The third page includes a ritual inspired by each item or card.
These rituals are simple and require very little in the way of tools.
For example, You don’t need to own each crystalor herb to do each ritual.
Sometimes it is a breathing exercise, a journaling prompt, or energy work.
Most of the rituals are mental exercises.The fourth page is a reflection about each item
or card.
This is generally a paragraph about the themes surrounding the oracle car and accompanying
ritual and then a journaling prompt or question to consider.
In the back of the book is a vellum pocket containing 36 oracle cards in 4-up sheets.
They are perforated and must be separated before using.
The cardstock is very thin and it is easy to separate the cards by simply folding them
back and forth.
However this also means the deck of cards is very delicate as well.
It is not the typical card thickness.
I ended up putting all three decks together in one large drawstring bag for storage.
The backs of the cards match the beautiful illustrations on the endpapers of each of
the books, and the artwork by Katie O’Hara is gorgeous.
I am very inspired by her art style when painting my own oracle card deck.
I will be showing some of my favorite individual cards in a close up as I flip through each
deck.
The Illustrated Crystallary provides guidance and rituals from 36 magical gems and minerals.
The Illustrated Bestiary provides guidance and rituals from 36 inspiring animals.
And, the Illustrated Herbiary provides guidance and rituals from 36 bewitching botanicals.
These books are very worthwhile to me because of the self reflection and journaling prompts
they provide.
Along with the artistic inspiration of their beautiful artwork.
I’d be very interested to know in the comments if you have any of these books and what your
review of them is.
I will let you enjoy the rest of the book and deck flip throughs without further commentary.