I use a different tarot or oracle deck for my weekly card drawings every month. During this month with Ochún, I chose the African Goddess Rising Oracle by Abiola Abrams. I purchased this deck in October 2021, and this was my first time working with it.
The African Goddess Rising Oracle is a rich and glossy 44-card oracle deck. Despite its title, the oracle features more than goddesses. The deck is divided into nine suits, or Temples: Threshold Guardians, Ancestors, Conjurers, Warriors, Shadows, Lovers, Griots, Queens, and High Priestesses. It includes a little 94-page booklet that includes a method to bless your cards, spreads, and the card meanings.
The deck includes orishas and other familiar individuals–historical women such as Sarah Baartman, Tituba, and Marie Laveau; Egyptian goddesses and queens such as Iset, Ma’at, Sekhmet, and Nefertiti; and other well-known figures such as the Queen of Sheba, Erzulie Dantor, Mami Wata, and Sara La Kali, the patron saint of the Romani people.
The oracle is Pan-African. Whether from Africa or the diaspora, the women are depicted as Black or generically African. Goddesses like the Punic Tanit, Medusa (with her Berber origins), and some ancient Egyptian goddesses included here come from peoples that are historically, culturally, and ethnically different from not only each other but from, say, Yoruba people.
It is problematic. The colonial imagination was limited to white and Black. For example, William Shaler, the American Consul General at Algiers from 1815 to 1828, described the Berbers, an ethnic group indigenous to North Africa, as a white race or, at least, non-Black. In the U.S. today, there is a tendency to equate Africa with Blackness and sameness. Perhaps it’s because we did not differentiate enslaved people and their unity ensured the survival of their traditions. We see this kind of homogenisation with European peoples, too; consider our treatment of “Celtic”.
It’s a complicated subject that I am conscious of, but it doesn’t bother me enough to reject this beautiful oracle deck. Pan-Africanism aims to encourage and strengthen bonds of solidarity between peoples of African descent. Ms Abrams is a Black woman, and browsing her website, I know I’m not her target audience, and that’s fine. Beyoncé’s Lemonade was not for me either, but I bought it, and I love it. And I am on board for an oracle highlighting African goddess figures to inspire and empower Black women. I purchased the African Goddess Rising Oracle because I didn’t have anything like it in my tarot and oracle collection and to expand my knowledge.
This oracle deck has taught me about new African goddesses and folk figures that I didn’t know, such as Gang Gang Sara.
Like all oral narratives, the legend of Gang Gang Sara, the Witch from Golden Lane, varies a little, but the basic story is that she was a West African witch who flew to Tobago or was blown off course and found herself there. In the village of Les Coteaux, she married a man named Tom (or John), worked as a midwife and healer and took care of the enslaved people.
When Tom died, Gang Gang Sara decided to fly back to West Africa. She tried to take off from a high silk cotton tree but fell and died. She had lost her power to fly because she had eaten salt while living in Les Coteaux.
Scholars interpret the story as a myth dealing with the history of slavery in the Caribbean. It speaks to wishing to return to West Africa and the impossibility of return. Sara’s eating of the salt of Tobago transformed her and tied her to the Caribbean forever. It’s a beautiful, sad, and powerful myth, and it speaks to me as someone from the Caribbean and a descendent of enslaved people. In the African Goddess Rising Oracle, the Gang Gang Sara card is associated with resistance and emancipation.
Many of the card meanings are confronting, no-nonsense, and aim to push you forward. For example, the card Mbuya Nehanda says:
Yes, you can! Stop the struggle. You can choose at any moment to start over and to be reborn. Like the sun, you rise again and again.
Dust yourself off, move forward, and go for it again. Like is about transition and change. You will fall on your face, change your mind, and need to make a ‘comeback’ again and again. Release the idea that you messed up if things aren’t perfect. Stop waiting to be ready. Make new choices and decisions.
This deck is very good at calling me out on my self-sabotaging habits.
Destiney Powell, an artist based in Nashville, Tennessee, illustrated the African Goddess Rising Oracle. It’s a beautiful oracle with bold colours, and the goddesses appear centred against their backgrounds. The cards are borderless, which I like, and have rounded edges.
My only quibble about the African Goddess Rising Oracle is the cardstock quality. After just one month of light use, the cards have buckled and show signs of wear along the edges. Laying a heavy book on the cards should help with the warping.
For more information about the Abiola Abrams and the African Goddess Rising Oracle, please visit Womanifesting by Abiola Abrams.
I hadn’t heard of Gang Gang Sara before. I know that Trinidad and Tobago has its own Orisha community from Yoruba free migrants after slavery.
I definitely see what you mean, pan-Africans want to empower black people but having a blanket black imagery for all Africans is misleading especially for Amazigh (Berber) people as well as Egyptians.
I hope decks like these inspire people to learn more about the figures in them. Thanks for stopping by, Dominic, and commenting!
“Ms Abrams is a Black woman, and browsing her website, I know I’m not her target audience, and that’s fine.” I’m curious of how you came to this conclusion? Is it because you see black women on her website? Abiola has worked with women from all over the world, of various races. Even in the introduction of her book (that corresponds with the deck) African Goddess Initiation she opens it with the fact that
As a Black woman if I went on websites and assumed something wasn’t for me because I didn’t see depictions of me represented as the majority, I would be greatly underserved in several areas of life. Although, I am often not the “target” intended, I guess I haven’t been able to live in that privilege. I just found this part peculiar from your review especially.
Although I’m glad you ventured out and found some oracle cards you wouldn’t usually use (even if you find some depictions “problematic “). I have been introduced to so many wonderful women via Abiola, even ones that are not Black. What we have in common is a yearning to embrace our sacred feminine energy and use it as catalyst for growth.
Hi Candace. Thanks for reading and commenting. Abiola’s work doesn’t speak to me for a number of reasons, but I’m very glad you find it valuable as I’m sure many people do.