My Process for Using Oracle Cards and Astrology to Develop Characters

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Recently I’ve been experimenting with new methods for plotting my stories and developing characters, and as a divination witch I naturally gravitated toward trying to use the tarot for this purpose. I used oracle cards to flesh out the backstories and personalities of the main characters in Star-Crossed Killers (which I’m now onto the scene-by-scene outlining phase of, having finished the character profiles and plot point outline), and it worked brilliantly. I usually have two or three projects going at once, and I still need to flesh out the backstories and personalities for the main cast of Early Sunsets, so I figured I would make my first blog post on how to develop a character using tarot or oracles and demonstrate by using oracle cards as well as astrology to develop a main character for the novel. At the end of this post are a couple of bonus spreads for developing characters using the tarot as well.

The protagonist of Early Sunsets is a young woman named Hiliana Chavez, who goes by Ember after developing fire powers. How she develops the powers is an important worldbuilding detail to Early Sunsets, and will probably be covered in another blog post at a later date once the book is further along in the planning stage. I will be using oracle cards and astrology to develop Ember as a character.

I will be using Caroline Wyss’s Archetypes Oracle deck, Kim Krans’s Wild Unknown Archetypes Oracle deck, and Kim Krans’s Wild Unknown Animal Spirit Oracle deck to develop Ember’s personality. I will also be using an astrology die to determine my protagonist’s sun sign, then pick a date within that sign at random for her birthday. I will pick a birth time at random as well to decide her rising (ascendant) sign. Her astrological placements will help me develop her personality as well.

To develop her backstory, I will divide her life into five stages, as she is twenty-five years old at the start of the story: early childhood, childhood, pre-adolescence, adolescence, and adulthood. For this part of the reading, I will be using Nicole Privirotto’s Prism Oracle deck, Kim Krans’s Alchemy Oracle deck, and Rae Hepburn’s Tea Leaf Fortune Cards deck to come up with major events for each phase of her life.

Using Oracle Cards to Develop Main Characters

To develop main characters, there are two main spreads I use: one for personality, and one for backstory.

Personality

I developed a spread using oracle decks I have on hand to develop my characters’ strengths, weaknesses, and overall personality. To really flesh out a main character, I use the spread once for strengths, once for weaknesses, and once for overall personality.

1-3 use Caroline Wyss's Archetypes Oracle. 4-6 use Kim Krans's Wild Unknown Animal Spirit Oracle. 7 and 8 use Kim Krans's Wild Unknown Archetypes Oracle.

Meanings:
1 & 4: Trait 1
2 & 5: Trait 2
3 & 6: Trait 3
7 & 8: Traits as a Whole

The cards I drew for Ember’s strengths, weaknesses, and overall personality are pictured and listed out below:

Strengths

  1. Visionary
  2. Engineer
  3. Exorcist
  4. Fox
  5. Peacock
  6. Crocodile
  7. The Temple
  8. The Comic

Weaknesses

  1. Virgin
  2. Victim
  3. Storyteller
  4. Bee
  5. Otter
  6. Starfish
  7. The Mirror
  8. Anima Mundi

Personality

  1. Shape-Shifter
  2. Companion
  3. Fool
  4. Frog
  5. Octopus
  6. Lamb
  7. The Shadow
  8. The Riddle

After drawing the cards, I used a combination of intuition and the guidebooks to determine the meaning of the cards and develop Ember’s strengths, weaknesses, and personality. I won’t spoil it here, but if you’re familiar with these decks I’m sure you’re not far off from what I came up with based on the cards I drew.

I also rolled an astro die to determine her sun sign, and got Leo, which I used to give her a birthday of July 24, 1983, as the novel is set in 2008 and she is 25 years old when it takes place. I chose 1:11 AM as her birth time, and used this birth date and time to create a natal chart for her on cafeastrology.com. Her chart ended up being predominantly fire and earth with some minor air placements, which checks out for the personality I developed with the cards. The water Mars also seems very appropriate.

Backstory

I also developed a spread using different oracle decks to flesh out a character’s backstory. I separate their backstory into life stages and use the spread once for each stage. Depending on the age of the character this can mean six or more separate uses of the spread sometimes, but I like to be thorough. Ember’s reading uses the spread five times as she is in her mid-twenties.

1 and 2 use Kim Krans's Wild Unknown Alchemy Oracle. 3-5 use Nicole Pivirotto's Prism Oracle. 6-9 use Rae Hepburn's Tea Leaf Fortune Cards.

Meanings:
1 & 2: Overarching Theme
3 - 5: Emotions and Reactions
6 - 9: Major Events

The cards I drew for Ember’s major life events and backstory are pictured and listed out below:

Early Childhood

  1. Pneuma | Breath
  2. Aurum | Gold
  3. Space
  4. Illumination
  5. Ghost
  6. Yoke
  7. Archway
  8. Grapes
  9. Scissors

Childhood

  1. Scintillae | Sparks of Light
  2. Mercurius | Mercury
  3. Rejection
  4. Flow
  5. Success
  6. Throne
  7. Quill
  8. Whale
  9. Boat

Pre-Adolescence

  1. Sublimatio | Sublimation
  2. Solis | Sun
  3. Passion
  4. Disruption
  5. Fear
  6. Angel
  7. Door
  8. Tent
  9. Kangaroo

Adolescence

  1. Caput Corvi | Raven’s Head
  2. Mortifactio | Mortification
  3. Surrender
  4. Protection
  5. Cleanse
  6. Leg
  7. Butterfly
  8. Chair – Empty
  9. Parrot

Early Adulthood

  1. Saturni | Saturn
  2. Volte Faciem | The Despicable Face
  3. Frustration
  4. Caution
  5. Mystery
  6. Needle & Thread
  7. Ladder
  8. Rose
  9. Club

The process for developing the backstory was a little more freeform and relied less on guidebooks and more on intuition. I simply used the guidebooks as a jumping off point and went from there to develop her backstory and the major events in her past.

Now, onto…

Using Tarot to Develop Characters

The spread and process for developing characters with tarot can be a lot less involved than with oracle cards. Once again, I have made two spreads.

Meanings:

1 – 2: Overall Personality
3 – 5: Strengths
6 – 8: Weaknesses

Meanings:

1 & 2: Overall Themes of Backstory
3 & 6: Childhood
4 & 7: Teen Years
5 & 8: Adulthood

It is also possible to use the tarot in the spreads for oracle cards from the first part of this post, but I wouldn’t recommend it for the backstory unless you have multiple decks as the backstory reading from the first part can be quite extensive and use most of the 78 cards in the deck of tarot cards.

Conclusion

Using oracle or tarot cards and astrology can be a good way to flesh out your characters if you need outside inspiration for developing their backstories and personalities. Feel free to use the spreads in this post to develop your own characters.

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