The Tree Keepers Oracle is an oracle deck of 44 cards published in 2023 under the imprint of U.S. Games Systems, Inc. The art for this deck is all watercolour paintings by Stephanie Pui-Mun Law, the artist who previously created the Shadowscapes Tarot (2010) and recently released the Verdance Tarot (2025). The 108-page full-colour illustrated companion book for the Tree Keepers Oracle is written by Angi Sullins, who also wrote Doorways and Dreamfields: A True Fairy Tale (2010). The cards of the Tree Keepers Oracle are packaged in a heavy chipboard presentation box with a hinged lid and a silver ribbon for lifting out the cards, and the cards themselves feature a green gilt edge. A greenish-silver organza drawstring pouch is included in the box.
Each card in the deck depicts a central usually-feminine humanoid figure, the "keeper" representing a specific abstract idea that the card's surrounding art expresses in further detail. The backgrounds of each card are, as with Law's other decks, lushly populated with plants and animals, some of which have relatively universally familiar symbolism, and others which represent ideas specific to the author and artist. Card number 6 is the "Keeper of Whimsy," for example, and she is surrounded by dreamy and playful imagery, while serving herself tea and wearing a beachgoer's sun hat. Card 42, the red-haired "Keeper of Wonder," holds a feather pen to write in a fantasy book in her other hand, while she perches on a branch with a dragon coiling around it and looming over her, interested in what she's writing. Some images are more mythologically explicit and obvious than others; card 17, the "Keeper of Journeys," clearly depicts Odin (though one may cheekily elect instead to interpret the grey-cloaked, staff-bearing figure as Gandalf), accompanied by his two ravens Huginn and Muninn. The text itself notably absolutely does not mention any deities or specific mythological characters by name; it is left up to the reader to recognise them as they appear.
It's clear that Law and Sullins worked on this deck in the capacity of mutual muses: some images don't convey any obvious meaning, and Sullins came up with a Keeper and companion text for those images, but needed to stretch her imagination a bit to do so. Other images are clearly drawing from Sullins' text existing prior to the image being illustrated, and these make for a far better fit and a more naturally intuitive interpretation of the card's meaning for the reader. The art throughout the entire deck is beautiful, but not all of it is created equal. Some ideas are also recycled: card 21, the "Keeper of Fairy Tales," also features a red-head writing in a book while a dragon watches her closely. I don't really expect this to actually bother anyone who owns the deck; oracle decks are typically much less intensive efforts than Tarot decks, typically having fewer than 50 cards instead of a Tarot deck's 78 cards, and often an oracle deck is making use of art which an artist created as practice and liked, but simply couldn't find any other context to use it for. The art style Law employs in this deck has considerable variation, rather than the consistency of style we see in Shadowscapes and Verdance, which suggests to me that many of the images in the Tree Keepers Oracle are the results of Law's developmental practices as an artist, and were never actually purposely made with a deck of oracle cards in mind. None of these inferences are meant to cast any aspersions on the beauty of the work, naturally; it truly is just par for the course, for oracle decks, and I present these remarks as a way for a prospective buyer to manage their expectations, lest the sheer magnificence of Shadowscapes set you up with the wrong assumptions about this deck.
The Tree Keepers Oracle is, in my opinion, a natural companion to the Verdance Tarot. The two decks have a certain artistic quality of being in conversation with each other; it's very apparent that some of the Tree Keepers illustrations are earlier draft versions of designs which later found their way into Verdance in a more refined and stylistically consistent form. Despite being published under separate imprints, they also have very similar box art and deck boxes, so they display very nicely together. The tone of the Tree Keepers Oracle is gentle, encouraging, and oriented around a mindset of personal growth and improvement. The way it addresses negative topics is strictly focused on healing from the negativity, so this deck is not well disposed toward shadow work. It spends a lot of attention on comforting one's inner child, accepting one's past, strengthening one's social boundaries and moral backbone, and approaching the unknown future without timidity. It's a very easy deck to read, with a blessedly concise guidebook. Where Tarot decks benefit from very in-depth explanations of every card, oracle decks are better suited for simplicity and exceedingly literal summaries, since their very structure of fewer cards and straightforward card titles is geared for expedience rather than ritual. I'm happy to recommend this one, and I find no fault in it that isn't typical of most oracle decks. It's lovely even just to have as an objet d'art.
Iron Noder 2025, 25/30