How to read Oracle cards

This is about how to read Oracle cards, based on the very first photo-realist painting I created in 1983 while at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design.  This painting is titled The day I learned to read and is quite large, except the top 5 inches are missing. I remember the day I learned to read, a Sunday morning sitting in bed with Mom and Dad, and I wanted to read the funny pages to them, something they indulged me with as I made up stories based on the pictures.  But this day, of a sudden, the squiggles made sense and I sounded out the words, and was really reading.

I began this painting in the upper left corner, and was painting leaves like the shape I have of them in my head; copying the template in my conscious mind of a leaf shape.  And this is not what leaves look like at all.  In frustration I cut off the top 5 inches and started again, this time gazing in a detached way to see the shape as it really was in the photograph; not trying to "name" it as anything but a pattern of color and form. Suddenly a leaf appeared.

From that moment on I could paint anything by truly seeing the form--without analyzing or defining or even understanding what I was looking at.  What has this to do with reading Oracle cards?  The same detached, non-analyzing, non-judgmental receiving of information applies.  When I read a Journey Oracle card, I let the image just wash across my awareness without any labels.  The first words, feelings, intuitive impressions that occur to me are the accurate message from reading the card, and I resist any sort of analyzing or judging.  I base my experience on two truths:  no matter how it was chosen, I am looking at the right card; and my first intuitive understanding of the colors and forms is the right meaning of the card.  The rest unfolds in the magic of metaphor as the cards take me on my journey, just as the abstract shapes and colors I paint reveal themselves to be a landscape where I can feel the wind blow.