Oracle or Tarot? Finding the Deck That Suits Your Questions
November 11, 2026
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Stories Behind the Cards · Part 6 of 8
Original AI-generated editorial illustration. An imagined Yggdrasil inspired by literary descriptions; not a historical diagram of the Norse cosmos.
A world tree is an image you can look at in several directions. Follow a branch outward and you encounter one set of relationships. Follow a root downward and another appears. The whole picture asks you to hold more than one place in mind.
Yggdrasil, the great tree of Norse myth, makes that experience especially vivid. Its stories include water, animals, divine gatherings and damage. Learning a little about those descriptions helps us see more than a decorative emblem of connection.
In Gylfaginning, part of Snorri Sturluson’s Prose Edda, the tree is described as the Ash of Yggdrasill. Its branches extend across the world, and three great roots reach in different directions. Wells are associated with the roots, including the well of Mímir and the well of Urðr. The gods gather at the tree for judgement.
The same account gives the tree inhabitants and pressures. An eagle sits above, a squirrel travels along the trunk, deer browse its foliage and Níðhöggr gnaws below. Water and clay are used by the Norns to tend it. These details appear in sections XV–XVI of Arthur Gilchrist Brodeur’s translation of Gylfaginning.
Even this short selection changes the picture. The tree is active and inhabited. It is exposed to damage and receives care.
The Bibliothèque nationale de France discusses an illustrated Yggdrasil in the Edda Oblongata, an Icelandic manuscript from the late seventeenth century. Its account places the tree within the different worlds of medieval Scandinavian narratives and draws attention to the animals around it. See the BnF’s manuscript discussion.
The date matters. An old illustration can preserve a later artist’s response to a much older narrative. Describing it as “a Viking drawing” would blur that history. A contemporary fantasy painting adds another stage to the same process of picturing a story.
It is also sensible to ask where a particular map or arrangement comes from. A diagram can be useful for an illustrator or reader without being the exact layout supplied by every text.
The identification of Yggdrasil with ash is part of its familiar cultural story. The Horniman Museum and Gardens’ tree folklore trail introduces that association alongside other tree traditions.
The mythical tree should still be allowed its imaginative scale. An illustration can suggest the reach of a canopy or the hidden work of roots without becoming a botanical diagram. Recognising the real tree association makes the artistic choices easier to notice.
Look for whether a picture emphasises shelter, distance, movement or strain. A brightly lit canopy with scarcely visible roots tells a different visual story from a composition that brings the roots and water into the foreground.
One contemporary way to read this image is to consider what keeps a complicated system going. Where does nourishment arrive? What is being worn away? Who moves between different parts? Which work is easy to overlook because it happens below the visible surface?
Those are questions suggested by the image and its narrative details. They are not a claim that Norse communities used a modern oracle keyword such as “interconnection” in the same way a guidebook might use it now.
Roots & Ravens brings Yggdrasil into a contemporary oracle deck alongside figures and stories from Norse and Celtic traditions. Those traditions remain distinct; sharing a deck does not make them one historical religion or one body of evidence.
Choose a project or responsibility and place it at the centre of a page. Around it, write the people, materials, skills and ordinary routines it depends on. Then circle one connection that needs care. What would a manageable act of maintenance look like this week?
You can take that question to an image of the world tree and see what you notice next. Perhaps your attention goes first to a branch; another day, it may go to the water beneath the roots. Keeping both responses lets the picture become a place of study over time.
If that kind of return interests you, explore Roots & Ravens and its online interpretations within the Oracle Library. A separate printable deck and illustrated guidebook is available for readers who prefer to keep the picture and their notes side by side.
