Oracle Deck Review – Heaven and Hell: Harness the Power of the Angels and the Demons by Travis McHenry
Oracle Deck Review
Heaven and Hell
Harness the Power of the
Angels and the Demons
by Travis McHenry
Publisher: Rockpool Publishing
72 Card Deck & 168 Page Guide Book
Release Date: April 2, 2024
You might be forgiven for thinking that angels are both male and female – there are plenty of images of female angels, or at least angels that appear to be feminine. But officially, angels have no gender. They are not like humans – they were not created as we were, born from the sexual act between a man and a woman – they were not born at all. No one proclaims, “It’s a boy!” or “It’s a girl!” Angels are not human. They are a different species altogether.
But any woman knows that when a species has no gender, that means that whatever that species is – in this case, angels – they are by default masculine. According to Christinity.com, in the Bible, the word “angel” is always translated in the masculine form and when angels appeared to humans, they always appeared as men. They were also given masculine names – Michael, Gabriel, Raphael. In the Quran, it specifically says that angels are not female. I have read the Quran but I had to look this up because I couldn’t remember what was said about angels. I found the answer on an Islamic website called “Islam Question and Answer”. However, the Oracle of Heaven and Hell is based on the Christian Bible and nothing to do with Islam or any other religion.
Actually, I never thought about the gender of angels before I started looking at these cards and reading the names and the categories of the angels and demons. Nor did I care. But they are all masculine. Every last one of them.
For what it’s worth, many people think that when a person dies, they go to heaven and become an angel. But this is also erroneous. They become a saint. Again, let me stress that angels are another species of being – they are not human.
I mention this issue of gender because I always thought of my guardian angel as female – like a heavenly fairy godmother – and of course, that’s not how it works. Angels – whether they’re a guardian angel or just one that helps you or maybe hinders you – aren’t any kind of fairy godmother. They’re angels. Fairies are a different species of being. There are all kinds of species of beings.
None of this makes any difference to using these cards for divination. The fact that angels are gender-less; or by default masculine – is immaterial. There are plenty of divination decks – Tarot, Oracle, Lenormand – which feature images that are all female, whether they are goddesses or human women – and there are hundreds of decks which have images of animals – cats, dogs, horses, crows, wolves – just to name a few. So unless you’re a man-hater – and remember that angels and demons are gender-less; not masculine – by default or otherwise – there’s no reason not to use the Oracle of Angels and Demons – unless, of course, you just don’t like the deck, for whatever reasons that are unique to you yourself. And I suppose there might be people out there who aren’t going to like the Oracle of Angels and Demons. Everyone has different likes and dislikes.
But I like this deck. I didn’t think I was going to, but I really do. Sometimes you get a deck to review and you look it over – the artwork doesn’t really grab you – the concept isn’t your cup of tea – it’s not a deck that you would have bought for yourself if you were in the market for a new deck – but it’s been sent to you to use for a while and honestly review – and you end up really loving it. This has been my experience with the Oracle of Heaven and Hell.
Created by Travis McHenry, the very talented creator of The Hieronymus Bosch Tarot, Angel Tarot, Vlad Dracula Tarot, Magicians, Martyrs and Madmen Tarot (I would really love to own this one!), the Oracle of Heaven and Hell follows in the same tradition of original artwork supporting well-researched spiritual concepts. Travis McHenry is active on Instagram and it’s worth checking out his page. He posts a lot of cool stuff. Plus he’s one hot dude. You can link to him here https://www.instagram.com/travis.mchenry/?hl=en. I am now a dedicated follower. Rockpool Publishing, the publisher of the Oracle of Heaven and Hell, also has a page for Travis McHenry, which is here https://www.rockpoolpublishing.com/travis-mchenry. There are other Travis McHenry pages – Simon and Schuster has one and there’s a Wikipedia page on him, among others.
The Oracle of Heaven and Hell cards are five inches long and three and three-quarters inches wide, and made of thick card stock – you’ll be able to use these cards for years and years and they won’t bent from usage or get a corner turned from excessive shuffling. The edges are a shiny red gilt that looks richer than some of the gold-edged cards I’ve seen.
The backs of the cards are black with red accents and white and gray summoning seals. Each card has a picture of an angel and a demon on it – turn the card one way and the angel is upright; turn the other way and the demon is upright. The angel side is written in black ink and the demon side is written in red ink. Each one has its own name, number and seal. However, neither side is positive nor negative – rather, they both contain positive and negative messages – “two sides of the same coin,” McHenry writes in the section “How to Use the Deck. He stresses that the meanings were “not derived from religious texts” (McHenry, 9).
The cards come with a book which is much more than the usual “little white book”. It’s nicely bound and has 168 pages with all the information you need to use these cards intelligently and competently. Both cards and book come in a box which makes keeping them clean and safe between divinatory use easy. The entire package is top-notch.
I read the book completely before I touched the cards. The book explains that there are 72 Kaballalistic Angels, which are “heavenly beings of light” (McHenry, 1) and 72 Goetic Demons, which are “a combination of fallen angels, ancient gods and infernal spirits” (Mc Henry, 3). Both Angels and Demons have a hierarchy, which will be familiar to those of us who grew up in the Catholic Church.
I was surprised to read that according to the “secret doctrine” of Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, each human being has three guardian angels, as well as a “servant demon” (McHenry, 6). I am not going into what these three angels and one demon mean to each of us here, but if you do acquire these cards, do pay attention to this section of the book and how these beings may manifest in your life. Knowing the exact time and date of your birth will help you with this.
Then it was time to use the cards!
The first spread in the book is the “Circles of Hell” Spread, based on the Dante’s circles of hell. It uses the demon side of the cards. I thought it interesting that the cards weren’t mixed up so that the demon and angel sides weren’t used at the same time – like upright and reversed cards in the Tarot. However, it was clear – as I read beyond this first spread – as a person became more adept with reading with these cards, the cards would be mixed up like a traditional Tarot deck.
The directions for the spread were quite simple to follow and I thought that the spread could be used with any Tarot or Oracle deck to get any answer to any question. But if you use the Circles of Hell Spread just as McHenry directs you to in the book, “to help you burrow down to your soul to unlock a problem or issue you may be having”, using the demon side of the cards, you won’t be disappointed. I certainly wasn’t.
I was amazed at how easy it was to read the cards. Even without referring to the book, I could get a complete and total understanding of what my problem was – of course, having the meaning of each card printed on the card certainly helps. I did, of course, refer to the book – but not before I wrote down the meaning of the cards in my divination journal and what I thought what they meant.
I also did the Stairway to Heaven Spread, which used only the angel side of the cards. Again, I thought this was interesting – just to use one side of the cards. But again, it was a simple spread and the cards were easy to read and interpret.
Again, I was amazed at how easy it was to read the cards and to get a good idea of what I needed to know from the spread. As you can see above, I made quick notes from the spread and hadn’t gotten around to a full analysis but when I did sit down with the book and wrote out a full page of what was going on as I ascended the “Stairway to Heaven”. It was so cool to connect with what I knew all along!
I really like the Oracle of Heaven and Hell by Travis McHenry. Not only are they a great divination tool, but they are fun to use. I’m not even sure why they are fun – they just are. Who ever thought that angels and demons would be fun? But they are. Go to your favorite occult outlet online or in their brick-and-mortar incarnation and buy this beautiful boxed set of oracle cards. You won’t be sorry!
References
McHenry, Travis. Oracle of Heaven and Hell: Harness the power of the angels and demons. Summer Hill, NSW: Rockpool Publishing, 2024.
https://www.christianity.com/wiki/angels-and-demons/are-angels-male-or-female.html
https://islamqa.info/en/answers/96306/gender-of-angels-and-do-they-die
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About the Author:
Polly MacDavid lives in Buffalo, New York at the moment but that could easily change, since she is a gypsy at heart. Like a gypsy, she is attracted to the divinatory arts, as well as camp fires and dancing barefoot. She has three cats who all help her with her magic.
Her philosophy about religion and magic is that it must be thoroughly based in science and logic. She is Dianic Wiccan but she gets along with a few of the masculine deities. She loves to cook and she is a Bills fan.
She blogs at silverapplequeen.wordpress.com. She writes about general life, politics and poetry. She is writing a novel about sex, drugs and recovery.