The Faeries Oracle – The Soul Shrinker

The Soul Shrinker (Photo credit: Brian Froud)

For today, we’re still getting introduced to Brian Froud’s Faeries Oracle deck and book. The opening exercise that was recommended to me involved going through all 66 cards and finding the one that appealed most to me and finding another that was unappealing. Yesterday I talked about the Faery of Honesty and why it was such an appealing card to me. Mind you, I’m only looking through the deck at this stage, so these are only my impressions of the cards before I dig deeper into Froud’s book.

So today’s card is called the Soul Shrinker. I can’t even describe the feeling I get from this card. It’s not that it makes me uncomfortable in the way I think of the word. Being uncomfortable to me is like not being able to find a good position to sleep in when you go to bed. Whether the sheets are too hot, the blanket feels off or your pajamas are just the wrong pajamas for the night, you know you’re not going to sleep well. I don’t get that feeling off this card. Instead, the Soul Shrinker, to me, just isn’t the best art when compared to the rest of the deck.

Everything about it feels very pallid and plain. The rest of Froud’s deck is colorful and vibrant. It’s wild like the spaces the Faeries inhabit, teeming with action and life. Even the couple of black and white cards in the deck have a lot of detail and subtle things going on behind the scenes. The Soul Shrinker seems like a lonely face in a lonely world. The Faeries all have wonderful personalities to go with their art and each card shows it. The Soul Shrinker looks extremely dull, even a little distraught. It almost feels as though Froud tried expressing that this Faery is alone and separate from everyone else.

The name Soul Shrinker also doesn’t sound friendly. While reading through the introduction of the Faeries Oracle, the writer talks about how the book is meant to be light-hearted. Not light-hearted just in tone and emotion, but light-hearted as in the Faeries are meant to bring light into your heart so that you can spread it with others. Soul Shrinker definitely does not convey that light-heartedness.

Again, I haven’t read through the book so I don’t even know what the Soul Shrinker represents as far as a reading goes. I do know that after examining and weighing the cards individually, the Soul Shrinker doesn’t feel like a good card to me. I’ll be excited to share with you the actual card meaning when I reach it.

I have one last card to reveal through the book’s introduction. In addition to pleasant and unpleasant cards, I need to pick one at random as a message from my higher self. This message is supposed to show me how to resolve my discomfort with the Soul Shrinker and help me reach my potential, or at least get on the right track to reaching it.