Divination Practices and Everyday Oracles: Five Writing Prompts to Inspire Your Craft
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💫 Divination as a Tool for Writing Prompts
💫 Tarot Card Writing Prompt
💫 Oracle Card Writing Prompt
💫 Bibliomancy Writing Prompt
💫 Music Lyrics Writing Prompt
💫 Food Wrapper Writing PromptThis article contains affiliate links for Bookshop.org
When I was in middle school, I spent two years in Girl Scouts. After years of trying, and failing, to find a place for me in a local troop, space finally opened in the troop led by the mother of one of my best friends, the same troop that included all my other best friends. Over the next two years, we spent every Friday at my friend’s house for meetings, sold cookies during February, and went on field trips that included sleepovers where we would stay up all night talking, watching movies, and playing games. We played all the standard fare—card games, like Go Fish and Uno, M.A.S,H., and, of course, Truth or Dare, where, if you were courageous, you ate something nasty and, if you wanted to tell the truth you admitted who you were crushing on (this was an easy answer because usually everyone already knew).
In addition to these classics, we also played divination games. Divination is the practice of determining the hidden significance or cause of events, sometimes foretelling the future, through various natural and psychological techniques. Many of these methods are already familiar to us, such as tarot cards, oracle cards, astrology, and crystals. When I was a teenager, I specifically remember playing with cootie catchers and the fortune telling fish.
Back then, none of us took that stuff too seriously. These games were just a way to pass time, stay connected, and feel in control during our confusing adolescence. Still, I often found that, for me personally, the answers I received—whether I liked them or not—were right on the money, an aspect that scared me because I wasn’t in a place where I could yet integrate the negative aspects of myself with the positive ones. I would try to put the results of readings and fortunes out of my head; and yet, I could never shake the idea that something higher was guiding me, that there was truth in these answers, and that I wanted there to be. I wanted a power that I could tap into when I was scared, confused, or needed reassurance.
I’ve come a long way from asking whether I would get a good grade on a math test.
Now, I use these tools to write.
Divination as a Tool for Writing Prompts
In 2015, my friend Sherri, a reiki master, took me to a women’s healing circle where the facilitator used oracle cards to help guide her sessions. I took to the practice immediately, marveling at the art on the different decks, and felt moved by the inspiring messages. With the support of the group, I invested in my own set of cards and started using them at home.
While integrating the guidance of the daily draws, I saw my life change. I developed a stronger relationship with my family, received an offer for a prestigious internship, and felt the pull to pursue art again, not as a pipe dream but as a serious endeavor in which I could gain success.
Not long after, I started an Instagram page, Awakening Spells, where I posted daily readings with affirmation poems written from the energy I channeled that day. Each poem was handwritten and posted alongside the cards and a short guidance message. I wasn’t sure if my words would help anyone but as the days went by, I watched my followers heal and gain confidence—and, as they did, I did too.
Channeling energy publicly taught me three things:
Our lives are made up of big energies.
Divination practices offer a way to harness and connect with those energies.
Writing allows us to give those energies a name.
Now, I advocate for using tarot while writing whenever possible. However, tarot cards aren’t the only divination tools you can use.
Read on to discover exercises and writing prompts that make use of tarot cards, oracle cards, bibliomancy, music lyrics, and even foods like chocolate, fortune cookies, and cough drops.
Whether you’re looking to write for publication or simply journaling your daily brain dump, I hope these exercises help you connect with your heart and intuition in ways that remind you, you were the power all along.
Tarot Card Writing Prompt
I approach tarot cards like an ekphrastic exercise. Each of the 78 cards is a small painting, and each painting includes depictions of environments and people. Unlike oracle cards, tarot cards often don’t include key words. All the meaning is interpreted from the scenes and environments depicted in the image. So, for this exercise, we need to pick a card and study its image.
Here’s your tarot writing prompt:
Grab your favorite tarot deck (or a deck that’s speaking to you in the moment) and draw a card. If you don’t have a deck, you can use an online generator, such as Daily Tarot Draw. Once you draw your card, take a moment to sit with it and study the image,
Ask yourself what is happening in this specific image? How are the people, animals, objects, and environments interacting? Note any specific details (including colors and numbers) that you notice.
How am I (meaning you, the querent) responding and feeling about what I am noticing in the image? How is my body responding?
How might the image, and my response to it, relate to what is happening in my life right now?
Take 5-10 minutes to write freely on each of these questions. Don’t think too much about your answers. Let the pen guide you.
Once you’ve completed your free writing, go back over your paragraphs and pick the most energetic line (the line that sounds the best to you) from each one and put them together in a poem. You can put the lines in separate stanzas or keep them together—the choice is yours.
When I did this exercise, I drew the seven of cups (which, funny enough is about choices) so some themes I am considering now relate to choices, options, the notions of right or wrong choice and alignment, or even if the choices in front of me even make sense at all.
I am asking myself: What do I want to do? Where do I want to go?
What are you asking yourself?
Oracle Card Writing Prompt
Oracle cards are like tarot cards, but they utilize a wider range of themes and can contain images and key words, images alone, or words alone. For this writing prompt, I want us to try a key-words-and-definitions exercise.
Once again, start with choosing a deck that calls to you. Here’s an oracle card generator from Alaina Fairchild, with several of her decks, if you prefer digital. I recommend the Sacred Rebels Oracle and the Mother Mary Oracle.
Once your deck is chosen, pull your cards. This time, however, instead of focusing on the images, focus on any key words or phrases written on the card. If the card has a single word, make that word your focus. If the card has a phrase, choose one or two words from the phrase and make those your focus.
Once you have your words and/or phrases chosen, write them on a piece of paper and create a mind map (flow chart) of all associations you have with those words, such as colors, sounds, textures, and landscapes. After completing your flow chart, find all the associative pairs that you consider opposites and put those words together in a couplet.
Write each couplet individually, then arrange them into a cohesive poem.
Bibliomancy Writing Prompt
Bibliomancy, as you may have already guessed, is the art of using books as divination tools. In the 18th and 19th centuries, those who practiced bibliomancy often used sacred religious texts, but today everything from a romance novel to a psychological thriller to a poetry collection can work. All you need to do is trust your intuition and let the books guide you.
For this writing prompt, let’s try a past, present, and future exercise using three poetry collections. Structured similarly to a tarot spread, the first poetry collection will represent your past, the second your present, and the third your future.
Once you have your books, there are a few ways you can attempt this exercise:
Choose specific page and line numbers from each collection to guide you
Open to random pages and let your eyes or fingers choose for you
Though you can choose as many lines as you want to represent the three time periods, for this exercise, I recommend choosing one line from each collection. I also suggest writing three poems—one to represent each period of time—using the lines you gathered. Start each poem with your found line and go from there.
Did you find any connections across your three poems?
Lastly, if you want to have even more fun with this exercise, try attempting bibliomancy with someone else (always ask permission first!). It’s fun to see how poetry resonates with different people, across various contexts.
Music Lyrics Writing Prompt
You’ve probably already done this exercise a million times. Open YouTube, or your favorite streaming app, and choose a playlist. After closing your eyes and taking a few deep breaths, hit shuffle. The first song that plays will guide your writing.
The writing prompt here involves listening to the song and studying the lyrics intently. What message is the song trying to convey? Is the song happy, sad, somewhere in-between? Similarly to the tarot card exercise, it’s important to pay attention to how your body responds. Play the song a few times if needed.
If the song has a character (for example, listen to Barton Hollow by The Civil Wars), write a narrative poem that expands on the character’s journey. Try playing with point of view, tone, and dialogue.
Reflect on what playing with another’s voice might tell you about your own. Where is your writing voice the strongest, the softest?
Food Wrapper Writing Prompt
Every few months I buy a bag of Dove chocolates. Not only are these some of the best tasting chocolates on the market, but I also like them because the wrappers have inspirational aphorisms on them. Every time I eat a piece, I treat the moment as a ritual. I place my hand in the bag and trust that whatever piece I pick has a message I need to hear. I often treat fortune cookies to the same rituals and just recently discovered that Halls cough drops have affirmations on the wrappers so those can work too!
I challenge you to buy your own bag of Dove chocolates and engage with this simple ritual as a writing prompt. Journal about the aphorism on the wrapper. Does it resonate? If so, how? Respond in whatever way feels best for you. You may even want to try collecting several of the wrappers and making a collage out of the phrases! I’ve found that different flavors come in different colored wrapping and have different affirmations, so try mixing flavors and see what happens.
Final Thoughts
Both fun and informative, these divination practices offer us a way to connect with our mind, body, and spirit and translate each. The more I’ve worked with these tools, the more I’ve learned to trust myself and what I have to say. I hope these exercises can help you do the same. I’d love to see what you create using the above prompts. Feel free to follow me on Instagram @the_awakened_poet and tag me and The Poetry Lab!
This article was published on September 7, 2026. Written by:
