The Witch is a symbol of revolt. 

This Oracle is an act of rebellion. 

Witches who wish to keep their hands clean: this Oracle is not for you. 

 

The Cave of Sybil leads to the Underworld. But to make passage through the porta inferno, Sybil demands an offering: A drop of blood. A golden bough. All that we were before and can never be again. Now we descend into Plutonian darkness. 

 

Beneath the soil.

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Under the earth. 

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An image of no beginning, no end.

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Sybil is a telluric witch, and so we seek her in the sordid earth where all deep secrets hide. We must abandon the false light of civilization and return to the infernal wisdom that dwells deep in the grotto. We must leave behind the world of men and enter the cave. 

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A return to the wisdom of the cave means accepting the primal darkness that exists within and without. Only when we begin to look beneath the surface and acknowledge our own darkness—and the innate darkness that connects all things—can we liberate ourselves and live fully in the moment. We have much to unlearn. 

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The Cave of Sybil is intended to guide you through your own shadow realm and the dark times in which we are living. These images were not made to heal. They were made to transmute. The process of transmutation is painful—a burning away of that which does not serve. But with that pain, there is also powerful malleability and softness; softness to help shed old layers and the scar tissue of hardened wounds. Many layers have been shed in the creation of this deck; many versions of myself reduced to ashes in its alchemical fires. 

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My wish is that the Cave of Sybil acts as a bridge from the duplicitous daylight realm to the sacred darkness of unknowing. May its blackened flame corrupt, defile and transmute. If Sibyl allows return passage from the chthonic depths to the land of the living, we’d be wise to live well so that we may one day die well. After all, nothing survives Death. It is always there, that ancient serpent, devouring gods behind our altar fires.