The Friendship Card
Medium: Foiled Oracle Card
Date: 2026
Project/Body of Work: Mayura Oracle Deck
More About this Card: “Dear Unknown Friend”, “Entering the Coordinates”
A hand-painted oracle card built around the prompt “Friendship.” The composition centers on a candlelit table set before a window, framed in gold and rendered against a deep field of dark tones. Two glasses rest on the table while a single candle burns between them, casting light into the room and out toward the night beyond the window.
The image reads simultaneously as invitation and threshold, a quiet interior space prepared for inner encounter. Rather than depicting two people directly, the card presents the conditions which contain relationship: a shared table, a light between participants, and an opening toward the wider world beyond.
The card originated as part of a small early series created before the Mayura Oracle deck formally existed. At the time, the theme of friendship was interpreted inwardly, not primarily as a social bond, but as the idea of befriending the Self. The image was sketched and partially developed during that period but remained unfinished for several years.
Over time, the drawing itself became a kind of dormant symbol within the broader Mayura system, a placeholder for an idea whose full meaning had not yet revealed itself.
Process Notes:
The card was created in a vision card class organized around weekly life themes such as health, family, and friendship. Participants were invited to produce literal or aspirational imagery for the year ahead. Rather than approach the theme narratively, this card (along with several others from the same material set) emerged symbolically.
Across this early set of gouache cards, white and gold were used to articulate an internal divide that was seeking integration. Each card introduced a third stabilizing color (blue, green, or deep brick red) while the black field functioned as a grounding element across the series.
In this piece, the candle became the central organizing element. It functions both as illumination and as a shared point of focus, a flame that belongs to neither side of the table, yet makes the space visible to both. The window behind it introduces another layer of meaning, the interior chamber of relationship exists within a larger landscape, suggesting that connection unfolds across a broader field of experience.
The imagery in the Friendship card initially suggested the simple symbolic premise, that if one commits sincerely to inner work, meaningful connection tends to appear in unexpected ways. Carl Jung expressed a similar idea when he wrote that those who do their work conscientiously will eventually find that unknown friends appear along the path.
For several years the drawing remained only a sketch, a visual marker for that concept within my studio practice.
When the card finally entered the Mayura Oracle deck years later, it carried additional layers of meaning that had accumulated through lived experience. What began as an inward-facing symbol of relationship with the Self had become intertwined with a series of real-world events connected to the long arc of my creative process.
Within the context of the deck, this evolution is typical.
Cards rarely enter the system fully formed. An image may originate in a particular moment, but once placed into the deck it becomes part of a larger symbolic landscape. Each time the card surfaces in response to a question, it gathers new associations from the circumstances surrounding that pull.
In this way the card functions less as a statement and more as a coordinate on an evolving map.
The original gouache sketch eventually served as the foundation for a digitally rendered version produced in Procreate and then printed as a foiled oracle card for the Mayura deck. Its final entry into the system marked the moment when the symbol, the image, and the lived experiences connected to it converged into a single point on that map.
Further Reading:
You can find out more about this card and the process behind it here:
