SKAM (translated to “SHAME”) is one of the most successful television programs to come out of Norway, if not THE most successful. There are two dominant themes throughout the series: first loves & identity. However, there is another theme that has remained present (albeit in the background) throughout the seasons: religion & spirituality. I will get to that soon but first I want to give a little background on the show and the characters.

If you have been living under a rock and never heard of SKAM, it is a series based on teenagers that attend Nissen High School in Oslo, Norway. It doesn’t sound ground-breaking when you read a one sentence synopsis, but the format of the show is unique and unlike anything that has come before it. Clips are released in real time throughout the week on the NRK website, and then combined into one episode that airs on a Friday evening. By doing this it targets both the teenage crowd (their target market) by allowing them to live their lives alongside the characters which keeps them engaged 24/7. It also targets the older crowd who are used to more traditional media and sitting down to watch an episode of a show on television each week.

To make the show even more realistic, we see their social media posts on screen. Messenger conversations, YouTube channels, Instagram posts, FaceBook accounts, and Tinder are utilised in a way that we use social media these days as millenials in a way that no other show has done yet. As a viewer you can follow the characters you love on social media for extra content, blurring the lines between the actors real lives and the characters.

You can compare television shows like UK’s Skins to SKAM’s format but SKAM is even better. It’s less gritty and peculiar than Skins, but just as juicy and entertaining. SKAM focuses on one character’s perspective each season, as opposed to each episode as seen on Skins. This allows you to dive deeper into a character’s story arc and follow their journey in-depth throughout the 3-4 months in which the season takes place.

All the characters make mistakes like any other teenager, but SKAM never judges or pities their characters, leaving you to come to your own conclusions and space to come up with theories to fill in the blanks. SKAM trusts that you are a smart individual and doesn’t treat you like you are an infant like some series tend to do. If I had to pick one word to describe SKAM apart from amazing, it would be heartfelt.

Warning: This post will contain spoilers up until episode three of season four.

“It’s 2016 and the world is progressing.
Don’t you get that it’s [religion’s] nonsense?”

The first season focused on Eva; a girl who had no friends apart from her boyfriend and his best friend. We follow Eva’s journey while she finds a new group of friends and navigates her messy, seemingly perfect teenage relationship. Eva never mentioned her religious, spiritual or personal beliefs and most of her moral compass was influenced by the people around her. Spirituality was not a factor in Eva’s season apart from the offensive remarks made towards Sana who is a Muslim girl in Eva’s friendship group.

Fan-favourite Noora was the focus of season 2. Noora is a strong feminist and loyal friend that we fell in love with in the first season. We followed her journey of falling in love with the teenage heartthrob/fuckboy, William (aka Willhelm). We mostly see her struggle with her feminist identity and navigate her way through her feelings for William as her judgement is clouded by love and she feels not like herself. Unlike Eva, Noora’s moral compass is completely internal which is why she found it so challenging when William challenged her views. Spirituality and religion was not much of a factor for Noora either as she was so self relient and introverted when it came to her values. When Noora began questioning her own ideals during her relationship with William, Sana gave her the following advice: “If you say you’re in favor of a world full of peace you actually have to try to understand why others think and act the way they do.”

Note: Season 2 also deals with darker themes that may trigger some people so please be sure that you will feel safe watching.

“If you say you’re in favor of a world full of peace you actually have to try to understand why others think and act the way they do.”

Season 3 was the most popular by far and focused on Isak who is struggling with his sexuality and home life so he moves into Noora’s old room once she leaves to move to London (spoiler: she returns). His relationship with new student Even is complicated, messy, on and off, and devastatingly beautiful. To quote Ronan Keating, life is a rollercoaster for Isak. Although Even is not the first boy Isak has had a crush on, he is his first real relationship and like Eva and Noora, we watch him navigate the waters of his first love.

Isak’s mother is very religious and sends him regular Bible passages via text message, causing Isak to roll his eyes and question if his parents will accept him if he is gay. He stands up for Sana (his biology partner) when a teacher calls her hijab a burqa, but struggles to understand her faith himself. He once asked her, “no offence, but why are you actually religious?” Towards the tail end of the conversation Sana asks him what he believes in, his reply is “I believe in science. The theory of evolution. Nothing else.” Despite not identifying with any religion, Isak is still somewhat interested in the metaphysical and has his own beliefs about parallel universes and infinity.

Towards, the end of the season Isak finds out that his boyfriend Even once memorised the Quran in Arabic. Although this has not been discussed further in the show yet, there are many fan theories about what this could mean in the context of the fourth and final season with Sana as the main character. Even’s secret past at his old school has not been exposed yet, all we know his that he “acted crazy” and was friends with Sana’s older brother at one point. This is going to cause a lot of drama between Isak and Even as they have never talked about it and Even continues to hide what happened even when questioned about it.

“Can’t we just agree that there’s a lot between heaven and earth none of us know about? Instead of sitting here criticising my religion, just respect that we have chosen different beliefs.”

After being a scene stealer in the first 3 seasons, Sana is now the main for season 4. Sana is a muslim girl who is a badass, a fiercely loyal friend and an all-around adorable munchkin (but don’t tell anyone). Continuing the theme of the show of ‘first loves’, Sana’s season seems to be heading towards being about her first relationship (she is not in a relationship as of the time I am writing this during episode 3) as she is crushing on her older brother’s friend, Yousef. Yousef is a sweet, caring, funny, smart, attractive boy who works at a kindergarten and wants 12 (yes TWELVE) kids so he can have his own football team. Being an introvert, Sana keeps her cards close to her chest and doesn’t let on to her friends about her crush.

In her own words, Sana’s main struggle is being “a muslim girl in a faithless country”. Balancing her home life, her spirituality, and her friends is a continuous juggling match and she is going to drop the ball eventually. She is on a russ bus with her friends and has not told her mum about it yet. Her friends have no concept or idea of her culture and beliefs; her friend Vilde in particular has made offensive comments in the past (Sana just glares, rolls her eyes and moves on as she is used to it). In previous seasons Sana has been an enigma; we have had jokes made about her “magical hijab”, reflecting just how naïve most of us are to Muslim culture.

Julie Andem, creator of SKAM, said the following in relation to creating a character like Sana, “The point was to make a character that chooses her own relation to her religion. She has strong faith, but she doesn’t need to relate to the whole package the culture is trying to push on her.” It’s incredibly interesting as the season 4 trailer when reversed plays the song “Don’t let me be misunderstood” which was performed by a women who converted to Islam.

The first three episodes of Season 4 were quite peaceful but most of us knew it wasn’t going to last as Julie Andem said, “shit’s about to go down”. She wasn’t wrong. At the end of the third episode, Sana finds out that Yousef (the boy she’s been crushing on) is not Muslim like she had assumed he was. Although it remains to be seen how she will proceed knowing this news, it’s safe to say that it will cause a lot of inner turmoil for Sana.

But I’m just a soul whose intentions are good
Oh Lord, please don’t let me be misunderstood

As someone who identifies with new age spirituality, attended a Lutheran high school and has mostly as athiest or agnostic friends, I am incredibly fascinated by Muslim culture and Islam. All I have heard about Muslims prior to SKAM is what is depicted on the news or shared on social media which is incredibly racist and xenophobic. There is a lot of fear in Australia about Muslims and I am so grateful that a show like SKAM exists and has reached me on the other side of the world thanks to the internet. This season of SKAM has come around at the perfect time. We need to be educated and we need to have our eyes opened instead of living in segregation and ignorance.

One of the most interesting things is how SKAM plays on the prejudices we have internalised so much that we don’t even realise how judgemental they are. This is shown through the character’s own prejudice. Isak has internalised homophobia and despite questioning is his sexuality and living with his roommate Eskild (who is an openly proud gay man), he claims in Pride (click and scroll for full clip translation), “There’s nothing wrong with being gay, it’s just that I’m not gay gay. […] You understand what I mean. You talk about sucking dick and Kim Kardashian and lavender scents out loud. I mean, I totally respect that you’re taking the gay package all out, I’m just not like that.”

Instead of Eskild having an immediate hot headed tumblr-like reaction, he takes the time to educate Isak in a calm, quiet way, ending the conversation by saying, “and now I don’t really want to talk more with you, so now you can just sit here and think about what I said”, then calmly leaves the room. There was no shouting, yelling, accusing or abuse. In such a simple yet thoughtful way SKAM shows us how to treat each other and how to have important conversations with the people in our lives. Isak is not a villian for saying what he said which was quite offensive and thoughtless, but he is flawed like the rest of us. Flaws do not mean you’re a bad person. Being uneducated does not mean you’re a bad person. It just means you have something to learn.

“Islam says the same as always. That all people in this world are of equal worth. And that no man shall be slandered, violated, judged or ridiculed. If you hear someone use religion to justify their hate, do not listen to them. Because hate doesn’t come from religion, it comes from fear.”

SKAM’s success is unprecedented, especially for Norwegian entertainment. One-fifth of Norway watch SKAM on a weekly basis, and in 2016 it became popular worldwide thanks to social media (Tumblr in particular). Unfortunately, it was recently announced that season 4 was going to be SKAM’s final season. The fandom remains confused, devastated and in disbelief at the news as SKAM was perfectly set up for six seasons, but we keep on carrying on and are enjoying this season while it lasts.

A US version of SKAM called SHAME is currently in development. This has caused both excitement and concern amongst the fandom as SKAM is a precious series that is dear to our hearts. We hope that SHAME does justice to the original, whilst not being a direct copy. It will be interesting to see how they approach the spiritual and religious themes portrayed in SKAM, as America is a very religious country with 70% of the population identifying as Christians, 30% being agnostic or atheist, and less than 1% identifying with Islam. The United States are known to be a very racist and intolerant country when it comes to Islam and depending on the team hired to write the show, they may fail to straddle the line between depicting the racism that Muslims face, and being downright offensive.

If you’ve watched SKAM please come chat about it with me in the comments below! I would love to hear your theories, analyses and straight up fangirling about this wonderful show. If you’ve never watched or even heard about SKAM, I hope I’ve inspired you to watch it and I hope you love it as much as the rest of us do.

It is rare that I find an oracle deck that I truly connect with. The Sacred Creators Oracle is one of the few that I completely vibe with. If you identify as a creative or even better, a spiritual creative, this is a deck you need in your life. It’s the perfect one to keep in a home office for a quick message each day, to reinvigorate you, or inspire you when you are overwhelmed.

The Sacred Creators Oracle is a relatively new deck and was initially crowdfunded on Kickstarter earlier this year. I believe it is the first deck by Chris-Anne and I am desperately hoping she creates more decks in the future. The quality of the card stock, the book, and the box is incredibly beautiful and is one of the best I have ever seen. Both the cards and the box have a matte finish which is lovely and smooth to touch. The box is quite large and very sturdy cardboard. It’s not a small paper box like most tarot cards come in.

The colours show up beautifully. The sides of the cards have a shiney gold gilding, but it’s not the type of guilding where all the cards are stuck together and you have to try to separate them – they were all already separated and felt so beautiful to hold. The size of the cards is perfect – similar to a regular tarot deck like The Wild Unknown.

The guidebook is wonderful – 270 pages of information on each of the 67 cards, as well some some spreads and other information. Each of the card meanings have up to 4-5 pages worth of information which is great as sometimes I get stumped as to why I’ve picked the card that I did. The book is so well done and I’m really glad that Chris-Anne poured so much love into it.

My favourite part of the book is how each card meaning as different sections that are individual to the card. In most tarot + oracle books it is the same layout – card meaning, affirmation, etc. Chris-Anne really goes into detail and has personalised each card – each one stands out as it’s own message and doesn’t just feel like it belongs to a group which I love.

I actually started working on my own oracle card deck early last week and was surprised to see how similar my visual concepts were to this deck. I will definitely need to do some tweaking while ironing out the details (my concept was a watercolour background with a scribbly line art drawing on top with a key word or phrase).

Please pick up this deck if you are a creative, self-employed, or if it resonates with you. It is a very uplifting deck but it also helps you work through any issues or problems you may be experiencing, both personally and professionally.

A few months ago I was browsing Amazon when I stumbled across the Linestrider Tarot. I was immediately struck by the bright white aesthetic and the seemingly simple images and knew I had to get it.

The Linestrider Tarot was originally funded on Indiegogo and had a limited print run in 2015. It was then picked up by a major publisher and released in May 2016. For just $28 you can pick up the deck as well as the guidebook which is 272 pages.

The second edition release now comes in a large, beautiful box which includes both the deck and the book. The issue I have with the box is that it is so large and impractical. I think I will end up ditching the box eventually and keeping the tarot deck in a silk bag, and keeping the book with my other spiritual books.

The card backs have changed from a mid-toned purple, to a white and blue ink splatter design. I much prefer this as it goes better with the aesthetic of the deck, and it matches more closely to my own colour preferences.

The cards themselves are very varied in colour – it feels like Siolo has utilised the elements of earth, water, air and fire in the colour scheme of this deck. I find very few of the cards to be positive and uplifting, even the ones that have the most beautiful meanings. Overall this deck for me, depicts struggle and movement, or lack thereof which is quite relevant to my life at this time. I love how decks find you when you most need them.

The guidebook is truly wonderful. It is one of the better tarot books I have come across (The Lumina Tarot being the other) as it brings tarot into the 21st century. You get a black and white full page image in the guidebook, along with two pages of information about the card. Sometimes tarot can be really outdated and old fashioned in the way words are attributed and associated with the cards, but this is a great beginner deck and the guidebook is fantastic if you’re looking for some up-to-date, relevant interpretations of the cards.

Of course it is always good to use your own intuition and form your own card meanings, but if you are unsure or if nothing comes to mind, it’s a great book to fall back on.

I’ve only had the deck for one week and am already loving the readings I am getting with it. I find that there is a dark element to this deck which is similar to The Wild Unknown tarot deck. Even though the colour scheme is very light, the black line drawings cut through that and add a real shadow vibe. I don’t feel it is a particularly happy deck and I probably wouldn’t reach for it if I was feeling down. It is great for self reflection and will help you to gain clarity about situations that could be bringing you down or holding you back.

Please let me know if you have picked up this deck, or if you are considering it. Is it your aesthetic? I like anything white and watercoloured, and tend to avoid decks with black borders so this one is right up my alley.  I have quite the tarot and oracle card collection now so if there are any you would like me to review, please check out the list and let me know in the comments.

A few weeks ago I went to a Mind-Body-Soul expo and got an aura photo taken. While I was there, I noticed that they had The Wild Unknown Tarot Deck. I had been lusting after them for quite awhile so I thought I should pick them up to save on shipping costs. I believe I paid $70 for both the cards and the Guidebook.

As you can see, the design of the packaging is beautiful. The cards themselves are beautiful to hold; they are made out of thick, matte cardstock and feel very luxurious. This deck is a very nature-based and has lots of animals throughout it. Deer, snakes, owls, and swans make up each suit in the deck which is beautiful. The deer are my favourite by far, as there’s something so innocent and romantic about them.

The great thing about having animals and earthly elements on the cards rather than people like traditional tarot cards, is that they are more relatable and universal.

Although the deck comes with a cheat sheet, as someone who is new to tarot cards, I do find it handy to have the guidebook to expand on the meaning of each card. I have done a couple of quick readings for myself which have been very accurate and I find that I am really bonding with this deck, which was surprising as I didn’t think I would bond so quickly to a deck that is so earthy and nature-based in design. I’ve always felt like someone who lives in the air, rather than on the earth.

The cards are absolutely beautiful; ranging from brightly coloured backgrounds to complete black and white, they are absolutely stunning and each card pulls you in. The Ace of Wands is my favourite card by far; it’s an explosion of creative energy which is represented beautifully in the design.

UPDATE 2016: This was the first edition of The Wild Unknown Tarot. The deck has now been picked up by a publisher and you can now pick it up for a fraction of the price.