What I do : What is a Lenormand

In 2010 I brought some copies of my Melissa Lenor­mand to the Read­ers Stu­dio. The reac­tion I got from nearly every­one who pur­chased one was, “What the hell is that? I want it any­way!” or “I’ve heard of Lenor­mand cards before… but aren’t they sup­posed to be bor­ing?” I left a lit­tle dis­cour­aged, but mostly unphased (you know it takes a lot to phase me). I wrote up a pro­posal to teach a study group in 2011 at the con­fer­ence, which was hap­pily accepted. So last year at the con­fer­ence I taught about two dozen peo­ple how to tell for­tunes with Lenor­mand cards. At the urg­ing of one of my study group atten­dees, I cre­ated lenormand.info — as a plat­form to get this work­shop out to as many peo­ple as pos­si­ble. It’s been slowly, steadily blow­ing up since then, thanks to the amaz­ing mod­ern Lenor­mands being pub­lished here in the States and elsewhere.

My audi­ence here on this site doesn’t always over­lap with the folks in-the-know about the Lenor­mand stuff — so con­sider this my “intro­duc­tion to Lenor­mand” entry.

What is a Lenor­mand deck?

Facts:

• A Lenor­mand deck (the Lenor­mand deck — that is the Lenor­mand div­ina­tory sys­tem repli­cated with the most fre­quency) has 36 cards.
• Each card con­tains a sym­bol — a pic­ture like a dog.
• Each card also con­tains a num­ber and a cor­re­spond­ing play­ing card.
• Some decks con­tain a small verse that gives a clue to the mean­ing of the card — this is more uncommon.
• Lenor­mand cards are typ­i­cally sparse — mod­ern excep­tions being decks like my own.
• They are read in lines. The story that the cards tell is the metaphor­i­cal nar­ra­tive of the querent’s life.
• They are easy to learn. The sym­bols are mod­ern and we still speak this same lan­guage today (whereas the lan­guage of the tarot might be con­sid­ered lost in antiquity).

How do you accom­plish a Lenor­mand reading?

• Find a Lenor­mand deck. If you don’t have one, you can play with mine.
• Shuf­fle the deck and lay the cards out, face up, in four rows of nine cards each.
• If you iden­tify as a man, locate the man card. If you iden­tify as a woman, locate the woman card.
• Using how­ever many cards you find to the imme­di­ate right of the man or woman you chose, form a sen­tence that will speak of your imme­di­ate future.

Lenor­mand read­ings work inde­pen­dently to the images of the cards. In this man­ner, a Grand Tableau that looks like this:

Will be read the same way as this one:

How can I learn more?

Every­thing you need to learn about lenor­mand cards you can find for free online. There are many fab­u­lous blogs and web­sites ded­i­cated to this form of car­tomancy. I have quite a bit of infor­ma­tion avail­able with free access at http://lenormand.info as well. Ded­i­cate your­self to your study. It’s easy to learn, I promise.

The video course I offer is more of a guided kick-in-the-pants. Designed to get you in and out the door, read­ing cards as quickly as humanly pos­si­ble. If you’re hav­ing trou­ble syn­the­siz­ing what you’re read­ing in other sources or you just can’t get your brain out of “tarot mode” (or you never really expe­ri­enced any kind of “psy­chic mode” any­way) — you’ll prob­a­bly have good luck with my class. Many folks have had their Lenor­mand aha! moments by watch­ing my videos. I also host monthly webi­nars you can attend for a small ticket fee - think of those like tak­ing a work­shop on a cer­tain topic though. If you have lit­tle to no expe­ri­ence with Lenor­mand, 101 is for you.

You might also stop by the Tarot Tribe’s Beyond Worlds radio show Sat­ur­day night — as I’ll be a guest! I’ll be chat­ting with host, Don­naleigh de LaRose, about get­ting into the Lenor­mand cards — the hows, whats, wheres, whens and whys.

And I promise, of course, to say all kinds of Sh*t Lenor­mand Read­ers Say…

Two coping strategies that don’t work (and one that does!)

Cop­ing is a skill that I hap­pen to be well-versed in. Hell, I’m a self-employed sin­gle mother. Every day is a new les­son in cop­ing. I’m con­stantly try­ing new strate­gies to just. get. through. the. day. Because it really sucks. It’s hard. I’m fraz­zled, stressed and totally over­whelmed. The key to avoid­ing train­wreck­i­fi­ca­tion¹ though is effec­tive cop­ing. And mov­ing, 600 miles away from my tribe, my happy places, my fam­ily, friends and home­land (yes, I’m look­ing at you, Indi­ana), has been a crash refresher in these kinds of skills. To that end I’d like to share with you two cop­ing strate­gies that DON’T work — and one that does (for me — aside from drink­ing heav­ily².)

Talk to Pollyanna

I was talk­ing to a friend about how it had been a week since my last shower. And when I finally got my kid­dos set­tled to the point where I thought I could safely jump in and lather up my hair, my daugh­ter decided to sit out­side the tub and scream like she was dying because she was out of juice. So look, I was frus­trated, fraz­zled and over­whelmed and I started cry­ing. In the shower. With soapy hair.

My friend lis­tened to all of this, smiled and said, “Look on the bright­side! Your kids love you and need you SO MUCH ALL THE TIME you’re SO LUCKY!” worse yet is when Pollyanna says some­thing like “Well soon your kids will be all grown up and they won’t need you any­more! So think about that!”

(Next time I’m sob­bing in the shower?)

Why it’s not helpful

When some­one tells you to look on the bright side it’s usu­ally because of two reasons:

1. It’s easy to respond this way AND
2. They’re uncom­fort­able with your pain

When you talk to some­one about being fraz­zled, over­whelmed or stressed — need­ing to find some way of cop­ing, what you’re really talk­ing about is your pain.

I wasn’t just telling my friend about how I needed a shower — obvi­ously the story ran much deeper. I was try­ing to com­mu­ni­cate that I hurt because I have to do every­thing myself and it sucks.

And when Pollyanna sug­gests you look on the bright side, it usu­ally indi­cates an unwill­ing­ness on their part to be present with that hurt. Talk­ing to peo­ple about unpleas­ant things is awk­ward. It’s weird and uncom­fort­able to see other people’s pain. Per­haps your friend is wor­ried about the pos­si­bil­ity of expe­ri­enc­ing empa­thy — of feel­ing any of that yucky stuff for them­selves — and will say any­thing to escape it as quickly and effi­ciently as possible.

And yet –

Talk­ing to some­one about the ways and the hows of my hurt is SO help­ful to me. But I’ve learned that it’s impor­tant to chose those peo­ple who will really lis­ten and allow me feel my pain rather than try­ing to sweep it under the cur­tains.

And if you’re a Pollyanna who reg­u­larly dis­penses this advice, stop it. It doesn’t help and it’s just so uncre­ative. You can do bet­ter. Start by giv­ing your friend a hug and hold­ing their hand while they wring out all those tears.

Make a grat­i­tude list

I’m a grate­ful lady. I’m well fed, have a beau­ti­ful lit­tle (pink) house in the coun­try. I have two chil­dren who are good look­ing, intel­li­gent and healthy. I have so much to be grate­ful for, it’s sick really. It’s unfair to most of the world just how won­der­ful my life is.

That doesn’t mean it doesn’t suck some­times. So when I’m hav­ing a bad week — when I get behind with the house­work, with sleep; when I am frus­trated by a project, by a per­son, by my own short­com­ings — and some­one tells me to make a grat­i­tude list, I seri­ously just want to fly into fits of rage and throw a lamp across the room at a wall, for example.

Why it’s not helpful

Grat­i­tude is a prac­tice that’s best insti­tuted before you get to the actual cop­ing bits of life. Grat­i­tude is some­thing that, if it’s already in your box of tricks, will help you deal with the blows before you’re in the pre-lamp-throwing train­wreck­i­fi­ca­tion phase. So in that sense, I do rec­om­mend that you keep it in mind — like when things are going good.

I’m also a fan of notic­ing. It’s like grat­i­tude but with­out all the touchy-feely-woo that’s going around these days. I notice what things bring me great joy (and yes, I even make lists about it some­times) — so that when I begin to feel a lit­tle edge-worn I can call upon those ener­gies, those spir­its, those choco­lates and dou­ble Amer­i­canos, for exam­ple — and that is a good cop­ing skill.

Notic­ing works in the oppo­site direc­tion too — with equal effec­tive­ness! If you notice what makes you psy­cho crazy and just keep it in mind, you can avoid it like a blis­ter­ing com­mu­ni­ca­ble dis­ease next time you notice it creep­ing up on your radar.

Grat­i­tude lists don’t work for me for (again) two reasons:

1. I can’t fool myself into this way of think­ing. The grat­i­tude list works as a way to remind you of what you have going for you. I am either too jaded or this is just too obvi­ous for my brain. I know my prob­lems are first-world prob­lems. If you’re read­ing this, chances are your prob­lems are first world prob­lems too. Be grate­ful you have the inter­net right? Is it really help­ful to remem­ber that you have clean water to drink and don’t live in a war-ravaged third-world nation? I mean, yes? But still…

2. Even­tu­ally, if things got really really bad, all your list would be good for is to remind you that all that all that shit hasn’t killed you… yet. And hey, maybe that makes you feel bet­ter. It doesn’t, me.

I tried to do grat­i­tude lists once. It didn’t make me feel bet­ter. It made me feel petty in addi­tion to the shitty I already felt. Maybe I wasn’t being grate­ful enough? Maybe I’m ungrate­ful. Maybe I’m a hor­ri­ble per­son. Maybe if I could be more grate­ful I wouldn’t be so stressed out all the time! Why can’t I be MORE GRATEFUL WHAT’S WRONG WITH ME OMG.

What does work

Roller derby.

Kid­ding! Okay not really. Actu­ally I found roller derby to be an incred­i­bly stress-relieving, perspective-inducing, edge-smoothing cop­ing mech­a­nism. There’s just some­thing about get­ting your ass smeared all over a gym floor to really put your prob­lems into per­spec­tive (please note: I only con­done vio­lence when all par­ties are wear­ing mouth­guards and wheels).

Honor your pain

A few things -

Look­ing on the bright side and being grate­ful for what you have are both good ideas. I sup­port both plans whole­heart­edly. But the pos­i­tive thinking/manifesting your desires/believe-in-yourself and all your wildest dreams will come true move­ment seems to miss the mark on the fact that feel­ing shitty is just part of life. There’s a ten­dency to just gloss over that unpleas­ant detail — in self-help books, blogs, etc. Life can be dis­ap­point­ing. Life can suck. Every­thing that makes you very very very happy also has the power to make you really really really mis­er­able. That’s the toss of the die, people.

When I say ‘honor your pain’ — I don’t mean wal­low in it.

Hav­ing a good cry is dif­fer­ent than not being able to get out of bed for a week. Punch­ing a pil­low is dif­fer­ent than punch­ing your obnox­ious neigh­bor. If your pain is so deep that you’re unable to see the dif­fer­ence, please seek the help of a qual­i­fied pro­fes­sional who can meet you where you’re at and offer you the sup­port you need. You’ll feel better.

How to honor your pain:

1. Allow your­self to feel it — Cry. I used to cry all the time. I find I have a harder time with this now. This is, of course, me avoid­ing those unpleas­ant feel­ings. I always feel bet­ter when I cry though. Always.
2. Release it into the wild — I like a bit of rit­ual in this step. Ever hear of a bit­ter bon­fire? Maybe host one with you friends and fam­ily. Where I’m at right now — not so appro­pri­ate to have giant bon­fires. Take a can­dle out­side. Write that shit­ty­ness down on a lit­tle slip of paper and set it on fire. If you like a bit more woo with your rit­ual, try it while the moon is wan­ing, in the late evening right before you indulge in a hot bath (hand­ful of salt in the water).
3. Make it for some­thing — one of the ways we can honor a spirit is to give it a pur­pose. Make your pain good for some­thing — even if that some­thing is just the promise to your­self to enlist that awk­ward teenager down the street to watch your babies while you bathe. If you’re frus­trated by work, you don’t have to release your pain and then do some­thing dras­tic, like quit your job, for exam­ple. But think of some­thing small, some­thing use­ful and good that the pain can be for. Maybe it’s for tak­ing a walk while your cowork­ers smoke. Maybe it’s for find­ing a book about writ­ing your own busi­ness plan. Make it for some­thing. Our brains like it when energy, even the hurt­ful kind, has purpose.

And finally, a spell by Valerie Worth (from Crone’s Book of Mag­i­cal Words)

To Dis­pel Sorrow

When world and fate
Con­spire to mark
Your life with lines
And char­ac­ters dark,
Mold a tablet
Of earth or clay,
Write on it all
You would cast away –
All you regret,
All that you bear,
All that afflicts you,
All that you fear –
Break it and bury it
In the ground,
Say­ing this charm
To heal the wound:

Sor­row be dust
And dust dis­solve:
Let all my grief
Go into this grave.

***

The simplest way of knowing

The most com­plex sys­tems humankind can come up with, are in essence, made of Yeses and Nos. On and Off. The pres­ence and absence of what­ever. We are drawn to oppo­sites. They make our minds light up with the desire to ease or inflame the result­ing ten­sions. If the answer is Yes, we think in how­ev­ers. If the answer is No, we dream about per­haps. Whether we like it or not, in what­ever real­ity we are bas­ing our pres­ence, some­thing either Is or Isn’t (whether this is actu­ally the case in an infi­nite uni­verse, is a post for another day).

To divine is to know. It is to sur­mise an indi­ca­tion of future events. 

The sim­plest way of know­ing is called Clero­mancy. Throw­ing lots. There are many forms. This is per­haps the eas­i­est. I will teach you now.

To begin, you will need a lot of things.

You can get ornate. An abalone shell full of stone beads, for example.

Some lots are more deli­cious than others…

I pre­fer my jar of lentils. I like the way my fin­gers feel when I dip them in a dish of dry grains.

The sim­plest way of know­ing requires the sim­plest kinds of ques­tions. Yes or No. This way or That way. Red pill or Blue pill. 

My daugh­ter frac­tured her leg last week. She is going in for exrays on Mon­day and there is the slight­est pos­si­bil­ity she may get her cast off (there was dis­agree­ment over whether or leg was actu­ally frac­tured, but the stan­dard is to over-treat, espe­cially for chil­dren). My ques­tion is, “Will Freyja get her cast off on Monday?”

Know­ing your ques­tion, under­stand that 1 = Yes, 2 = No. That is, all odd num­bers = 1 = Yes, all even num­bers = 2 = No.

Don’t think about the next step too much, just do it. Expe­ri­ence it.

Scoop up some of your lot with your hand and place it in another dish or on the table.

And then count.

64. No, Freyja will not get her cast off on Mon­day. I’ll report back and let you know how it goes.

Now it’s your turn. Test the method as often as you can over the next week. In the com­ments here, on a blog post you link, on twit­ter, face­book or g+, cast your own lot. What was the result? Now report back when you can. Was your pre­dic­tion correct?

The Tarot Lovers

In which I sound like some kind of pro­fes­sional intu­itive instead of the Sassy Sibyl you all know and love… This was writ­ten last year for Flock. I’m shar­ing here now, since I’m no longer there. I’ve updated the post with some pho­tos of dif­fer­ent Lovers cards from my col­lec­tion. I pur­posely chose some lesser known and strange ones. What is the odd­est Lovers card you’ve ever seen?

Feb­ru­ary is the month of Lovers. Well, it’s the month of Valentine’s Day, and for a tarot reader, that means being inun­dated with ques­tions about cou­plings. Does he love me? Will she marry me? Will we end up together? What kind of love will I find? What kind of love do I need? How do I attract a lover? I don’t mind answer­ing these kinds of ques­tions; the desire to find and main­tain ful­fill­ing love-relationships is one of the human expe­ri­ences that we all share in com­mon. It’s so big in our lives, that the Major Arcana of the tarot has a card devoted specif­i­cally to it.

The Lovers card from the Vic­to­ria Regina Tarot

The Lovers card in a tarot deck is the sixth card in the Major Arcana. In the Rider-Waite-Smith tarot, which is arguably the most com­mon tarot in the West­ern world, the card is illus­trated with the archangel Raphael bestow­ing a bless­ing of pros­per­ity over a nude cou­ple (pre­sum­ably Adam and Eve). Behind the woman is the Tree of knowl­edge of Good and Evil and the snake – which per­suades the female to choose her own des­tiny. Behind the male is the Tree of Life, set aflame with twelve leaves, which rep­re­sent the signs of the Zodiac – which he uses to make informed deci­sions. The woman looks to the angel for divine inspi­ra­tion, while the man looks to the woman. They are part­ners, two halves of a whole, but they play very dif­fer­ent roles in their rela­tion­ship. The card is com­monly illus­trated with two or more fig­ures, embrac­ing or reach­ing out to each other. Some decks include the third fig­ure (or snake) to intro­duce the aspect of choice in union – that is to say, the inno­va­tors of the tarot under­stood that the rela­tion­ships that we enter into are by choice, and that our choices have the power to hurt others.

The Lovers from The Prairie Tarot and the Bohemian Gothic Tarot

When the Lovers card comes up in a read­ing, it can be inter­preted as an exter­nal rela­tion­ship – one that is either roman­tic or pla­tonic, depend­ing on the con­text of the card in the read­ing – or it can refer to dual­i­ties within the sit­ter (the per­son whose cards are being read). Often the card refers to two oppos­ing forces at work oper­at­ing within our lives and the card directly speaks to our inter­ac­tions with other people.

The Lovers from the Deviant Moon Tarot and the Paulina Tarot

I have been long fas­ci­nated with the masculine/feminine duality/opposites aspects of The Lovers card. In the tarot, “mas­cu­line” cards tends to exert out­ward influ­ence on their envi­ron­ments. They deal in the con­scious, prac­ti­cal, the mun­dane, and the the­o­ret­i­cal. While “fem­i­nine” cards in a tarot focus on the uncon­scious, inter­nal, intu­itive, emo­tional, whim­si­cal or dream realm and the pos­si­ble. Both of these forces are present on this one card.

The take away les­son of The Lovers card though, is that bal­ance is needed in order to achieve har­mony. For exam­ple, we fall in love based on feel­ings, but we enter into rela­tion­ships con­sciously. Rela­tion­ships can be messy, hurt­ful, or divinely bliss­ful – but if they’re going to be suc­cess­ful, they come with the under­stand­ing that there’s com­pro­mises and choices to be made and main­tain. We can embrace the dif­fer­ences between us and be lovers, or we can ignore or fight about it. And every­one knows that in order to love fully and in a way that will sat­isfy the emo­tional needs of any other per­son, we must first learn to love ourselves.

The Lovers card from the Fan­tas­tic Menagerie Tarot

Let’s spend some time exam­in­ing the dual­i­ties we find within our­selves and in our inter­ac­tions with oth­ers. Try these exercises:

1. Ask your­self: if I were a pack of tarot cards, which aspects of me would be “mas­cu­line” cards? Which aspects of me would be “fem­i­nine” cards? For exam­ple, I tend to dom­i­nate in per­sonal rela­tion­ships, but I have a very deep, strong, intu­itive well that I draw from when I need to make impor­tant decisions.

2. What is your intu­itive sense about what kind of energy you will need to invite into your life in order to bring bal­ance to your life right now? Look through a tarot deck and find a card that you feel is rep­re­sen­ta­tive of that energy and use it as a jump­ing off point for jour­nal­ing or meditation.

3. Imag­ine your­self if your per­fect rela­tion­ship. What do you bring to the table? What does your ideal part­ner bring to the table? How do you two bal­ance each other out? What com­pro­mises does the bal­ance require? What choices do you need to con­sciously make in order for the rela­tion­ship to work? Try this five-card spread when work­ing with the tarot to dis­cern the nature of per­sonal relationships:

1. the sig­ni­fier (choose this card inten­tion­ally to describe the nature of the rela­tion­ship)
2. Per­son A – what is con­scious | 3. Per­son B – what is con­scious
4. Per­son A – what is uncon­scious | 5. Per­son B – what is unconscious

Love should be cul­ti­vated in all cor­ners of our lives – roman­ti­cally, pla­ton­i­cally and within our­selves. While love may be based in what we can­not under­stand (the uncon­scious), true, last­ing and sat­is­fy­ing rela­tion­ships are formed when we care­fully cul­ti­vate an under­stand­ing and accep­tance of the true nature of our­selves and oth­ers. Using the tarot is one way to arrive at that kind of understanding.

If you have ques­tions or get stuck with your inter­pre­ta­tions, feel free to leave a com­ment here, on face­book or send me an email!