Learn With Me: Lenormand Tarot, say it loud

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Part 1

Over the past several weeks we’ve looked at the history of Lenormand Tarot as its been told by Christopher Butler in the book accompanying this deck and a few quick online searches. The origins are as fuzzy as any other Tarot deck.

So far we’ve looked at a few single cards. The more I work with the deck, the more I appreciate the artwork. Color on black with a certain neon light at night aesthetic is my favorite palette. Been definitely feeling the intp, cyberpunk lofi aesthetic these days. This deck is a standout in the art and visual representation. I don’t care much for the pale colors and deliberately old, eighteenth century look of most of the other decks that I’ve seen. The lesson there is to find a deck you resonate with VISUALLY regardless of RWS vs Lenormand setup to the deck.

See? We really are learning stuff here.

We also learned how the Lenormand Deck pushes you toward intuitive reading. You have to rely on your own intuition for the role that the playing card insets play in the card interpretation – if any. In contrast, the RWS decks use that aspect of intuition through card reversals. Lenormand disregards reversals outright.

I have to agree with my friends who said, in their experience, Lenormand tended to be more blunt, direct, in your face and to the point. I have a hunch that this is a function of Lenormand being a smaller deck and, I suspect, you might get the same punchy quality if you did a major arcana only reading with a RWS deck. Some limited run specialty decks are majors only, and when I first experiments with “cybertarot” software back in the 90s, the demo was majors only – and this has a similar feel to those majors-only readings. Just like when a lens narrows a beam of sunlight, it increases the heat and intensity of the light it could be that a smaller deck increase the intensity of a reading. But I also suspect there is a “goldilocks zone” at play, too. Too small of a deck, or too large of a layout could dilute or blur the cards’ insights to the point that it is no longer useful at all.

In my experience, larger layouts will do that regardless of the deck’s size. Even the 10 card celtic cross can get unwieldy and contradictory. I see no value in even trying the every-card-in -the-deck 4 x 9 grand tableau layout that is common to Lenormand. It is absurd to me on its face. My hunch is that Mlle Lenormand was riffing from pure intuition and using the cards to connect with her clients. That isn’t to say that it is schtick or performance or a con or a trick…people are sometimes more willing to believe “the cards” over what another human has to say. The cards make us feel that the information is otherworldly, something more or special compared to human insight.

The cards are skeletal armature. The cards are a structural foundation on which human intuition builds.

That is the larger, functional insights from these cards today. Please read tomorrow and we’ll take a look at these cards specifically in this pathway layout. The right hand card is fading energies, the middle card is current energies and the left card is growing energy as I read these.

continues tomorrow …..