It worked for Benjamin Franklin.

Not Lenormand Tarot. As far as I know Ben wasn’t into Tarot. I mean being self taught. Benjamin Franklin was a voracious self-directed learner. I can’t recommend his autobiography highly enough. I may give it a quick re-re-re-read after writing this.

Mr. Franklin is proof that being self-taught isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It isn’t the right approach fo everything. He was an apprentice, he learned from others – but I’m pretty sure he figured out the electricity thing on his own. When you are self-taught, you just might be the fresh eyes that see something brand new. It’s as Terry Pratchett wrote in his book Equal Rites: “It is well known that a vital ingredient of success is not knowing that what you’re attempting can’t be done.”

The same holds true in Tarot. Many, if not all, aspects of intuition and magick cannot be fully taught and must be experienced for oneself, . I forget whether it was Mat Auryn or Marshall WSL who wrote about this being the essence of “mystery” or occult traditions. It’s not so much that the information is secret as it is that the experience of it is entirely subjective and can only known to you as an individual. In the “mystery” traditions the teacher can give you theory and information. A teacher can take you right up to the threshold of experience, but only you can take that last step through the doorway to deep knowing. That step through the doorway can only be experienced first hand, thus remaining a mystery to those without that first hand experience.

Initiation, it seems to me, is a matter of taking a solo step through the doorway and joining others on the other side who have taken their own solitary step before you.

That’s what these “Learn With Me” posts do…

I show you the path I took to get to this place. It’s still down to you to decide if that path is right for you, if you want to take other steps, or whatever. Even when I read Tarot for you as an individual, the goal is to amplify your connection to energy, to amplify you intuition and help you to connect to your own message – not to be a substitute for any of that. But that’s another story for another day. Back to Lenormand Tarot.

I’m largely self-taught, but a big piece of self-directed learning is selecting and finding the right teachers and classes. I’ve had classes in intuition development, aura reading, psychometry, and full training and certification in Reiki. I’m grateful and privileged to have met Ted Andrews at his.”Animal Speak” workshop in Sewickley PA at the old Open Mind bookstore back in the 1990s, just before his Animal Wise Tarot was released. I’ve read reams of books and consider those authors to be teachers, too. But when it came to finding, curating, synthesizing, internalizing, applying, living all of that, it was up to me and me alone. The same is true of your learning path. If you aren’t self taught at the very least you choose who else teaches you.

In the middle of the biggest and best Ivy League university, you are still self-taught to some extent because it is entirely up to you what you do with that ocean of information. It is up to you which thresholds you actually step across.

After stepping across some thresholds and crossing a fair few bridges too far, the “Learn With Me” posts on the Sage Sips blog are about how to find the doorway. Regardless of whether I’m translating spirit/energy into English for a private individual reading, peeking at the collective energy for the blog, teaching a specific oracle or teaching an intuition building process, the final steps are ones only you can take.

Mistakes creep in both when you are self-taught and when you are tutored. Finding your own way through the forest makes you a little more vulnerable to making honest mistakes. It also empowers you because you don’t know what is impossible, Terry Pratchett style. To my way of thinking, that easily balances the extra trial, error and experimentation a solitary self-learning path entails.

So – I could be wrong.

Over the years, with the information I’ve found, Lenormand Tarot has given the impression of being separate and distinct, an oracle tool unto itself. Lenormand Tarot is not the familiar format or symbolism we all know so well from other Tarot decks like the Visconti-Sforza from 1425, the Marseille deck from the 1500s or the ubiquitous Rider Waite Smith deck from 1909.

Perhaps because it is older, ostensibly from the late 1700s to middle 1800s, the Lenormand Tarot stands apart from modern oracle cards, too, both in symbolism and emotional tone.

Lenormand has never really captured my attention until recently. I was chatting with fellow reader and energy healer extraordinaire Pip Miller who reads both RWS and Lenormand Tarot. She described them as largely similar in concept, but the Lenormand had a more direct, succinct, no holds barred, smack-in-the-face sort of personality (as far as card decks have personality, but we’ll put a pin in that for another day, too)

Until that conversation, I had a vague (possibly unfair and inaccurate) impression of Lenormand Tarot and its community being a little bit stand-offish, guarded, perhaps a smidgen elitist. Lenormand always felt like a gated community while RWS style Tarot readers felt more like a fandom, like a contemporary, dynamic collective of individuals with a shared interest and varied skill sets. I had the impression that Lenormand deck was staid, quaint and archaic like some sort of wealthy widow in a mansion in a Nancy Drew mystery book.

But, like I said, I could be wrong.

Let’s find out together.

The Learn With Me: Lenormand Tarot series will post on Wednesdays.

Next up: Weekend Update where we take a closer looks at this week’s “growing energy” card from Monday’s Energy Path reading for this week, the Five of Cups.

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