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Did you not contact LoS ? I just did.

I'm not sure I'd agree with that, personally. The Master Method is imported from playing cards, as are some other things in Lenormand, like playing card spreads. The former, however, seems quite redundant to me when Lenormand has numbers and its own house method built into it. Where does Lenormand folklore go? One could just perform a reading a la master method with ordinary playing cards. Whatever the house method, if combining cards is the second thing they look at when it's the base of the whole system, to me, it drifts away from what I understand reading Lenormand to be. If they are happy when doing it though, who am I to meddle with people's happiness.... Freesytling at the beginning-- when it comes to anything we learn, really-- seldom produces great results; or so I've seen (in reference to the group you mentioned). Taking in the different voices out there is a necessity for growth; inventing our own things is something I'd give more time to before attempting to do. I am certain that our best teachers today followed their own first before reaching that stage of building a personal connection with their cards and venturing to pass on their own knowledge to the others. Being unique is brilliant, being yourself and having your own opinions is even better. However, I'm not striving to be unique; I love what has been working for a long time and produces results for me, and I share that when someone asks since I agree with every bit of it (not everyone has to, of course). And if that means echoing someone else's voice until I get my bearings, I'm content with it. It's only been a little bit more than half a decade ever since I picked up these cards and chose to stick with them, after all. I am sure being creative is easier for you and other far more experienced readers than I; which is of course always invaluable to observe and also to learn from, dear @Mister

Hi cspacediva :) I'm in your same situation. Daily participation is off to me too. But perhaps we could consider one card/week? I have a couple of pdf copies of Chesca's handbook, that includes the three diagrams and the Wheel. On fb there's a little private group named "The art of Chesca Potter study group" where the admin has shared a lot of links, files her own studies about it etc. I may ask her if I she gives the permission to download the contents she gathered, mentioning the source. In her handbook Chesca says "The Greenwood Tarot is an initiatory cycle. I would advise that you at least once follow the cards and the text around the wheel". So I agree that this is the good point of start. As we are already almost at the half of October, perhaps it's better to start from Samhain, to arrive prepared at the moment? As you already said: Death, The Guardian, Wren, Wolf, and the 7s. We may work on Death on the 1st week of November, The Guardian on the 2nd, Wren on the 3rd Wolf on the 4th, first two of the 7s on the 1st week of December, second two of the 7s on the 2nd week of December. So we should arrive at Winter Solstice. From now to then, we could try to understand the Wheel system itself and/or other general topics related to the introduction of the handbook. I'm very new to this all, but deeply drawn to it. Like you, I'm definitely interested into the art and the artifacts that inspired Chesca but, as you, I have not the background too. I hope we can go through it, anyway, as we can. One thing: I'm not intended at all to consider Ryan's words about the Greenwood nor to mention him or the Wildwood at all.

I went ahead and ordered Tarot of Mystical Moments as a reward for konmaring 99% of the stuff in my closet. It was mostly old school assignments and homework from decades ago, and I did want to keep some sketchbooks and old journals and stuff to have a doorway into what I was like in the past. Also some of it is funny. The rest of the stuff I’ve just gotta do in categories. But I’d been procrastinating and had been too busy for at least two weeks and needed a push so I told myself I’d get this deck if I finished. I’m looking forward to it because it has a unique perspective and take on each card that makes me go “huh!” It looks like it’ll be a little bigger though, but that’s okay. I am running out of space on my tarot cabinet/shelf thing though. I might have found one janky solution but I’m gonna try and look for a taller shelf.

I recently home printed the deck and book too, courtesy of Mi-Shell. I am very drawn to this deck. I need to tread with caution here because the prospect of learning together sounds fabulous, but experience has shown me that these study groups are difficult to sustain, and I'm probably one of the worst offenders when it comes to jumping on board and then ghosting. Daily participation is definitely off the table for me. But if I were to proceed with such an endeavor, I think it would make the most sense to stick with the wheel of the year and study the cards in their seasons. So from now until Samhain, I would look at The Wheel, Reflection, Heron, Reindeer, the 6s. This would probably be the time to throw in The Seer and the 9s as well, although to be honest, that seems like a lot to me, so I could also see saving the center of the wheel for the end. Starting around Samhain, I would switch to Death, The Guardian, Wren, Wolf, and the 7s. I have access to both the Potter and the Ryan versions of the book. I do have a low quality scan/photocopy of Potter's physical book which includes a few diagrams not found on the blog. The archived study group on AT is a good resource too, with some great insights from Mi-Shell and others, although they did not get around to all the cards. I'm also interested in looking into the art and artifacts that inspired Chesca, I just don't have the background to recognize all of them.

Most of the time I don't read reversals, and the way I shuffle keeps the cards all upright. Occasionally, a reversed card will sneak in anyway and then I will go ahead and read it as a reversal. I do spend a lot of time thinking about, selecting, and modifying spreads to fit the question. I used to read with reversals and I found it cumbersome when a negative card (like 10 of Swords) would come up in a blocking position in a spread and then it was reversed. If I was more of a free form reader I probably would use reversals. I tend to think of it like the saying, 'the difference between medicine and poison is the dose.' I think each card contains the a full range of meaning, from medicine to poison, and the question, context, card position, intuition tell me which aspect should be emphasized.

So I applied knighting to this section of the keyboard...

I know nothing, but I always have an opinion...

I have had this deck for a few years now. I just found it in the drawers, and took it out. It looks so interesting with deep strong contrasting colours, and graphic shapes. This deck feels quite unique in the sense that many minor cards figures and and shapes in the cards are different from the traditional Thoth, TdM or RWS images. Each cards has the corresponding astrological signs and Hebrew letters which is really informative for the readings and studies. I wonder if anyone else has or uses this deck. Then please join here in the study group for discussing the deck in readings and also analysis on the images. I haven't seen any dedicated books for this deck. I could be wrong. Many thanks.

They sure are! Given that they make sense to you. For that to happen, the idea of using them should appeal to you. If it does not, disregard 'em for ease of use. If you stick with these cards, some will take on a directional meaning, but that should simply be allowed to happen naturally. Especially in the beginning, it is honestly more worthwhile to just interact with the cards your way, that gives you a personal base from where to approach the field. I mean, the traditionalism-craze is over, they won't hunt you if you do not do as they say anymore. At least here. You are allowed to grow, you need not be produced. Yes, both make sense. Generalisation is what doesn't make sense. It keeps away from observing tendencies, which is vital. For example, some see it as a beneficial thing if a couple is facing the same direction. They are united in their view, stand by each others side and face their challenges together. So for the Lord and the Lady, both patterns are pretty usable. They'd be usable somehow even if they'd face the sky. That's Andy's way for sure - loooking at it closely, how you first approach a system matters quite a lot. For example, here in germany, there is a crowd of people approaching the Lenormands via the houses/master-methody path, freestyling happily along as it goes and we all somehow do - it's their legit point of entry. For them, attendance is a sub-concern, if a concern at all. Forget about directionality. It does work for them. Let that sink in - I know I had to. I believe they may someday employ attendance and distance like you do knighting, as a secondary technique, if they don't already. In summary, a primary method which appeals to you is best. It has the highest chance of becoming your own thing along the way. Iris Treppner's style of Lenormand is coloured by her prefered way of reading, favouring stable pairs and relying on the images of the Blue Owl as gate to the cards core. Colette Silvestres style smacks of an introduction to reading cards via tarot, french-style, and Andy's seems to be via scenic parlour style. What makes them stand apart is that they stuck with the cards they liked long enough to develop a personal connection with them - they first became confident in talking with their cards and then they wrote their books. Then they became confident some more and wrote and write some more, it seems. After all, what matters more than any masters or methods are our personal experiences in this field - it's about life, and life tends to favour uniqueness. What regularly messes up things is when adherence to someone else's uniqueness blotches out our own, by noise or caving. What also regularly messes things up is education gone bonkers - In adhering to our uniqueness, self-reliance helps a lot is why. Divergence is a necessity, as is coexistence and unity. If all is allowed to happen, things become alive instead of simply getting lively. Which is not easy.

Glad you could make it @Rachelcat!

I haven't had a chance to do more than look through the deck since I got it. I'll have to let you know later.

As is mine.

That's interesting. I'd read the same thing but it was about the Ship. It annoyed me for a while that the Lady in my deck didn't face left and that both the Gentleman and the Cavalier didn't face her (the Cavalier can greet her if they face each other, as that card can also be a male love interest!), along with a bunch of other things. But I've made peace with my deck, happily. The way an emblem faces can be quite important and useful with some cards (for example the Fox, the Scythe, the Snake, etc.) but with others you'd just be overdoing it (the card behind the Cavalier can still show what he is bringing forward and the card ahead of him can still show what his news will result in regardless of the direction he faces. And I don't even use this convention with this particular card; I just read the cards around him.) These details, then, are quite understandably things that I try to note only when it's necessary. It's really like knighting and mirroring in a grand tableau; you should only use them when you really have to, even if it's tempting to note them all the time.

...a little venting always helps... On the bright side, the Kazanlar Tarot just got delivered to my door, and the shipping for this one was a very reasonable 12 euros, so that definitely cheered me up! 😊 Deck: Kazanlar Tarot

Thank you so much, @Moon-Hermit , for your incredibly in-depth explanation! Yeah, it makes a lot sense that the Lady and the Gentleman don't actually have to face each others, and to rely more on combinations. I remember being told that we should always choose decks on which the Rider is facing right (as if he was "riding forwards" in a reading), because he is a herald of new things and so should point to the future. BUT you see many beautiful and traditional decks with the Rider riding to the left as well. So I believe your view makes a lot of sense, or else the readings might become inconsistent across different Lenormand decks!

I confess I have always had the same problem, even though the Lenormand is an incredibly popular deck in my country (when I was a kid, it was far more popular and accessible than the Tarot, which was hard to come by). I CAN definitely work with the idea of the “layout as picture” - I do it a lot with the Playing Care Oracles, for instance. However, it's an added intuitive layer that comes spontaneously for certain layouts. Certainly not for every reading, and a card facing a different direction doesn't change its core influence. I am not sure if the permutations ARE in fact that important… it is something I assumed from watching others read Lenormand. I do know that the proximity with certain cards can be positive or negative, but in this case I'm not sure the cards' picture themselves have any influence? Then again, as I said, my knowledge of Lenormand is quite basic. 😅

Hi all! Work got in the way of tarot yesterday, but here I am now. This week for me will be the newly received Visconti Brambilla Tarot, Milan, 1442-1447, A treasure from the Renaissance, a recent Lo Scarabeo offering. I’m a little disappointed because the box and book are basically the same as those of the Visconti Modrone, which is a treasure, but the cards themselves are smaller, and smaller than the originals according to the book. The backgrounds are gilded, majors and courts in gold and minors in silver, as in the original. According to the book, this deck is mostly a reconstruction because only 2 majors (Emperor and Wheel of Fortune) and 7 courts are extant, but all the pips are extant except the 4 of Coins, which interestingly may have been lost in a museum fire in 1904. The rest of the extant cards were owned by the Brambilla family from about the 1880s until 1971, when it was bought by the Italian government and put in a museum. The reconstruction is based on the Modrone for the courts and the Visconti Sforza for the majors. Backs are marbled green. I don’t know if that is a reproduction or a choice. Not sure this is going to stay in my collection, given that it’s mostly a reconstruction, but we’ll see. Interview time. What is your most important characteristic? World She’s not Judgment even though she has a horn. She has a landscape behind her and her dress is adorned with sketches of buildings. This is an all-or-nothing deck. You either like it or hate it. What is your strength? Page of Cups As in the Modrone, the cups and other attributes are engraved or pressed into the gilding, so sometimes you really have to look to see what the courts are holding. There’s a lot to learn, but you have to want to learn it. Your weakness? Temperance Ok, according to the book, not ALL the majors are based on the Sforza. Some are a combination of Sforza and Modrone and some are made up by the artist. Temperance is based on Hebe, cupbearer to the gods, and Pandora. The problem is it’s not a balanced combination of tradition and art. What can you teach me? Ace of Coins All three very gold coins with very silvery background. The deck can teach me how to enjoy it as a work of art. How can I learn it? 2 Coins By balancing its reality with my expectations. What will be the outcome of our work together? 5 Coins But that won’t work too well. I might have to let it go. We’ll see at the end of the week.

We could have had it all. But the shipping price is ridiculous. Thanks, but no thanks

Not every reader cares whether they face each other or not (I myself am one example). I have the Dondorf deck, and the Gentleman and Lady cards look exactly like the picture you posted. To my understanding, those who care about it mainly use the convention in relationship readings to see if the parties agree with each other or not; if they have their backs turned to one another, it's seen as a problematic dynamic. Personally, to gauge the relationship between the Gentleman and the Lady, I note the cards they intersect at, the chain formed between them, and the card each one of them looks at (as that can show what they're interested in). Directionality can create its own problems; for instance, those who use the ppf tableau often (past, present, future), have noted that if the Lady faces left and the Gentleman right, they could only face each other if the Lady ends up in the Man's future and the Man in the Lady's past. If you were to rigidly note whether these two are facing each other in every single reading you did, a Man is always going to have some problem with the Lady in her past, lol. Some readers also read the cards based on which direction the significators are facing. For example, if the Lady faces left, you'd read her cards from right to left rather than the usual left to right. So, to sum up, in my opinion, the direction that the emblems are facing is secondary compared to card combinations, distance, etc. I think Andy explains it better than I could, so I refer you to this amazing article published by him on his blog. It should answer your questions: https://thecartomante.com/2026/08/08/the-lord-and-the-lady/

I love the IDEA of Lenormand, and own several Lenormand decks. I can certainly get a lucid story from any layout I've done. However, I have NOT EVER been able to get a story that has proved remotely accurate about my actual life, or things that have happened to me. And what you mentioned, @Marina is one aspect of Lenormand that I find ...unusable. The way a figure FACES on the card? So if the sideways-on dog is pointing towards your significator card, that is your friend. But if the dog is pointing away from your significator card, it's not your friend? And etc. Which side the clouds are on, versus the sun? And where the mountains are placed in the illustration? These sorts of things—which are supposed to be significant in a reading—come down to the particular illustrations in the deck you've chosen. They make any reading incredibly complicated. I think ...well, I don't think this works, actually. It certainly doesn't work for me. Lenormand is usually spoken about as if it's a simpler, more exact method of divination than Tarot. But for me, the myriad permutations that the layouts encourage (including which way certain images face) makes the whole thing unmanageable. I know there are many Lenormand users out there who would disagree with me, but I'm not sure how they manage to get accurate readings if they take all these permutations on board. I have no doubt they do, but I have no notion HOW.

Lo Scarabeo released The Key to the Tarot this year - it's a fairly faithful reproduction of the original release of the Rider Waite (as it was called in 1909) down to the crackle/mud cardbacks. The images have been adjusted so that they are consistently placed within the card. As one might guess from the name of the set, it comes with a version of The Key to the Tarot. I haven't compared this set to either my Pam B or Pam D yet. The deck is thick and sturdy - ~35mm/1-3/8" thick. I think the cardstock is comparable to that of the Rider Waite I bought in the early 90's. I bought the set with one of Llewellyn's 35% off coupons. The copy on Llewellyn's site says: I wrote to their customer support to tell them the copy was likely wrong cause the "original" book that came with the deck was The Key to the Tarot, NOT The Pictorial Key to the Tarot. The response I got back was that it was Lo Scarabeo's listing, and they were just the distributor, and they don't go around changing the copy the receive. OK. Whatever. Once I received my deck and confirmed The Key to the Tarot is the book that's included, I wrote back to the person from Llewellyn, confirmed that the listing is wrong, and explained the difference between the two books in case they didn't know. I also let them know that the "we're just the distributor" line is BS because it's sold on their website, and the deck contains their ISBN. So when customers complain about Bait & Switch and want their money back because they didn't get the book with the pictures in it as advertised, Llewellyn is going to have to deal with that... That was a week ago, with no response. And the description on the website has not been updated. I ended my followup email with: Getting what I expected to get, I'm fine (especially at 35% off!). But anyone who buys this set expecting a book that includes pictures of the cards will be sorely disappointed...

Hi everyone! I am not very good with Lenormand, and only ever had one deck (I'm not even sure counts as a real Lenormand - it's the Titania's Fortune Cards). Recently, I came across a Lenormand deck I found interesting, but I have a question about the Lady and the Gentleman cards in it: Shouldn't these cards be facing each other? So that, in a spread, they could look at each other, or have their backs turned to each other? Like I said, I know very little about Lenormand so I may be wrong here, but I have always had the impression that the direction the cards are placed in relation to the others is very important. Would the cards, facing the same direction, be detrimental in a layout? Or is it just an aesthetic difference? Thanks!

J'aime Le Tarot de la Grande Ourse! Thinking it over if I am going to back it ❤️