Discussion on Missing Topics and Overburdened Cards

[coinilius]

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It's a great deck isn't it? For a while it was my working deck, but I eventually ended up going back to the standard 36 card Lenormand. It's easier on the brain! 😂

 

It's a very nice deck, but I never bothered using the extra cards for readings - though I do enjoy having them, even if its just to look at them! I like the approach of making it a playing card deck, with the Lenormand symbols - I'm doing my own personal deck with a focus on being able to use them as actual playing cards, but I've got more of a German pattern with the pips in the top half and the image in the bottom half of the cards.

 

I really only ever use the Ur-Lenormand Game of Hope deck when doing readings.

[Doktor_Zeus]

@akiva sorry, I think I tagged the wrong person there.

 

I personally think that the Lenormand is perfect for storytelling because of its ability to form complete sentences. When I get stuck, I often just shuffle the deck, start laying out and interpreting cards as individual words, and see how long it takes to make a sentence that makes sense. The flexibility of the imagery means I can... kinda 'feel around' for a meaning that fits both the sentence and the context of the story. Sometimes I get a little creative with the sentence structure to make it fit, mixing up which cards are the nouns, adjectives, verbs and so on, but that's just part of the process. It's a bit like playing with magnetic poetry.

 

I also use cross spreads for character development - the central column from top to bottom can represent superego, ego and id, while the left and right cards represent formative events and future aspirations. The Grant Tableau spread is great for coming up with a general overview of the plot. I'm still experimenting, but I've had some good feedback so far.

 

@Chariot I always recommend "the Complete Lenormand Oracle Handbook" by Caitlìn Matthews. It's heavy going, but it is VERY thorough and somebody who's already comfortable with the Tarot should have no problem grokking it.

 

 

[Chariot]

13 hours ago, DanielJUK said:

Personally I have never had this issue. One of the joys of these systems is learning the traditional meanings per card and then making the combinations. It's really fun when they come up in wild ways as a combination. Working out how they fit in a modern context is fun!  The Letter can represent emails, internet conversations. The Garden might represent us here, an online space. Birds can be zooming, birds and mountain someone is on mute 😉 .Storks can represent innovation and a start-up. Book is scientific discovery.

When you know the basic idea of the card, you can take it to modern meanings because it's always about the underlying meanings for all contexts.

 

Lozzy from Lozzy's Lenormand has done numerous posts on her blog about modern takes, it's worth reading through them all.

 

I am not sure how adding more cards helps the situation, it's about working with what you have to make them fit what you want. Lenormand and Kippers are different cartomancy systems, I would recommend not mixing them. I do readings where I use multiple systems but I keep the cards separate, maybe tarot and lenormand. I did readings here for people in the past with Lenormand and Kipper but I took 3 cards from each and interpreted them separately and then got a combined message.

I do find the Lenormand difficult just BECAUSE there are so many different things the card can be relating to.  I don't know why this doesn't come more easily to me, but it doesn't as yet.  

I remember being a rank beginner with tarot, way back when I was in my 20s ...and I didn't know much at all, compared to what I've been learning over the years.  But I have to say, I didn't have difficulty getting it to work for me, right from the start.  I got answers that made sense, and were accurate most of the time, which is why I persisted.

I don't know why, but I seem very blocked in that regard, with Lenormand.  Maybe one system (tarot) is just going to have to do it for me, when it comes to predictive readings.  It's a pity, because I really do like Lenormand cards.  But for me, Lenormand is a bit like algebra.  Algebra always made sense to me AFTER somebody explained a particular problem and how they got the solution.  But give me another new problem to solve ...nope.  I ended up right back at square one, not having a clue where to start.  I mean, I never ever got close to understanding algebra, despite working hard at it for a whole year.  For a nearly straight A student to be getting straight Ds in a subject I was actually working hard at was a humbling experience—and made it easy to understand people who struggled to 'get' subjects I found easy.  But algebra just never clicked for me.  I understood the basic principle, but couldn't ever get it to work.

I haven't given up on Lenormand yet, but I have this gut feeling that it's never really going to click either.

 I think the reason I find it attractive to merge Lenormand with Kipper is that the combination offers more precise options.  Lenormand has The Garden, for example, which signifies a Public place or something done out in public (which could be just about anything from attending an event, walking in a garden, or meeting up with friends for coffee in a public place.)  Kipper has the Community card, which means the public—but these aren't random 'people,' they are YOUR people, the people you live with, work beside, and know.  Different kinds of 'public' and usually a more focused concern on their well-being.  Kipper has a Garden as well, but it's a more secluded garden, where you might go to rejuvenate yourself in the company of nature.  It doesn't carry the 'public' aspect to it.

If I decide that the Lenormand Coffin means the end of something, while the Kipper coffin means a physical box, I find it easier to get some sense out of the reading.  If I need a straightforward answer, I don't want to have to mess around guessing whether somebody is going to die or give me a box full of old, collectible dolls.

It's like if you want to make yourself perfectly clear on a complicated subject when writing or speaking, the larger your vocabulary the more precise you can be.

 

Edited December 1, 2023 by Chariot

[Doktor_Zeus]

I think we're going round in circles now. Shall we try to get back to the main subject?

[coinilius]

If you wanted to look at 'splitting' cards, the Birds and the Owls could be a good possibility, as we discussed earlier.  Perhaps the Whip/Birch Rod could have the Broom separated out from it  - a lot of decks depict this card with a broom, which seems to me to be a misunderstanding or misrepresentation of the Birch Rod symbolism.  In any case, Broom could be more physical activity, routine labour, needing to 'clear house' compared to the Whip/Birch Rod's more punishment and sexual activity sides. 

[coinilius]

@Doktor_Zeus Were you still considering expanding on your Lenormand deck?  Something else you could consider is taking a look at some of the other Lenormand-like Fortune Telling decks that seemed to be all the rage for awhile - decks like the ones made by Valmor and Whitmin seem to draw from a similar pool of symbolism for the extra images, much the same as the US Games GW Fortune Telling Cards.

[Doktor_Zeus]

On 12/8/2023 at 8:10 PM, coinilius said:

@Doktor_Zeus Were you still considering expanding on your Lenormand deck?  Something else you could consider is taking a look at some of the other Lenormand-like Fortune Telling decks that seemed to be all the rage for awhile - decks like the ones made by Valmor and Whitmin seem to draw from a similar pool of symbolism for the extra images, much the same as the US Games GW Fortune Telling Cards.

 

I've looked at a few already, although so many of them don't come with interpretation books. I'm not familiar with Valmor and Whitmin, I'll try and look them up.

[coinilius]

14 hours ago, Doktor_Zeus said:

 

I've looked at a few already, although so many of them don't come with interpretation books. I'm not familiar with Valmor and Whitmin, I'll try and look them up.

That should read Whitman, but the cards in each use a combination of symbols you'd see in the Lenormand cards and also in the GW Fortune Telling Cards, plus some others.  Interpretations tend to be limited to what is on the cards, or the small details given in the instruction manuals.

[RandomConspiracy]

Oh I hope the thread is not so cold yet. I was thinking the same about possible topics missing from the standard Lenormand deck.

 

For instance, I think the existence of the many schools of thought around Moon/Fox/Anchor for job, it's a great clue that we need a definitive job card. Well, at least I think it could make things easier as Chariot mentioned with the double Fox's meanings. And what a coincidence, I also ended up thinking about the Broom and Scales as possible extra cards. Scales for the legal matters and/or order as well as the Broom for order, domestic chores, repetitive actions and cleaning up a situation.

 

I see a job card as by far the most useful, specially thinking about how much importance it has in our lifes to be placed as a secondary meaning in a host card. The symbol?... could be a desk or a workshop table. Something vaguely familiar to any job.

 

Other cards I thought could be useful were Clown, Butterfly, Wine, and Eye.

• Clown for laughs, making a clown of youself 🤡, unrequited atention. (But it kinda downplays more serious cards. Coffin + Clown sounds tricky)
• Butterfly for inconstancy, freedom and lightness. (But again, Clover / Stork can do the job)
• Wine for party, celebrations, chaos, drugs, negligence, pleasure. Project X levels of disaster hashahss.
• Eye for caution, vigilance, observe or being observed, atention, care for details, clairvoyance.

Ryan Edward adds the last 2 in his Maybe Lenormand and are present in the Gypsy Witch too.