The Clubs Suit: Malefic Cards

[katrinka]

The cards pictured above aren't all of the Clubs suit, obviously. They're just window dressing. ;)

 

Clubs, in the original German suits, were Acorns. It's a hardship Suit. Preparing a meal of acorns is labor intensive and not worth the effort to people who are not starving.

Clubs include the Clouds, Snake, Whips/Birchrods, Fox, Bear, Mountain, Mice, Ring, and Cross.

While A few of these can be neutral sometimes, they can also carry extremely negative meanings. Lenormand is a little bendy sometimes. Scythe, for instance, is danger but it isn't a Club. But while some of these cards might also carry neutral meanings, the major, MAJOR malefics are Clouds and Cross. You don't get through those unscathed. But the Whips, Fox, Mountain, and Mice are also extremely malefic. 

Over the years there have been attempts to sugarcoat. Whips are not sporty sex. They're strife.

If Fox is your "work card," where is your card for lies and deceit? Yes, Fox falling after a card is shrewdness, but falling before a card, it's a red flag for dishonesty.

Clouds are NOT "confusion." Nobody gets confused by clouds in the sky. And the card is not called "Fog." It's a nasty storm coming, the kind that does damage.

I see so much misinformation being repeated over and over. (Endless repetition is Ring, BTW. The Whips are things that happen twice, no more.)

Of course in a GT you're going to get all these cards. And they do bear watching.

But in smaller spreads, Clouds, Whips, Fox, Mountain, Mice, or Cross - just ONE of them - can derail what you're asking about since the cards interact with each other. Of course smaller spreads tend to cover shorter periods of time, you can try again in a few weeks or months.

Several of them showing up? It's a hard 'NO'. It's likely the project is best abandoned and another avenue pursued.

If you want to learn the actual Lenormand method and not just use Lenormand cards to do something else that doesn't work right, stick with trusted sources like this:
https://www.amazon.com/Lenormand-Thirty-Six-Cards-Introduction/dp/1500582484

Or this:
https://www.amazon.com/Petit-Lenormand-encyclopedia-Björn-Meuris/dp/1983957755   

 

People who become good readers possess initiative. They don't expect to be spoon fed, they don't expect free tutoring on forums, they seek things out on their own. Get these books and work through them.
 

Edited May 23 by katrinka

[WizardintheWoods]

I do so rarely comment on posts but this topic gets under my skin.  Now it is no shock you and I agree on this point and I won’t pretend that we are not very close friends, to do so would be a mistake.  But whether you are the author or not, again I rarely throw in my two cents. And yes, before any should ask or wonder we have had disagreements that we have taken the “agree to disagree” approach to, we are both mature and respect each other to be able to do that and remain close.  With that out of the way I continue.

 

To avoid reading cards as they appear in a reading and rather put large coats of sugar on the meanings to make them more agreeable to whoever is being read for is a huge mistake.  Yes, huge and for more than one reason.  

 

The first reason is you go to a reading expecting a person to use the skills they have honed or are honing to give you an honest answer to your question.  If we are trying to massage a reading so that it does not sound harsh, to the point of not being willing to say that a card does in fact point to a negative aspect that the person asking the question needs to be aware of, this not at all being honest.  To omit the card or just skip over it during the reading (yes I have seen this done on more than one occasion) is even worse.  Honesty should be the Hallmark of the Card Reader.

 

A second reason especially when working with the Lenormand System is that those cards and their meanings were put there on purpose and with reason.  Life is not all sunshine, bunny rabbits and dinner with the Queen at the Palace and this System addresses that.  If you don’t want a well balanced, extremely useful, often deadly accurate and yes blunt and direct System then why spend your time learning Lenormand?  There are endless number of Oracle Decks out on the market that will do nicely for a Reader that only wants positive vibes present.  

 

Could I go on and on about this subject, yes I could.  The serious Lenormand Readers spends untold hours learning and practicing their skills. Yes, hour upon hour.  And the practice with the cards?  The more you do practice that practice will prove the point that ALL of the meanings, positive, neutral or negative all work together and need to be present.   It is how the system works, it is that plain and simple.

 

I close with a reminder of that old saying, “Forewarned is Forearmed.”  If we don’t prepare a person to make changes so that a negative event can be avoided by making changes in what a person is doing or at least prepare for the negative event in advance then why bother with doing a reading?  I have to be as blunt as my beloved Lenormand, you are making a mockery out of the System and making a Fraud of yourself at the same time. 

 

I step down and away from the soapbox now.

[Chariot]

I have only dipped my toe into Lenormand, but I agree with both of you.  Trying to sugar-coat any reading is ...well, why bother with a reading?  I've heard it said that if you feel—ahead of time—that you won't be able to handle a negative reading, then don't do a reading! (Or don't get one done for you.)

For me, a problem with Lenormand (and to a lesser extent, Tarot, although I'm working successfully on the problem) is the catastrophic nature of some of the cards.  If I do readings nearly every day for 'practice,' negative (malefic) cards are going to turn up frequently.  And hey ho, actual catastrophes don't usually follow ...otherwise I'd be in a perpetual state of disaster.

Is there a way to de-catastrophise Lenormand cards for frequent readings?  Say, you get the Cross 3 times in one week, along with Clouds, occasionally a Mountain or Mice in a future position ...and nothing bad happens.  Maybe a minor niggle occurs (or not!), but nothing out of the ordinary.  And then the benevolent cards start to appear again.  This kind of result is common, at least for me.  (I'm lucky in my life, most of the time.)  So while I don't want to sugar coat, or change a card's meaning, I think I need some method to downplay a strongly malefic meaning to something more mundane and useful.  And also some way to know when a strong malefic meaning DOES warrant action and belief.

As I said, I'm  not a Lenormand practitioner at the moment, although I have three decks and do work with them on occasion. But this aspect of the readings always stumps me.  How do you two handle a mundane situation, when doing a reading?  Does the secret lie in the question, like in Tarot?  Or something else?

I'm at the stage with my personal daily Tarot readings where I can put cards down, get an immediate reaction to them, put them away, and act upon what I've seen ...and it works for me.   I'm at the stage with Lenormand that the readings are NEVER accurate for me!  The readings look accurate on the reading table ...but then the forecasts don't come right.  Sometimes laughably so.  Are the cards having fun at my expense?  Frustrating.... 

Edited May 23 by Chariot

[katrinka]

7 hours ago, Chariot said:

Is there a way to de-catastrophise Lenormand cards for frequent readings?

It sounds like you're doing dailies. You always ramp down for dailies, same as with Tarot or anything else. 
In other words, if the cards show something burning it's probably your dinner and not your house. This isn't sugar coating or ignoring malefic cards. You still ruined dinner and you have to throw it out, soak and scrub all the carbon crud off the pan, and find something else to eat. 

With normal readings, we don't do that. If the cards say "fire", it's a good idea to take all the precautions.

[katrinka]

20 hours ago, WizardintheWoods said:

I do so rarely comment on posts but this topic gets under my skin.  Now it is no shock you and I agree on this point and I won’t pretend that we are not very close friends, to do so would be a mistake.  But whether you are the author or not, again I rarely throw in my two cents. And yes, before any should ask or wonder we have had disagreements that we have taken the “agree to disagree” approach to, we are both mature and respect each other to be able to do that and remain close.  With that out of the way I continue.

Yes, we're good friends and it's true that we don't see eye to eye on everything! I think it would be boring to agree with someone on every single thing. And impossible as well. 
 

20 hours ago, WizardintheWoods said:

If you don’t want a well balanced, extremely useful, often deadly accurate and yes blunt and direct System then why spend your time learning Lenormand?  There are endless number of Oracle Decks out on the market that will do nicely for a Reader that only wants positive vibes present.  

Exactly. There's tons of angel decks, affirmation decks, etc. out there. 
 

20 hours ago, WizardintheWoods said:

The serious Lenormand Readers spends untold hours learning and practicing their skills. Yes, hour upon hour.  And the practice with the cards?  The more you do practice that practice will prove the point that ALL of the meanings, positive, neutral or negative all work together and need to be present.   It is how the system works, it is that plain and simple.

Yes. And for years.
I'll never forget, a lady posted on facebook wanting to know if she could learn Lenormand in three months so she could tell fortunes at an office party. People see that there's only 36 cards with simple images like a dog, a house, etc. and they think it's some kind of low effort, easy to learn deck. Nothing could be further from the truth. You can learn a few keywords and do some kind of rudimentary reading, but not a good one. Fluency takes about 5-7 years of study and practice, and that's assuming you're using good sources.  There's so much garbage out there these days, people get lost in it. I'm glad I learned when I did and not now. When I started, there was nothing in english at all and I was at a yahoo group talking to a german lady. She never tried to say Clouds were "confusion" or any of that. It was a solid foundation.
 

20 hours ago, WizardintheWoods said:

I close with a reminder of that old saying, “Forewarned is Forearmed.”  If we don’t prepare a person to make changes so that a negative event can be avoided by making changes in what a person is doing or at least prepare for the negative event in advance then why bother with doing a reading?  I have to be as blunt as my beloved Lenormand, you are making a mockery out of the System and making a Fraud of yourself at the same time.

Yes! Sometimes you can change things. That's why people listen to traffic reports: if things are at a standstill on your normal route to work, you take a different route. OTOH, some things can't be changed. You wouldn't tell someone in hospice they're going to win the Boston Marathon. Sugarcoating really does make a mockery of the System and everyone involved.

Edited May 23 by katrinka

[Morwenna]

To comment on the images of clubs as trouble: it is the Germanic way of looking at the suits; the Scandinavians do the same thing. But looking at them as acorns, which the poor had to make do with for food, it makes sense. And this is the first time I noticed how the trouble cards in Lenormand are clubs! My education continues...