The Snake biting the Fox's tail

[Moon-Hermit]

Hi everyone, I hope everything is well with all of you! 🩷🌸✨

I had a small question regarding a reading convention in Lenormand on which I couldn't find sufficient information.

What does the Snake biting the Fox's tail mean when they end up side by side like that in a reading? (I first came across this when reading through Katrinka's amazing blog, in a post where she reviews the Black Hand Lenormand deck. I'm not sure whether tagging her here would be okay or not... Here is her blog address: https://fennario.wordpress.com)

 

I would appreciate any information anyone could share regarding this. Thank you.

And if Katrinka reads this by any chance, I wish to thank her too. I've learned a lot from you!

[Mister]

It's about cancelling each other out when it comes to negatives - example: instead of having a real bad encounter with an authoritarian person, leading to complications along whatever it is you inquired about, like being double-crossed by your boss, some may indeed read it as good advice from a witty one knowing the field.

Taken from the idea that the fox gets done in by the snake and the snake is thereby already occupied/exhausted, so she can't do the querent any harm.

 

It appears mostly with older readers who grew up with/alongside it and those who ingrained their playing-card meanings on spades as the troublesuit, making the clubs more positive.

If you go by the theme of the original Game of Hope, clubs represent the acorns, thereby having scarcity as a general theme - people ate those in times of need, so it is little surprise that they foreshadow exactly that - times of need.

 

To my knowledge, this "negatives cancelling each other out" is most alive in the Benelux-region and in connection with self-help incorporating cards.

Edited 46 minutes ago by Mister

[Moon-Hermit]

20 minutes ago, Mister said:

It's about cancelling each other out when it comes to negatives - example: instead of having a real bad encounter with an authoritarian person, leading to complications along whatever it is you inquired about, like being double-crossed by your boss, some may indeed read it as good advice from a witty one knowing the field.

Taken from the idea that the fox gets done in by the snake and the snake is thereby already occupied/exhausted, so she can't do the querent any harm.

 

It appears mostly with older readers who grew up with/alongside it and those who ingrained their playing-card meanings on spades as the troublesuit, making the clubs more positive.

If you go by the theme of the original Game of Hope, clubs represent the acorns, thereby having scarcity as a general theme - people ate those in times of need, so it is little surprise that they foreshadow exactly that - times of need.

 

To my knowledge, this "negatives cancelling each other out" is most alive in the Benelux-region and in connection with self-help incorporating cards.

Thank you so much for sharing your knowledge, @Mister! I didn’t know that the convention is most common in the Benelux-region, so that was very interesting to learn about.

 

Your explanation makes perfect sense… in fact now I remember this part I’d read in Andy Boroveshengra’s book describing the Snake: 

“Careful attention should be paid when this card is with the Fox. When the

Snake precedes the Fox it shows an intelligent woman, one you may not

like, but who is, fortunately, trustworthy. If the Snake follows the Fox then

the reverse is true.”

 

Here it’s describing a person, but it could apply to situations as well, as far as I can understand; then Fox + Snake would be nastier than the other way around, which also corresponds with the insets, i.e. clubs being troublesome.

The deck I most frequently use is the Dondorf Lenormand, so that order would make sense to me, as both animals are facing each other. Your explanation helped put things in order in my mind! My first guess was that since the Snake is biting the Fox’s tail, then someone or a situation that is troubling you would be backfired/ destroyed. That’s because I see the Snake as more malicious than the Fox. In other words, the Fox gets a taste of its own medicine, or maybe something worse…. But as you said, I doubt I’d read the combo like this all the time. To me, when both these cards are together it signals a red flag, not in the querent’s favor, if they were asking something about or relating to themselves.