As I see it, one of the goals of affirmation is to lighten our psychological load, shifting our attention away from the drag of burdensome past misfortunes and freeing us to take wing toward a brighter future, like a butterfly to a blossom. I think of it as "fortified wish-fulfillment." For years my wife had a post-it note … Continue reading The Butterfly, the Bear and the Albatross
Month: February 2019
(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction
I've been pondering where my initiative to get involved with the esoteric community here in southeastern New Hampshire is going. I get swamped with meet-up invitations from the metaphysical groups I joined online, but none have been compelling enough to lure me out of my house. I decided to do a 15-card "mini-tableau" with the … Continue reading (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction
The Rana George Lenormand “Attitude Check”
Not long ago I bought the Rana George Lenormand deck. I had taken it off my wish-list as being of only middling interest, but you know what happens when commercial availability and consumer vulnerability converge. Although its artwork is nowhere near as dazzling as Ciro Marchetti's Gilded Reverie Lenormand, I place it in the same … Continue reading The Rana George Lenormand “Attitude Check”
Back to the Basics
Similar to the tarot, which has Arthur Edward Waite's Pictorial Key to the Tarot as the first - if not necessarily the best - gateway to the most popular style of modern tarot reading, the Lenormand cards have their watershed moment in the Philippe Lenormand Sheet, a single page of keyword meanings and interpretive guidance … Continue reading Back to the Basics
“Hear All About It” – Lenormand “News” Cards
I have always understood that the Rider is the primary "news-bearer" among the Lenormand cards. However, in reading back through some of my published material, I came across a couple of distinctions. The Rider often represents news that is delivered in person, while the Letter indicates receipt of a written missive, whether through the post … Continue reading “Hear All About It” – Lenormand “News” Cards
Divinatory Revisionism
Yesterday I was reading an article that equated geomancy with "earth healing" - that is healing of or through the Earth. This stopped me in my tracks because not only does this usage have absolutely nothing to do with the suffix "mancy," which derives from the ancient Greek word "manteia," meaning divination, it is at odds with … Continue reading Divinatory Revisionism
Lenormand Crossovers: Breaking the Chain
For the tarot enthusiast aspiring to master Lenormand reading, there are several cards common to both systems that stubbornly resist shedding their tarot trappings during the transition. Interestingly, they all appear in sequence in the tarot: the Tower (XVI), the Star (XVII), the Moon (XVIII) and the Sun. (XIX). Since their Lenormand counterparts, at least by title, … Continue reading Lenormand Crossovers: Breaking the Chain
“Look, Ma . . . No Hands!” (A Five-Card Experiment)
I decided to put my somewhat feeble line reading skills to a test in two different ways, asking the same question of two decks and using a pre-positioned topic card in one of the spreads. I used the Blue Owl for the unstructured line and the Piatnik for the pre-arranged one. The question was "What is … Continue reading “Look, Ma . . . No Hands!” (A Five-Card Experiment)
The Literalist
I've recently been involved in a debate about the necessity - or even the desirability - of large spreads. In tarot, I seldom use spreads smaller than five cards, and seven to ten cards is closer to my ideal (the Celtic Cross has been my mainstay for decades). In Lenormand, I prefer the Grand Tableau over … Continue reading The Literalist
Foreverquest
Back in the early "aughts," when I was still playing Everquest Online relentlessly (what can I say, I'm a throwback), my wife dubbed it "Foreverquest" (that was before her own fling with World of Warcraft). That epithet reminds me of the situation I find myself in whenever I decide it's time to chase down a … Continue reading Foreverquest
