Reading direction in Lenormand
The question of direction in cartomancy is often discussed by students and teachers alike, with different schools settling it one way or the other. Do you read from left to right by default, or do you read the direction that the characters depicted on the cards suggest or take?
In principle you can do what you like, if you decide in advance that there’s a particular method you want to follow. But you can also choose to both use a method and not use a method simultaneously.
I’m thought of this once, when I found myself answering a question from a student from Israel who was taking the foundation course in reading the Lenormand cards at Aradia Academy.
The student wanted to know what would be the most beneficial, given the fact that she was used to reading everything in Hebrew from right to left. I formulated three simple rules that I think others out there may benefit from. This is what I said:
1) You always work with the image first, and consider the function of each ‘symbol’ before you decide what the thing ‘means.’
2) You always work with your own cultural conditioning, meaning, if you’re conditioned to reading from right to left, then you do that as a matter of course. Here, however, you might consider the Western context and the fact that an illustrator has the opposite cultural conditioning, being inclined to pen the image with a right-forward movement.
3) You always keep a keen eye on the possibility to break out of your cultural conditioning, or indeed, break out of what you take for granted as ‘meaning’ or the tradition that ‘legitimizes’ its existence through untenable postulates à la: ‘it is so because it’s always been so.’
The third key here is the toughest, as you never tend to think of what you’ve internalized as a matter of course, which yet has no legitimate ground by any reasonable standard. So the art is to keep these three movements in sight when you read the cards, and balance them against each other.
Don’t read from left to right because that’s what you always do, or vice versa. Do it if you have good cause for it, if you see something at the image level that prompts you to do so. Let that be your guiding line, not conditioning. At the same time, it’s good to know just how conditioned you are, because if you don’t, you won’t get the exciting feeling of having transgressed slightly what everyone thinks or says. The magic is in this transgression, though here you must exercise the art of discernment, for if you go over board with your transgression, then you’ll be merely provoking what needs no provocation. This applies to following lists of meanings for the sake of following, and not because it makes sense. The idea is to familiarize yourself with the mainstream Lenormand vocabulary, so you’re able to differentiate and pick what is useful.
6 cards moving
I didn’t give an example with the cards in my answer above, as I just wanted to respond promptly. But what I said gave me an incentive to throw some cards here, and see how we can apply the idea of the three rules outlined above. I put down 6 cards at random, just to see what was happening in terms of reading according to direction.
Birds, Flowers, Man, Crossroads, Clouds, Fox
My preferred style is to read the cards in-line as a sentence. My preferred style is also to always have a question, but this time I had none, as I just wanted to get a sense of the direction of the cards both at the level of the image and that of cultural. So let’s try to see some differences, taking the Man as the subject, since this significator card fell on the table.
If we read from left to right we can say this:
Although the news is good, the Man has a dilemma and consequently follows a path that leads to deception.
If we read from right to left we can say this:
Although what what the Man sees is not what he gets, he can still be fortunate to get a message that’s appreciated across the board.
Now, if we look at what happens in the cards themselves, without making recourse to any of their added symbolic value, we note the following:
The birds are singing towards the left. Flowers are static, not ‘going’ or ‘looking’ in any direction than straight at us. The man clearly makes a walking gesture towards the right, left foot first, getting to the crossroads. The Crossroads is split into two. If this was part of a larger tableau, we could follow the cards that go either up or down from each direction to create a narrative. There’s fog on the road, what with the clouds over it. The Fox makes a move to the left.
Now, if we were to take all this information into account – which we must, otherwise, why read cards at all – then we could advance the following claim, starting with noticing that the Man has his back turned away from the Birds: good news is disregarded because someone else more cunning than the birds presents the idea of alternative roads.
If this was a question about ambivalence, we’d be prone to rhetorically ask the man we would happen to read the cards for: ‘Are you stupid, or something? Why leave the goodwill behind, for a shady business deal? What’s wrong with you?’
It goes to show. What is most beneficial is to start with the cards, just read the damn cards and forget about what school dictates what directions. Use your own common sense for it. You have a subject on your table doing things under the conditions that the surrounding cards show. Tell the man’s story, and leave it at that. If you work with a question that asks for advice, give advice. If the question begs reflection, offer one. If the question is about describing a situation, depict what you see. If the question has a predictive nature, then look at where the cards point to prognosticate. What leads your reading is the question, not the method that you use to get to your answer.
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Key
techniques
My essential course in reading the Lenormand cards offers the reader key methods and techniques that supersede what ‘tradition’ says, especially the kind that makes no sense.
