Reading for third parties

Let’s look at a reading with the Lenormand cards that made me think about how we can use the playing card insets in an optimal way. I’ve written about insets on a number of occasions, but when I see how beautifully a reading can flow in and out of the cards’ symbolic representations as they were accompanied by the playing-card significations, I like to return to the topic.

The question fell into the classical love triangle category and the layout was the 9-card carré. A woman wanted to know:

‘What impact do I make on my former lover and his new family?’

I often encounter this question in situations when a querent is working through their regret about not having been able to hold on to their relationship. I never dismiss such questions in the name of ethics – ‘it’s not nice to spy’ – or in the name of knowing better, which is worse, as it presupposes judging another’s motivation for asking such questions. It’s not my business to judge. My business is to read the damn cards.

As it happens, I actually understand where these questions come from, namely a desire to be remembered, to have left a trace. In fact, whenever we use the phrase, ‘I love,’ or ‘I have loved,’ what we disclose is actually a desire to make an impact that stirs strong emotions.

Sometimes this desire carries itself into our ways of coping with a failed relationship, as the ability to stir strong emotions in another person validates our sense of self-worth. For some it comes as a comfort to know that, although their former lovers may have moved on, the love that was mutually shared could still be felt at a tangible and concrete level. In this sense it can be interesting to know just how such past love may still manifest and if it does, in what manner. The cards are excellent at offering an insight, and sometimes they can also give people something surprising to think about. I always value the stories that the cards tell, also because they save me the trouble to spy in any other way, if spying is something I should fancy myself.

Now, to what extent such information is useful to the querent who wants to know what kind of an impact she still makes after the breakup, is another question, but to begin with, the question of impact is most definitely a question that can be answered.

On the question of how ethical it is to spy, I have to say that I’m not bothered by third party questions at all, and I answer all of them to the best of my ability. I’ve noticed, however, that other readers in the cartomantic community beg to differ. Which is fine, until the point when I notice that double standards are practiced without blinking. I’ve remarked, for instance, that the same readers who like to judge third party readings, calling them unethical, never seem to have a problem with people asking about their imbecile bosses and how to cope with them. Are these not third party questions? Methinks they are, so in case you’re worried about this aspect of ethics, I suggest that you think again. Let us drop the false claims to righteousness and just read the damn cards instead. That’s what fortunetellers do.

Back to the question: ‘What impact do I make on my former lover and his new family?’ Based on the cards below, I said the following: ‘You make no impact. None whatsoever.’

But let’s unpack this sentence. To begin with, we note something interesting: none of the usual significators showed up in the spread, namely the Man, the Woman, and the Snake, as a traditional representative for ‘the other woman,’ in this case, the Snake as a representation of our querent.

So what do we work with in the absence of significators? The playing-card insets, especially when they offer themselves as a magnificently clear representation of significators, albeit of the indirect kind. So my focus here will be mainly on the court cards. Let’s see what we can say about them.

The Lenormand playing card insets

The court card insets disclose the dynamics of how the parties involved – one direct, our querent, and two indirect whom the querent asked about – participate in the subtle suggestion that all implicated in the situation are trying to avoid the sticky conditions.

Although we know nothing about the two asked about, and whether they are trying to avoid anything, the cards give us an indication of how they figure in the equation both beyond their direct participation and also beyond their lack of agency or passive power in this context.

But this is exactly what makes third party readings exciting, namely that there are things we can ask the querent directly about the context, and that there are things we can only arrive at via deduction from a missing, but plausible context. If you like detective stories, then you’ll like reading for third parties regardless of your moral inclination.

I asked the querent here, just to validate my suspicion: ‘does the new wife of your former lover know about you?’ She said ‘yes’. So we have here part of the premise for why this woman thinks she may still be in the picture. I didn’t ask her what her hopes were. They were irrelevant to the question. But let’s see what else I said.

I proceeded from the center of the tableau and made this general statement: ‘a cloud has descended on the situation and everything is in the process of being laid to rest.’ By ‘everything’ I obviously meant everything pertaining to impact, as that was what the woman wanted to know. So I was not interested in talking about love, how it all ended, and who was depressed now. All of that was utterly uninteresting in relation to the question. What I looked at was the dynamics of the action. Here I noted the following:

The Cloud card features the King of Clubs on it, suggesting that our man of focus is right at the center of everything, yet indirectly represented. After all, we didn’t get the card of the Man on the table, as we might have otherwise.

The King of Clubs is aligned with the Queen of Diamonds on the Crossroads card, flanking him to the left. This closeness of the two court cards made me assume that this is the couple the querent wants to know about, thus leaving the Queen of Hearts on the Stork card in the first position to signify ‘the other woman,’ our querent.

In an extended interpretation, I can refer to the symbolism of the Stork, namely to change house and position, thus leading us to the conclusion that this woman, the Queen of Hearts, has willingly exchanged herself for another, the Queen of Diamonds, depicted on the card of the Crossroads, emphasizing a choice and an alternative path.

Now let us then assume that not only is the Queen of Diamonds the King of Clubs’ alternative option, but she is also the lesser candidate – she is below the Queen of Hearts, and therefore inferior in rank. But while she is a strong option, mirroring the card of prosperity, the Bear, she is still the second choice. In terms of imagery, we’re with the immediate ‘d’oh’ response, as the Queen of Diamonds can never beat the Queen of Hearts in matters of the heart.

Pointing out such details to a querent can have a real impact, especially if they happen to sit with a moment of trying to hide their disappointments. Nobody likes to hear that they make no impact, even if the context for their power to act is basically non-existent, simply by virtue of their not playing a role in it.

But knowing that you’re still the first, actually the Queen of Hearts, is way better than knowing that you have no influence. I get this insight by drawing a diagonal line from the Stork in the first position to the Coffin in the last position. Knowing that she is still the first made the heart of our querent jump, even if she actually already recognized the futility of her question.

In fact, as it happened here, the querent already knew the answer to her question beforehand, as it was embedded in the very act of her carrying the torch – for nothing tangible. But still she felt she needed to ask. A good thing that she did, for the cards here gave her a resolute picture of her loss of agency.

If we stick to the images of this tableau, we can actually also say that it’s not clear at all how the very idea of impact is manifest here. While we may say that the querent is asking about her power because she thinks she still has a stake in it, it looks like the other agents involved, the couple the querent wants to know about, don’t have a clue about their own power in their new relationship either. They are strongly clouded in their ways (Crossroads, Clouds, Bear).

This may explain the absence of significators proper in this tableau, that is, the absence of the Man, the Woman, and the Snake. They are only indirectly represented here via the court cards, simply because no one has any impact on anyone else involved (if we assume that this is yet another classic love triangle).

The card of the Clouds at the center, flanked by the Crossroads to the left and the Bear to the right, merely tells us that the central focus is weak and as transitory as the clouds, and that power (Bear) is divided (Crossroads) and sinking into the ground (Coffin below Bear).

But whose power are we talking about? The King’s or the Queen’s? To be more precise, what we obviously want to know is this: whose impact are we talking about exactly when we look at these cards, even though we already have the topic as a given in the question? We want to ask this question because, as the card of the Clouds touches all the other cards, it extends its function to all the other cards, which is to say, it places a veil on everything.

By looking at this this way we begin to understand why the card of the Book, the card of secrets, is right below the Clouds and the King. Let’s see what happens if we unpack some more.

Above the Clouds we find the Dog flanked by the Stork and the Tree. This makes us infer that however fickle the heart of the Queen of Hearts may be, in the head of the King of Clubs this heart is both the heart of a lover (Dog) and durable (Tree). However, as the Dog mirrors the Book, we can conclude that this is not a love that’s spoken of, but rather one that remains a closed chapter, left behind, and put to rest (Book flanked by Ship and Coffin).

If we look at the diagonal lines crossing the 9 cards, with the X marking the spot, we can say that the Queen of Heart’s impact is now a thing of memory (Tree to Ship via the Clouds), her own heart gone into dissolution too (Stork to Coffin via the Clouds). Observing this alone answers the querent’s question in a concrete way, while addressing her emotional turbulence too.

Now, however, if we were to go back to the motivation for asking what we can deem is a hopeless question, we could say the following based on looking at the ‘future’ column that features the cards of the Tree, the Bear, and the Coffin in it.

The querent, our Queen of Hearts, is asking the question because she feels moved (Stork a sign of change) by what she still perceives is a strong connection, exceeding the death of the relationship. In spiritual parlance, the Tree, the Bear, and the Coffin are significators for a connection strongly rooted in ancestral power. But what does this mean here? What impact may this information have on the querent’s question about impact?

We can point to a paradox and talk about the future in the past. The Tree connected to genealogy and family business, standing literally on what can be termed ‘inheritance,’ suggested by the Bear and the Coffin together, points to unresolved issues from the past that keep being carried into the future, but only as dead matter, as a dead end, perhaps even as a thing that’s ended before it began.

This is heavy, but significant. It’s heavy because we’re dealing with the future in the past, as in this situation: ‘we’re done, but it’s still here,’ whatever it is – perhaps the enduring heart. And it’s significant because of the everlasting relation between energy and entropy. Incidentally, the 9 Diamonds on the Coffin card represent energy in constant change, as diamonds are associated with fire, the nervous system, the mind and all its reflections.

On this, we can say that the cards tell a story about the querent and her pain in the soul, disclosing also a very specific key to the reconciliation of the unresolved. We are here with the notion of timing too, and about how far we can stretch our analysis into the space of the other we read for, a space belonging to what they are ready to hear.

While the answer to the querent’s question was already on the table in the first 5 seconds into the session, it was clear that by stretching it, by going into some of the nuances on the table, we could arrive at a deeply felt connection that opened itself up to action.

Let’s see how: if we gather the 3 major lines that lead to the Coffin, we can say the following: the heart is dead (Stork to Coffin). The roots of the love are dead (Tree to Coffin), and the distant secret is dead (Ship to Coffin). Meanwhile, a veil of mist and fog is descended upon the misfortune.

This means that it’s up to the querent herself if she wants to lift the veil, unearth the future in the past heroically, and penetrate with a question through the traces left by the still pulsating heart. She can ask herself: what is the purpose of this?

It’s also up to the querent herself if she chooses to stand by the catafalque and mourn. Meanwhile the same question applies: what is the purpose of this? Insofar as one is at the mercy of the clouds, as they don’t disperse on anyone’s command, the only available option is the practice of acceptance, or waiting. If the clouds dissolve, it will leave the querent in a state of clarity about the nature of her experience. Ultimately what the cards do here is articulate two choices: make an effort to lift the veil, or accept the fog and wait until the weather clears. All it takes is commitment to the truth that the heart already knows, and commitment to action against obscurations.

*

The Read Like the Devil Lenormand

More of this? Get the book as it offers many examples of how to read the square of 9 cards with an eye for the detective story.