You don’t reshuffle

Students often ask me: ‘do you reshuffle the cards if the significators in the grand tableau fall in the margins?’ My answer is always a resolute no. Why would I? What would motivate me to do it? Either we work with chance, or with ‘if I don’t like it, I’ll ask again.’ I don’t like the latter. So I don’t reshuffle. Not even when other mishaps happen. Let me give you a fun example.

When I take a new cohort in for a course, I tend to think about how I greet the students. I can go with the standard formulations and get on with the program. But how flat is ‘thank you, I’m so happy you’re here…?’ Is there something else I can say to them?

Once I decided to ask the cards about it, a method you may also practice, especially if you find yourself in the situation when you don’t know what to say to another, either because the situation is awkward, or becasue you may simply be at a loss for words.

So I asked my cards in connection with the intake of new students on a Lenormand foundation course.

What do I say to them?

I shuffled the cards and got the Dog, the Coffin, and the Whip. I have to admit that when I saw these cards I had a moment of hesitation, but then I went on and had a major laugh at it. Let’s see why.

I mean, just look at these cards: now what do I say to them, a bunch of enthusiastic and happy new students? I decided to deliver a message that was as straightforward as I could possibly produce, mentally and honestly. I decided to say this to the new group:

Whatever is familiar to you about the Lenormand cards will be buried. Not only will I bury it, but I will also make sure that it stays dead, having no chance to be resurrected.

I was happy with this answer, also because being quite Zen makes me refrain from imagining, projecting, or mirroring, what the others in the classroom might think of this message. They will think what they will think. It’s not for me to judge what others think. People think many things all the time. Some of this thinking may be aligned with reality, and some remains the expression of opinion devoid of substance.

I was ready to take a snapshot of the cards and post it in the group alongside my greetings, when I noticed that 7 of them were on another table. 7 good cards! The Star, the Woman, the Moon, the Fish, the Book, and the Heart. I had read earlier with this deck for a client, and when I was done, I didn’t put the cards together again and back in their pouch. Bad habit that cost me a few good decks, and yet I never learn…

‘Damn,’ I thought, how can I welcome the new students in the Lenormand class via a reading with an incomplete deck? How professional is that? What if these cards had shown up in the reading? I might have had a good cause to run with the platitudes or the flattery acts that I was trying to avoid…

For a second I did entertain this thought: I could redo the whole thing by asking the question again and by reshuffling the now complete deck in order to remedy my mistake. But then I thought about how this would run counter to what I preach: You always read the cards you get on the table, no matter how then land. Nothing more, nothing less.

‘What if’ and ‘let me do it again until I get the good cards that would show me what I would rather hear’ are not incentives part of my practice. So, whether appropriate or not, I welcomed my new students with these words:

Whatever is familiar to you about the Lenormand cards will be buried. Not only will I bury it, but I will also make sure that it stays dead, having no chance to be resurrected.

In my classroom I stress the importance of discipline, including being consistent with whatever method we happen to choose when we read for specific events. I like the idea of learning what there is to learn the disciplined way, because old wisdoms that came before us proved the validity and efficiency of the saying, ‘no pain, no gain.’

As my sole aim is to teach people to read cards for precision, I can’t do that without correcting old ways. Correcting can be offensive, but when the point is demonstrable and thus beyond negotiation, there’s much to be gained by simply accepting it at face value.

In addition, as I almost always offer my students a practice in the form of ‘the fortuneteller’s moment of Zen’ what I teach is the value of never taking the process of learning personally. Learning is learning, not tending to a constructed image of some wounded self. I was ready to use my whip in a friendly, yet resolute way.

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But after the work there are rewards

My essential course in reading the Lenormand cards is actually full of rewarding moments.