AUTHOR’S NOTE: As sportscaster Howard Cosell might have said “How about that!” I’m calling this a “maximum mea culpa” episode because I was guilty of not trusting the cards and being too impatient with a prediction. To absolve myself, I’m going to have to choke down a big slice of crow pie, walk widdershins thrice around the altar of Mlle. Lenormand, say “tres Santa Marias” and flagellate myself with a birch rod.

Last week I did two 3×3 readings for three valuable pieces of grill cookware that went missing. I created two Lenormand spreads for this, one to search inside the home and one to look outside. The “inside” reading predicted that I would find them in the vicinity of the front door but in the northwest quadrant of the basement rather than on the main level of the house; probably near the floor; and most likely concealed. I spent an hour ransacking the front wall of the basement in that area, moving and opening numerous storage bins, and found nothing. Then I did an “outside” reading, which said the items had probably passed out of my control, so I gave up.

But last night I went into the basement to dig out a pair of sandals I hadn’t seen since returning from our Florida vacation at the beginning of April; I was pretty sure they were on the floor near the stairwell that aligns with the front door of the house. I shifted a pile of moving pads that had migrated there since the last time I used the cookware. And there – flash of lightning and resounding thunderclap! – were the two most valuable of the missing items, right where the reading said they should be: slightly to the northwest, in the general vicinity of the front door but down a level, near the floor, and concealed. I had a true Archibald MacLeish “shock-and-awe” moment (or maybe a Gomer Pyle “Goll-ee!” epiphany would be more accurate).

The only false note (beyond the fact that the least expensive of the items – since replaced – is still missing) was that the objects were about ten feet back from the plane of the basement wall where I did not think to look since I had already combed the area thoroughly before doing the reading (or so I thought). But horary astrologer John Frawley, on whose system I based the “location mechanics” of my spreads, says that determining direction and distance inside the home isn’t reliable. About the best we can do is pinpoint the floor of interest (attic, second floor, entry level or basement) and the relevant room or section, along with elevation within the room, pertinent furnishings and relative visibility. The rest is up to our thoroughness and persistence in searching.

So I should have felt pretty good, but I was a bit nettled that I hadn’t measured up to the precision of the reading. I can only think that I had removed the items from the grill cabinet when I replaced the gas burners last summer and never put them back. The Lenormand gods were essentially saying “What part of ‘stupid’ don’t you understand?” Call this an object lesson in success and failure: cards 100, me zero!