AUTHOR’S NOTE: During my studies I occasionally see a distinction being made between a narrative “storytelling” approach to explaining the cards in a reading, in which a series of scenes is presented much like the panels of a comic strip, and a less-anecdotal descriptive style that defines the broader relationship among the cards, often in both coupled and decoupled pairs and triplets. This difference has been even more forcefully emphasized during online discussions between experienced cartomancers. Clearly, a judicious sense of order and precedent must be established in either case to present a coherent picture.

I have always pursued the narrative convention during my use of the tarot cards, which I’ve been doing since 1972. The cards are read in sequence, from one end of the layout to the other: something happens, then something else happens that either reinforces or counteracts the first event, and together they produce an outcome. This creates a seamless continuum, a rolling cause-and-effect progression that devolves upon a single-pointed conclusion: “Yes, you will get that promotion!” or “Sorry, your ex isn’t coming back.” I typically don’t revisit an earlier card until the summation at the end, when I might link the outcome card to significant precursors in the body of the reading.

The only exceptions to this model that I can think of are: 1) the practice of Elemental Dignities, where the center card in a triplet is considered the “principal” card and those adjacent to it are “modifiers” that affect the potency of the principal, thus effectively playing both ends against the middle; 2) the situation where one card in a reading stands out decisively from the rest regardless of where it sits in the spread, becoming the main focus of the story to which all of the other cards are referred; and 3) when not using a positional spread, something I almost never do.

Things are a bit different in the Lenormand community, where I get the feeling that the narrative style of interpretation is looked down upon because it offers little interplay between cards that don’t follow one another in series, and it places insufficient emphasis on combining cards to create vignettes that are blended into an overall perspective. Due to the way Lenormand cards are customarily read, I usually refrain from a direct, point-to-point narrative presentation, instead looking at pairs and triplets in various ways that let me discern where the main focus of the reading lies; I will then offer two or three key observations about what I discover. If it seems warranted, I might flesh out the discourse with a run through the narrative sequence but it’s an uncommon event.

My readings tend to be very economical and pragmatically to-the-point, with little digression into psycho-spiritual or mystical territory in either tarot or Lenormand. Tarot reading is more prone to it, but the kind of imaginative impressions that flourish in a discursive setting (typically derived from intuitive conjecture or visual free-association) are not where Lenormand’s strengths lie. With single-card Lenormand definitions I avoid them like the plague, although I might loosen the reins a little when contemplating a group of cards where influences either converge or collide. The goal there is to paint a compelling portrait using a diverse interpretive palette and vigorous linguistic brushstrokes that complement one another, not merely to describe a straightforward evolution over time. Get out the tarot cards for that.