AUTHOR'S NOTE: I've worked with the Thoth deck for over 50 years because I think it cuts much deeper than the rest. I'm also fond of the Tarot de Marseille (TdM) and the Lenormand cards, and I'm chipping away at playing-card divination, the I Ching and geomancy. The Waite-Smith (RWS) deck is far down in … Continue reading “Three Sizes Too Small:” My RWS Apostasy
Lenormand – General
Rethinking My Online Business Model
AUTHOR'S NOTE: For the last nine years I've keep my charges for online tarot, Lenormand and horary astrology readings roughly in line with my face-to-face sessions, even though it takes quite a bit longer to write everything down in a report than it does to deliver it orally across a table. I even tried raising … Continue reading Rethinking My Online Business Model
“Resource Management” Cards in Lenormand Reading
AUTHOR'S NOTE: This is the fifth installment of the series in which I'm experimenting with informally linking the 36 Lenormand cards to the 12 signs and 36 decanates of the astrological zodiac. This time I'm looking at the sign of Taurus and its "native" 2nd House as indicators of personal resource management. I'm bringing in … Continue reading “Resource Management” Cards in Lenormand Reading
The Maverick Cartomant, Part 1: Lenormand
AUTHOR'S NOTE: As I back away from involvement in the online tarot community, a decision I mentioned in a recent post, I've been seeking other divination sites that share my more exacting standards and expectations. One discipline with which I've spent a good deal of time over the last fourteen years is Lenormand reading, but … Continue reading The Maverick Cartomant, Part 1: Lenormand
“Distributed Lenormand” – Normalizing the Grand Tableau
AUTHOR'S NOTE: I recently performed a Grand Tableau (GT) in which all of the negative cards were scattered far-and-wide throughout the population. Few of them appeared in close combination with either the topic cards or each other, making for what I told the sitter looked like a "roller-coaster ride" of ups-and-downs with only a couple … Continue reading “Distributed Lenormand” – Normalizing the Grand Tableau
Revisiting the Six-Card Lenormand Mini-Tableau
AUTHOR'S NOTE: I created this simple design some time ago based on a segment lifted from the Lenormand Grand Tableau (GT) and decided to elaborate on its use. I took my original cue from the linear "narrative" approach to interpretation as opposed to the noun/qualifier "descriptive" style of reading, and grafted it onto the structure … Continue reading Revisiting the Six-Card Lenormand Mini-Tableau
Sensible Divination – Oh, My Stars and Cards!
Those of a certain age will remember Bullwinkle Moose exclaiming "Oh, my stars and garters!" whenever something surprised him, and I certainly resemble that remark (chronologically if not semantically since a certain rude three-letter acronym now replaces such quaint language). AUTHOR'S NOTE: When I began my esoteric journey as an astrologer in 1970, I was … Continue reading Sensible Divination – Oh, My Stars and Cards!
Mistaking the “Medium” for the “Message”
AUTHOR'S NOTE. In his 1967 study The Medium Is The Message: An Inventory of Effects, Canadian communication theorist Marshall McLuhan proposed that the medium by which knowledge is transmitted can have an impact in shaping our understanding of the world that goes far beyond the information it conveys. A good case in point is the … Continue reading Mistaking the “Medium” for the “Message”
A Mini-Lesson in Card Counting-and-Pairing
AUTHOR'S NOTE: When I first encountered the concepts of "counting round" and "mirroring" in the Lenormand Grand Tableau, I noticed a strong similarity between those 18th-Century cartomantic practices and the "counting-and-pairing" steps of the "Opening of the Key" (OotK) method for working with the tarot that was developed by the Hermetic Order of the Golden … Continue reading A Mini-Lesson in Card Counting-and-Pairing
“Lenormand 101” in Brief
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Even with nearly twelve years of study and practice behind me, I'm still far less experienced with divination using the Lenormand cards than I am with tarot reading after five decades of involvement, so I haven't felt confident (or competent) in publishing a Lenormand e-book to accompany my five tarot volumes. The fact … Continue reading “Lenormand 101” in Brief