Going with the gut: lenormand & intuition

Over the year and half of my journey with lenormand oracle studies, I have seen two groups forming on the lenormand front. One group is a believer that you shoud go by your "intuition" and not by the book. The other more traditional and more "rooted" group believes that one should not deviate from the basic meanings of the symbols and the methods to read them (combinations etc). I have been strictly Group B since day 1. The reason behind that is if you do not build the foundation by book, your building may collapse at a later stage when you are adding up layers after layers.

This does not necessarily mean I have never seen my intuition or my gut feeling play any roles. Seeing some other respectable lenormand readers who have been at it for longer than I am, they talk about the gut feelings taking a stronger position in your lenormand interpretation after a while. I guess now when its been over a year, I can sense it, like literally. I want to share an experience of such a "gut" feeling from yesterday.

My exams result had been expected for quite sometime. There is no proper date announced so students play guess games mostly. Some of them were of the view it will be 24th august and my idea was it will be sometime between 24th and 28th August. Nobody expected 23rd. When I pulled Book as theme card, my gut said it was something about my studies, and with that there was Rider + Clouds. When I looked at Book + Rider, my first thought was "exams result" and looking at Rider+Clouds its like clearing up of some sort, a news which clears things up since the lighter side of Clouds is where the confusion is clearing up.

The next day I opened my grade book on Student Account page, and it was there!

So you can see that lenormand does not tell you to strictly follow the meanings they have given you in books or in your lists or on any forum. It tells you to build a strong foundation as to what the Book can be, what the Rider can be and what the Clouds can be.Then within those limits, your gut plays along & lets you know what the Book, Rider & Clouds ARE for that particular day ahead.

This also clarifies things for those who are worried about daily draws not exactly telling whats happening ahead. Have patience fellas and keep practising!

Happy Reading !

Houses in Grand Tableau

One of my most favourite techniques to interpret my Grand Tableau with ease and accuracy.

Houses are the areas covered by each card, if the cards were placed in original numerological order. i.e 1-Rider in house 1, Clover in house 2, Ship in house 3 and so on. Now each card covers a particular matter as a house (just like the astrological houses in Zodiac, We have Aries , Mars as the natural ruler of 1st house but we may have a different ASC sign and ruler). There is a complete and very informative list for meanings of each house given by Jayce. I have been following these meanings in addition to Iris Treppner's course.

Treppner has a different technique which also happens to have proved quite effective and accurate. This technique involves using the combinations approach, I think just to keep you focused and for the ease purposes. In this technique you are pretty much doing the same thing, but if you are a beginner it would be easier to look at them as combinations. e.g in my GT here

The first house was Rider and the card in house 1 is Ring.  I will read it as Rider+Ring which is a standard combination for a news about a contract. Similarly Cross is in house of Ring, therefore its read as Ring+Cross which makes a relationship very painful and stressful at times. This way you can keep combining all the cards and keep finding what is happening in each area of your life for that time period (e.g I do a monthly so Clover tells me how lucky I'm this month, or 24-Heart tells me what is happening in area of love, and 35-Anchor tells me what is happening with the job etc).

You can do this for all the houses and there is lots of information there.

How I Do It:

Some people keep on combining houses from one to next e.g Moon in house of Cross, feelings are a test this month, Cross is in house of Ring, so these feelings are related to a relationship, Ring is in house of Rider, this relationship is on your mind most of the times, Rider is in house of Anchor, and these thoughts are going to stay for a long term and so on. you can go on and on and make a whole story by combining the houses and jumping around till you reach the Moon card again. I find that confusing because sometimes its more than 10 cards at a time. This is when the story starts blurring. I would rather just look at the house where that card is located and the natural house for that card. e.g if I want to know about my project (Book), I will see where Book is, and then what is happening in house of Book (house 26). Sometimes (remember, sometimes only) I will also see whats happening in that house whose natural ruler is located in house 26, but not always.
With my monthly Grand Tableau, I have noticed that they are a great way to form combinations because you usually know what has happened in your life in this one month and how the effect of that card residing in that house has effected that area of you life e.g whatever is is house of Mice is stressing you or adding to the stress, you would know it when you read it as Mice+That card sitting in house 23. Write the combinations down every month and you will have plenty for your own list.
There was something else too which I wanted to write about the houses, I just cannot recall now. You wash this down and I will be back, updating it when I remember *scratching head*

Knighting in Grand Tableau!

I have noticed from the results of keyword search on a popular search engine that Knighting has been quite an issue with many learners. I myself have been there where I did not know how to do it but it is really easy, specially if you have been a person who plays chess.

Knighting actually comes from the game of Chess where it describes how the Knight in Chess is allowed to move about the chessboard. I will explain it step by step:

1: Choose the Card you want to perform knighting for. e.g I choose the Lady card 29. This card is my Knight now. This is where I'm standing and this card is about what I need more information. you can choose other cards e.g Book for education, Heart for love, Ring for marriage etc.

Example 1:
2: Since the Lady card is to far right, we cannot move towards right, so I will start moving backward, 2 cards (Coffin, Roads) and then one card upwards.Key
Lady+Key tells me I'm sure about what I want next.

3: Then I will move in same direction and this time after two cards (Coffin, Roads) I will go downwards.

Example 2:
4: Since I cannot move to right, but if I could I would have done the same thing towards right, e.g for Child I'd move two cards to right (Stars, Key) and then one card upwards which gives me Book.
Child +Book = Young lady or child is studying

Then I will move one step downwards instead of upwards, which gives me, two steps towards right (Stars, Key) and one step downwards which is Roads , Child+Roads = Young lady/child is facing a choice.

Same thing I can do for child on left side, like I did for lady, 2 cards (Tree, Ship) and then one card up (Fox) and one down (Tower)
Child + Fox = Child/Young lady is cheating/lying
Child + Tower = Child is abandoned or alone.

Example 3: 
5: Next step is to move up or down first and then left or right. Pretty much reverse of what we did in steps 1-4. I will take Birds for explaining this one.
If I'm standing at Birds, I will move two steps down (Sun, Rider) and then right, Moon.
Birds + Moon = A phone call at night

Now, again, two cards downwards, this time going left, Heart
Birds + Heart = A lovely message, an affectionate couple.

6: The same procedure, this time in upwards direction. Two cards to up (Stars, House) then right, Book
Birds + Book = A secret phone call. A secret is causing anxiety.

This time, 2 cards upwards (Stars, House), but to the left. Whip
Birds+Whip = A conflicting situation causing anxiety.

Things to remember:

• You cannot do all 8 combinations for each card. It will depend on the position of the card in the spread e.g you have 8 combinations for Birds (with Whip, Book, Heart, Moon, Flower, Fish, Tree, Storks) but you have only 3 for Lady (Dog, Key and Mountain).
• If you do 9x4 formation, you can have maximum 6 combinations for one card.
• Knighting is done to get extra combinations for the card, e.g to further explain things for Lady, or for love, or a project etc. These combinations give extra or supporting information. Try this for yourself and see how it adds to your interpretation.

Daily Draw!

I try to write about every new thing I find with my deck and my readings to keep my friends updated, specially those who are new and are frustrated because they are not familiar with the deck yet.

When we are working with any divine or fortune-telling system, we try to find the DEEP stuff or intricate details with it. While we are working with this deck, we get small details which we tend to overlook. Specially when one is doing a reading for a week, a month a year vs. a reading done for one day (which usually stretches over to 1-3 days). We tend to go deeper than we are supposed to. Its one of the reasons why I stopped doing daily draws a while ago, because I was thinking the energy of that card was not actually showing in my day, I was rather twisting the happenings of my day to make it fit the symbol or meaning of the cards and that is a bad way to practice with this deck.

Every card has some meaning, a symbol with a meaning or a keyword associated with it. There are levels on those meanings. We can either look at the deepest esoteric meanings, or the subtle, over-the-top layer meanings. e.g if I pull a daily card as Ring, it does not mean I'm getting married today, or Rider+Heart is not going to make someone fall in love with me today, or Garden+Rider means I will be jogging in park this evening, the energies of these cards is even more subtle than this. We should look at the hints that occur here and there during the day.

Keep practising but practise the right way. Daily draw is an amazing way to familiarise oneself with this deck, by be careful and do not overdo the meanings or analysis of the day.

Blessings!

Reading Lenormand!

All readers, all learners and everyone who works with any kind of divination system says it over and over that one should always have one's personal system. No matter how many blogs you visit, how many helpers you get, no matter how many books you read, at the end of the day it will all narrow down to one method that is your own and that works the best for you.

All those beginners, and readers who are reading my methods of "nailing it", I swear it won't help you unless there is a personal touch there. Whatever way you read the cards, yearly, monthly, weekly, daily, Please try to find your own system and your own method and trust me that will be one method that will give you astonishing readings. When you read them, do it your way, no matter what you are advised, or whatever some well-known authors say. Your cards and your intuition will work with you according to YOUR natural system, one method which is YOURS all the way and how will you know it that its yours? Because it works! That's how you know its yours!

Lenormand Grand Tableau: How to?

I have been asked by a few friends about how I do it which system I follow and what techniques I incorporate. I do not follow any particular system, what I do is a mix of techniques which I have learnt over time. I did my first Grand Tableau spread in August and it was focused on one area and also covered a period of Four months. After that I also started doing one Grand Tableau for each month for practice. Initially there was TOO much going on, too much to take in, too much to handle, so many cards, so many combinations, the stories did not make any sense, it was  a mess. However, with the passage of time and trying different techniques, I did learn a lot (and still am) about different methods and different techniques.

I use a 8x4 +4 system. I never even tried that 9x4 system, although this is the spread used by Iris Treppner in her course.

This Grand Tableau was not dated in my Journal but its from sometime around August 2011.  It was done generally so it covers a time of 3-6 months.

The Cut:

Andy has generously provided us this technique in which we cut the deck three times from left to right and peek at the bottom card. These three cards are the root of the tableau and are always important.

The Four Corners:

I start off with the corners as the main, highlight, theme, significant event etc of the month. Card 1 + 32 and 8+25. Then 1+25 and 8+32 for extra information. This is what usually occupies me during the month.

Example: Anchor + Moon = emotional stability
Coffin + Clover = some lucky transformation, some suffering which will happen for good reasons.
Anchor + Clover = Small work, some stability or stagnation for good
Coffin + Moon = emotional pain, suffering

Locating the significator:

Next I look at the Lady card, the house it is in and whats its position with respect to the spread.

Extreme Left= Looking forward to something nicer this month, future-oriented
Extreme right = Pre-occupied with thoughts, regrets, things from past. Looking back continuously

Extreme bottom = Too much on head/shoulders.
Extreme top= totally in control

I have been in all the four extremes mentioned above and I have learnt the above lessons from experience. Last month I was at extreme left, so looking forward to new things in life, in high spirits. This month I was at extreme right, too much thoughts and regrets of pasts haunted me.

The House lady is in (for me, for men it would be Man card 28) is very important. It tells me my orientation for the month and also the card which is in house 29, is my general "mood" for the month.

Example: Lady is in house 5, of Tree, I have some learning to do, some growth, spiritual and emotional well being. With Dog in house 29, I'd say I'll rather be friendly, helpful and trustful this month.With me in house 5 of long term goals, and Dog in house 29, I will learn to be trustful and friendly.

Past, Present, Future:

Look at the cards surrounding Lady.To the left is the past, and to the right is the future.

Example:  In past there have been some blockages and they were making me feel stuck, but grounded. These blockages were of complicated nature but I overcame them and reached the spot where I was feeling optimistic.
In future there are some troubles which will lead me to cut off quickly from whatever was causing the pain.

Diagonals:

Here comes an important thing about diagonals. I have learnt this from Andy's blog and this says:
Diagonals to left of Lady is Past and to right is the future;

1. Left Lower diagonal: Farthest past
2. Line behind Lady : Farther Past
3. Left Upper Diagonal: Recent Past
4. Right Upper diagonal: Immediate future
5. Line to right : Farther future
6. Right Lower diagonal : Farthest future

GT for April 2012; This spread is for explaining this timeline only, for rest of explanation please refer to first spread given at the top.

You are going in a clockwise direction and along a timeline.
The cards below Lady is what is in my control, the cards above are what is in my head, what I'm thinking or bothered about.

The Column I'm in is my present situation.

Miscellaneous matters:

Back to original spread given at top.Look at other cards to see whats going on in those areas.For these you can use standard cards for that area e.g Heart for Love, Ring for your marriage if you are married or in a long-term relationship, Book for studies, Man for your significant other.

28-Man is the most important man for that time in your life. Look at the cards surrounding him to see who it is referring to. Sometimes we cannot say for sure if that is the new boy-friend, or a brother, sometimes its a hunch or one particular card tells you its him.

Example: When I did this draw I was single. Lets look at Man card to see who he is. The House is closer, it can be a family member. Tower , someone Tall (all of us are really tall). Coffin, he is ill or going through some pain. He is in house of Bear, can be father. In house of Man is Clouds, he is in trouble, going through a rough period. I would say its my father. He was dealing with too much at that time and all the cards are pointing to that. He had a surgery for anal fissure (Scythe in house of Snake) shortly after this spread. He lost his mother shortly after the spread (Coffin in house of Coffin). 

Similarly lets look at 24- Heart for love.

Example: Heart is in house of Key. Love is coming my way or I will find a way to unlock my emotions. In house of Heart is House, so there is comfort. Next to Heart is Ring - Key - Storks, a change is definitely coming. Well it did, not shortly after the spread but within three months. If Ring and Heart are close by, there will be a happy union.

Who is who? (and what is what?)

Another successful and better alternative to the above mentioned method is shuffling the deck and asking which card is person X in this spread? This will give you a much better result. A fellow member on the forum mentioned this technique and it works excellently for me. You do not have to guess and second guess your theories about who is who. (and what is what).

Reflection and Mirroring:

Next step is reflection and mirroring. It is a classic method from Iris Treppner's course in which you make combinations as if you were folding the Grand Tableau horizontally and vertically. e.g
Card 1 + card 8
Card 2 + card 7
Card 3 + Card 6
Keep going like with each row.

For vertical: Card 1+ Card 25
Card 2 + Card 26
Card 3+ Card 27

and so on.

Similarly, more combinations can be used by:
Card 1+ Card 32
Card 2+ Card 31
Card 3+ Card 30

Card 9 + Card 24
Card 10 + Card 23

You can learn more and more about each card using reflection, mirroring and knighting. I'm not used to knighting as of yet but some people do that. I will not explain that here because I do not do it.

Houses:

Next step is houses. Each position in the spread is associated with a card. If you put cards in original numerological order starting with Rider in position 1 and Cross in position 36, this is the houses reference for that. Rider is first house, what is coming , what your current thoughts are. Clover is where you are lucky. Ship is the house of longings and so on.This way you will know what is going on in each area. Houses are further explained here.

Knighting:

This was a really extensive topic which required detailed examples, therefore, I did a separate post here.

Counting:

This is another very very useful technique I learnt. This techniques tells you to pick up a card as yoru significator (Lady/Man for individual, Heart for love, Book for project etc) and then count a specific number of cards from that cards and make up a story. Treppner says count five, so naturally I count five. I choose Lady, counting five cards from Lady (Lady card is number 1), and the fifth card is my card to be included in story

Lady >> 1-2-3-4>> 5-Rider>> 1-2-3-4->>5- Tower>> 1-2-3-4>>5 - Lilies and so on

you get it, right?

Lady - Rider - Tower - Lilies - House - Dog - Ring - Snake

Lady is receiving a news from an important man who brings her comfort  and this is a friend in a relationship which is complicated.

You can do the same for any significator card in your spread, Lady, Heart, Ring, Book, Child, Anchor etc.

The Fours:

I have used this techniques and it works very well for me. Although the surrounding cards in a spread expalin everything, sometimes we need a clearer and concise answer. For that, Treppner suggesta technique. You pick up every fourth card in the spread and shuffle it. Now think of a question. e.g Will I get any money? The Fish is my significator. Now out of those 9 cards you picked up, put one card on top of Fish and interpret accordingly. If I get clover, then yes, I am getting money. I usually pose 3 important questions and use 3 cards to answer each, utilizing all 9 cards in 3 questions.

e.g my question would be?

What should I be warned about (Fox)? and put three out of those 9 cards on fox card and interpret.

Who can help in the project (Book)? and three cards to answer this question

What kind of news will I receive (Letter)? and the remaining three cards to answer this.

To be Continued...

What you ask is what matters!

I have noticed something since I started working with this oracle. The importance of question!
How you ask or What you ask is the most important aspect of a reading. Many a times we formulate a question and then without paying enough focus on "what" we are asking we draw out cards. Only later on some one pin-points or we realize that there can be more than one meaning for one question.

I encountered this thing many times. Once when I asked a question about my brother and posted it on AT and someone said there can be more than one side to this answer. Next was when I was asking a question about my karmic soul mate and once I encountered it yesterday. I will explain with an example:

I wanted to ask the cards when I'm going to see (meet) this particular guy again. What would be the first thing that pops up:

When will I see him again?

Now look at the dimensions it can work it. I might see his picture in my albums, so technically I am "seeing" him.

Should I ask "When will I meet him again?"

If I'm crossing a road and find him on the other side, standing with his friend and we stop to say hello, technically I did "meet" him, didn't I?

So you see we do not consider these things when we formulate our questions. Some people say its in your head the cards know what you are thinking about etc, but I disagree, because I have had instances where my wrong question gave me the "right" answer, but that was not the question I should have been asking. I will post another example, an instance from last night, which made me stop, ponder and write this post here for others to benefit from.
For now I can just give following suggestions about formulating your questions:

1. Write your question down: It always helps you focusing. i always get distracted. Writing the question down helps me in focusing on what I'm asking. Besides re-reading the question after lying the cards down helps me in  giving a direction to my "story".

2. Be specific: Instead of asking everything in one go, break your problem into smaller questions and then find answers.

3. Look at your questions from different angles before shuffling the cards out. You might be surprised for what you get.

4. Take your time. there is no rushing here. If you are short on time, come back later. Do not rush.

This is all for right now, I have lots more to share after I analysed my GT for Feb 2012 last night, but I have to come back later!!

Blessings!

How I read my daily draw

I started learning this deck with daily draws. First I started pulling out 3 cards, reading them as 1+2, 2+3, 1+3 and getting information. Later on, being tempted by the idea of learning more about rest of the cards (three not being enough) , I started pulling out 5 cards for one day. This gets hectic after a while because I thought I was assigning my meanings to the cards, according to whatever happened that day, instead of learning about the true meanings of each card which should manifest in my day. That was when I started pulling out 7 cards for each week. It is also said in Iris Treppner's course that 1-3 cards take usually 1-3 days for manifesting. Therefore, using 1-2 cards for each day makes sense. Besides I like working out on their combinations, like how Dog +Heart is different from Heart + Dog.

Therefore, I started taking out 2 cards, occasionally a third clarifying card since December 13,2011 and so far it has worked really well for me. On the other hand 7-cards weekly draw works well as for the whole week too.

Here is how I do it:
Before going bed every night, I take out my journal, enter the date for next day, then I shuffle the cards clearing my mind. After that I spread the cards in a half-circle in front of me and close my eyes. From then on, I follow my guts to pull out two cards.

I turn the cards over and try to make a combo out of the two cards.
 Example:

Dog + Lilies

This is a friend/a loyal lover, who is older and wiser. I would call it lover because Lilies can be an affair/a lover too, a with Dog it is someone who is loyal to me and protective about me.

I decided to pull out a clarifier, because that would explain: what about him?

Garden:
So either I'm meeting him, or we will discuss something on-line (because Garden has often represented social networking sites for me) or its something to do with people around us.

Next day, I ended up figuring out that my lover (Lilies) wanted a friendly opinion (Dog +Lilies) about how he should handle people he deals with. He was pretty much upset because of how people spread wrong words about him and when I was advising him on how not to be bothered, he said I was his best friend and the way he can talk to me he has never talked to anyone closer before.

So this is how you can pull out two cards, for your day and then take out clarifier as many as you want, but the lesser the better specially if you are a  newbie like me!