Lenormand metaphysics (split from Trying my hand at a nine card spread)

[Barleywine]

Interesting perspective Barleywine:

Here is the deal from my perspective: The divine wants to communicate in a reading. However, the Divine never read all those fancy books or web sites on cartomancy, and doesn't know all those clever techniques. That is one reason as to why there tends to be so much error in many readings. People are trying to use techniques to provide all the details when the Divine wants the reader to get the big picture. Now, I realize that most readers will disagree with the approach of simplicity, and that is just fine. People do tend to like their rules and techniques. We all have to find our own way.

I respect that. I'm more of a Spinozan Pantheist myself. But certainly, before I use any of the more iterative techniques, I look for big-picture "signature" themes or motifs, what used to be called a "gestalt" approach when I was first learning how to synthesize an astrological chart. I just carried the concept over into tarot and now Lenormand. Something important will usually show up in more than one way. So for me, "simplicity" provides the vessel and more "granular" techniques fill it up with detail.

I find this a little harder to do with the GT, which often has "clusters" or "pockets" of localized significance depending on the various focus areas of interest to the querent. I also find it unrewarding with 3-card spreads because there are too many gaps in the narrative for my taste. But it works well with 9 cards.

But I was also an engineer for most of my career, and always look for an underlying (ideally organic) structure in any method of divination. I don't have much patience for more enigmatic methods that are impervious to scrutiny and "just work" without much of a conceptual framework. Hopefully, any such accretion of structure upon cartomancy was arrived at empirically, through experiential trial-and-error over a long period of time (like classical astrology in its infancy), and not just cooked up by every budding writer with a "better idea" and adopted by consensus of the less-informed or less-critical.

What has facinated me with the central focus card is the unlikely number of times that the Man or Woman card comes up randomly in that position when I'm doing a more general "current situation" reading for someone without a specific question. I figured there's around a 3% probability of that happening. The "trigger' card I'm less convinced of, but it seems to make sense as a "tone-setter" in the same way the second, "covering" card does in the tarot Celtic Cross. I see that some people use the first three cards in the GT for this purpose, but I don't at this point.

 

[Izzydunne]

Barleywine:

Thank you for your thoughtful reply.

You said: " I am more of a Spinozan Pantheist myself".

I totally agree that the Divine is in all things, and yet it has a consciousness. So, when one asks a question in a psychic or card reading, where do the answers come from? If one asks with a sense of humility and wishing for the divine to speak to them, and they don't clutter the message with too many techniques, it will be simple, elegant, and accurate. However, since the Divine is in all things, you could address the same question to a rock. However, I don't think the answer would be forth coming. You may think this to be an extreme example, but it does make the point rather nicely.

As final thought, and I have said this many times: If the answer is correct it has come from the Divine, if incorrect it comes from the ego.

 

[Barleywine]

Barleywine:

Thank you for your thoughtful reply.

You said: " I am more of a Spinozan Pantheist myself".

I totally agree that the Divine is in all things, and yet it has a consciousness. So, when one asks a question in a psychic or card reading, where do the answers come from? If one asks with a sense of humility and wishing for the divine to speak to them, and they don't clutter the message with too many techniques, it will be simple, elegant, and accurate. However, since the Divine is in all things, you could address the same question to a rock. However, I don't think the answer would be forth coming. You may think this to be an extreme example, but it does make the point rather nicely.

As final thought, and I have said this many times: If the answer is correct it has come from the Divine, if incorrect it comes from the ego.

Not being facetious here, but practitioners of lithomancy would very rightly conclude that an answer can come from a rock (well, from a "manipulation of rocks"}. Rocks can also be used in geomancy (that's the method I use, after Israel Regardie), but again its the manipulation and not the rocks themselves that produce answers; they're just the agent, in the same way that cards are "agents."

I've studied the hermetic qabalah for decades, and I'm comfortable with the idea of three increasingly subtle worlds beyond the material realm of Earth. I've always believed that any effective method of divination opens a channel into higher levels of being and consciousness. Purity of intent is what determines whether you connect with "divine inspiration" or just veer off into astral mischief, where the denizens love to play off the Ego. It's one of the reasons that unprincipled (or maybe just ignorant) use of things like ouija boards was so dangerous to the impressionable.

 

[Barleywine]

Interesting perspective Barleywine:

Here is the problem with trigger cards, middle card, cards on the corners, directional facing cards, knighting, etc., they are techniques. The thing about techniques is that sometimes the technique works and sometimes it doesn't. As such, that makes it unreliable from my viewpoint. In one spread the center card will appear significant, and in another is has no extra meaning. The same for all techniques that I mentioned, and the ones I did not mention.

OK, back on topic. Because it seems to work best (but certainly not only) in a "literal" rather than a "suggestive" fashion, I find reading the 9-card spread to be like "peeling an onion," after I take the broader, holistic cut at it. Techniques are really only tools - I think of them as "can-openers" - to get at the meat of the reading (I suppose Lenormand brings out the pragmatist in me more than the mystic). If one seems to be taking you down a false trail, set it aside and try another angle. I approach the GT the same way; otherwise it can quickly become chaotic. Lenormad seems to be perfectly amenable to the "Swiss Army Knife" method of reading, as long as you fuse everything together with a healthy dose of imagination, inspiration and plain old intuition in the process. I will confess to not using knighting (in the GT, that is) or mirroring yet, except maybe out of curiosity; they don't seem to be essential to the core interpretation, and I haven't had to resort to such ephemera to get to the main points.

 

[Izzydunne]

Hi Barleywine:

"Lemornand seems to bring out the pragmatist in me rather than the mystic".

At the risk of being off topic, I would like to say that this is a wonderful example of the two reading styles I am discussing. Technique must be applied by the rational /conscious mind, and the direct communication of the Mystic is a link to the Divine. Both have their place, it just depends on the wiring of the reader.

 

[Barleywine]

I certainly agree. I should probably have said before now that I'm much less "mechanistic" with tarot, which seems to lend itself more to free-wheeling interpretation. That's where the "channel" into the more subtle realms of being that I mentioned previously comes into play. Despite efforts by many writers and bloggers to "dress up" Lenormand with the same degree of "keyword-itis" that tarot enjoys (?), it seems to be too hard-headed and practical a system to tolerate much in the way of aggressively modern embellishments.

I think we can get as much mileage out of it using the traditional meanings (perhaps with a little "sideways twist") as we can by sticking in stuff like the internet and telephone, social networking, airplanes and automobiles, television, etc. as a superficial way to update its relevance. With a nod to Marshall McLuhan, a message is a message is a message, regardless of the medium by which it's delivered; the vehicle of transmission is just the "wrapper." The content is what counts. About all we need to know is whether to expect a letter in the mail or a visitor on our doorstep (either literal or figurative - e.g. electronic).

Although we tried back at the putative "Dawn of the New Age," it doesn't seem to me that, by and large, modern people who avail themselves of divination practices are any more spiritually evolved than they were in the days of Mlle. Lenormand, they're just more complicated/neurotic, better educated, comparatively wealthier (at least until recently), and have broader access to communication tools and other toys. I'm a firm believer that "smart phones make dumb people," even as they broaden the reach of today's cartomancers, astrolgers, et al; they seem to me to be an emblem of a cultural devolution that threatens to irretrievably dilute the core of some of our best traditions.

<kicks soapbox out of the way and goes to get a drink>

 

[Le Fanu]

What is the "Divine" here? (maintaining the capital D as I think it might mean something)

I'm curious...

 

[Barleywine]

What is the "Divine" here? (maintaining the capital D as I think it might mean something)

I'm curious...

Izzydunne will have to speak to that. As far as I can tell from the context of our dialogue, "A rose (or a god) by any other name . . . "

 

[Izzydunne]

Hi Le Fanu:

"What is the Divine."

Good question, I will give you 3 guesses and the first two don't count..... (he smiles).

 

[Izzydunne]

Barleywine said:

"As far as I can tell from the context of our dialogue, a rose (or a god) by any other name."

The finger that points to the Moon is not the Moon.

The Rose contains and is enlivened by the Divine, but is not the Divine.


The mystery continues.