Welcome to what I am going to title my RANT about how Lenormand cards are being read.  If a RANT offends you – turn away now.

Maybe-Lenormand-Deck-15

Lenormand is a System of Reading Cards, loud and clear understand this, it is a System of reading cards.  You do not need a Lenormand Deck (yes you are talking to a man who owns more then 30 different ones) as you can use a playing card deck and just take away the deuces through fives of each suit and have a perfectly useable deck to work with the Lenormand System.

So now we know its a System of reading cards not an actual card deck and being a System it has a means of working.  The System, no matter what “school” you are working with ( I put school in quotes as really its a term that only means a few of the cards meanings are different, as I have learned it at least)  all seem to agree on one point, #28 The Man/Gentleman stands for the Querent if they are Male, #29 The Lady stands for the Querent if they are Female. It is sort of that easy and straight forward or so I thought.

As of late I am seeing a trend that people are using and it makes no sense if you are using the Lenormand System.  The trend is that the Querent, and that includes ourselves if we are performing a self read, chooses another card to represent them.  Why you ask, well as best as I can understand it is because they best relate to that card.  The title of this posting gives you a prime example, The Bear.  I have heard on more then one occasion that this “represents me since I am the Mama Bear” or “I have Mother Bear energy”  or something of the like.

Now if you want to do this, thats fine as long as you realize that

  • You just stopped using the Lenormand System
  • You just took a Card with very important meanings (they all have them) and voided them

Now you see it is the second point I really take issue with because that leads back to point one as well.  #28 and #29 have the express purpose of 99.999999999999999% being the Querent and the other being the most important person of that gender in the life of or subject asked about.  They are built that way and by taking the Bear (I just chose that one not picking on it) and making it your Significator you just lost out on the card that stands for Power, Authority, Strength, and in some cases your Mother or Grandma.  What card are you going to use to signify those?   Oh you are going to use the Mountain for those, then what signifies……….  you see the trap you are falling into now don’t you?

The Lenormand System has been around and worked well, very well in my humble opinion, because it is well thought out.  When we start to tinker with it, well we start to fix something that is not broken to begin with.  We are also starting to go down a path most dangerous – losing the voice that Lenormand speaks in, it’s very blunt and down to earth, direct voice.  I cherish that voice and I find most are drawn to this system do.

So before you start relating cards to the Querent or allowing them to talk you into doing so, think about this – Over 200 years of experience is behind this System, do you really want to go and play with something that has such an exquisite track record?

Until we meet again!

PS – Mr Ryan Edward’s glorious Bear from his amazing deck, Maybe Lenormand has been with his kind permission as well as the deck publisher, US Games Inc.  Thank you to both!!!