Lenormand Is Not A Religion

Seems pretty obvious, doesn’t it? So why am I blogging this?

I spend a lot of time talking with other readers online. We swap notes, we help each other out, sometimes we disagree. Not so many years ago, hardly anybody in the US or UK gave a thought to Lenormand, they considered it inferior to Tarot, if they’d heard of it at all. It’s only recently that there’s been a surge of interest here, and I’m seeing new people popping up every day, trying to learn.

Immediately they hit a wall – there’s very few books in english about Lenormand, and to be honest, the ones that are out there won’t get you where you want to be. With Lenormand, courses are best. Iris Treppner and Britta Kienle both have wonderful inexpensive courses available in english, and Andybc is offering a free course that’s actually top quality.

And of course there’s the community, you can post a question at any of the good Lenormand forums or the facebook group and almost instantly get answers. The Lenormand community is happy to mentor you, free of charge.

It occurred to me that this same generosity might be WHY we sometimes get accused of “bullying” when we tell someone that no, the Moon doesn’t mean “deception” in Lenormand, or that their best option is to study a tradition rather than make things up. We’re not trying to persecute anyone. Maybe if we called ourselves “Priestesses” or “Gurus” and charged hundreds – even thousands of dollars, they’d be sitting at our feet like disciples. (And I’m NOT implying that all religious leaders are crooks – just that that element definitely exists.) Which would be creepy. I’d rather be broke.

It’s kind of sad that so many people don’t trust something that’s given freely.

Someone (someone nice, no persecution complex, I see a very good reader in the making) posted a question at the facebook group today about placing more emphasis on the playing card insets in order to cull additional meanings. I thought I’d share my reply here:

I wouldn’t advise actively seeking additional meanings, it only muddies the water. If you stick with the traditional meanings and training your mind to combine them, you’ll find that they “stretch to fit” any situation and your accuracy rate should be 80-90%. It takes some discipline to get to this point, but it’s worth it.

I’m not trying to “tell you what to do”. A lot of people get huffy when we say things like this but we’re trying to help, we’re trying to transmit a tradition. Maybe it would be easier for us if we called it an “initiation” or “empowerment” and exploited it, but the Lenormand world is (happily) lacking that particular element of sleaze. People seem more accepting of things that aren’t given to them freely. I’m not rolling in money and I don’t have newbies cleaning my bathroom or hot young guys giving me funny massages, but I can look at myself in the mirror.

“Additional meanings” will come on their own, don’t try to look for them. I noticed the Heart coming up repeatedly as “the wish card” in my readings (logically it would be the Key, cartomantically it would be the Rider, 9H) so I use it that way. I see it as a personal idiosyncracy and don’t put it out there as “the way”, but there ARE “right ways” – trust me on this.