Lenormand Combination: Book + House

Today’s combination is inspired by a discussion regarding the possibility of Lenormand cards taking on the meaning of a person; particularly the cards that bear an inset face card, such as House which is the King of Hearts.

Book + House

Book is a secret, education or documents (the sense of “bookkeeping”). House is the home, or maybe family life. Combined, I would say this is a secret about the family.

House + Book

This could be a mortgage, especially the mortgage paperwork and records. It could also be records about a house.

One other way to look at this is to keep in mind that this House is inset with the King of Hearts, and therefore, could be a man. If the Book were interpreted as a secret, then this could be a secret about a man, or a man with a secret.  It would make sense to me that the man is a family member, or fits the description “family man” since this is the House, although I don’t think there is any such guarantee. A lot of Lenormand interpretation requires a decent dose of intuition to decode contextual clues. I don’t know how likely this is in an actual reading, but if you see a face card then you might keep it in the back of your mind, in case the normal card meaning doesn’t make sense.

If you have any thoughts on this, or related card readings that you’d like to share, then please leave a comment.

Lenormand Reading (Updated)

I hope you aren’t tired of reading my readings about homes yet, becuase that’s the topic of this post. 🙂

I confess having a hard time with this reading. Partly because my question might have been too fuzzy; I asked the cards to tell me about a particular home I’m seeing tonight, and anything I should know about it. And partly because I only had five hours of sleep, through no fault of my own. I’m going to give my thought process and break this down in “real time” as I write.

Without further ado, the cards are:

Book + Rider + House + Coffin + Clouds

The House, of course, represents the house I have in mind. This is a property whose location has some appeal, but this is also a disadvantage because the location is further away from the city in which I work. I’m not a fan of lengthy commute times.

The House is described by the Rider and the Coffin. The Coffin is not the best omen as far as I’m concerned, at least at first glance (and followed by the Clouds). Looking at this particular Rider card, I couldn’t help but notice the house set way back in the distance, off the road. I don’t normally read into a Lenormand card beyond the meaning of its symbol; that is, I don’t pay special attention to the rendering of an image in a given deck. Yet the connection jumped out at me. So the Rider may be emphasizing the travel required to and from this home daily.

On the right is the Coffin, which I could interpret three ways. The first — that this home is falling apart. The second is that it will end my search for a home, although with the Clouds following I don’t feel confident about this. The third is that I will be done with the house the minute I see it, for whatever reason.

I wasn’t necessarily looking for physical descriptions, but perhaps this suggests a modest house in a state of some disrepair.

Now, following the flow of action from left to right. The Book indicates paperwork, documents, or secrets. So there could be something unknown about this home, something I won’t know. Paperwork doesn’t seem to make sense in the past here, at least as applying to me; unless the home has some complication that would make it take longer to purchase.

The Rider makes me think this House was put up for sale due to whatever the Book indicates; or maybe that it was put on the market rather quickly (and recently). With the Coffin I see this home is not going to be considered for long, and because of the Clouds I’m likely to feel conflicted about this.

As a side note, I have found the Clouds came up for air- or circulation-related issues in homes so far: both for bad odor, and for damp basements. So this is another discouraging sign.

I hope my thought process was helpful, even though my reading leaves a couple of unknowns. If anyone else has a take, feel free to post in the comments, as always. I’ll leave feedback based on my actual experience visiting this house.

Update:

These cards were fairly accurate as far as I’m concerned. The home was recently put up for sale because the owners are getting a divorce, and I believe they would like to sell it sooner rather than later. That seems to fit the Book and Rider. The House is a bit further out west than I thought it was, which corresponds to the Rider as a descriptor. It also needs a bit of work on the outside, which looks a bit shabby, so that seems to fit in with the Coffin. I reluctantly decided I didn’t want to buy that home (Coffin and Clouds). I was rather torn because the location is wonderful, being near a lake. But seeing the work the home needs, and the increased commute time, don’t quite make up the difference.

This ended up being a more accurate reading than I’d expected.

Reading Your Future in the Cards by Louise Woods

A short look at the book Reading Your Future in the Cards, by Louise Woods.

This is a lovely book on cartomancy from a woman who seems warm and full of good advice; but I find that I’m of mixed feelings on it.

I think it’s a well-written book, entertaining and humorous. It oozes personality. Woods’ layout methods are fine; and she does emphasize the interaction of the cards throughout the book. Her reading method is based on layouts involving a few groups of five card fans. She seems to know her stuff.

The extras on card “mixers” are probably more useful after one is familiar with the card meanings Woods’ uses. These mixers are intended to show groups of cards that would give an idea, unequivocal answer to a question or ideally represent an person or situation. I skimmed through these though, and it gives cards that one could look for to answer questions, such as “will we have a purely sexual relationship?” or “is this the right job for me?” This is a helpful addition as it shows how the prospective card reader can build up a vocabulary with the cards.

Woods’ meanings, however, did not grab me. I had a chuckle at the 3 heart including menage a trois as one of its meanings. And there seemed to be a lot of love cards, particularly in the hearts, at least to my eye. She really downplayed the negativity of the spades, notably the infamous Ace of Spades, which is more of a creativity card. I think I understand her reasoning — she wants to give people hope in readings. I just found it hard to break with what I know. She does introduce the book with a suggestion to “forget everything you know,” and start with her meanings upon a blank canvas. Overall, I didn’t feel like her card meanings gelled for me. They seemed different enough from what I often think of for several cards, with little overlap of some “traditional” meanings, or at least commonly accepted ones.

Overall, I enjoyed reading this book, the author is very entertaining and she does have some good advice. I didn’t find the meanings resonated with me, but that’s okay. It’s a book that I was happy to have, even if I am not likely to use it a lot (although I may try out her card spread in the future). I think it would work for a newcomer though, who has nothing to unlearn, and wants a somewhat meaty method that utilizes card combining.

Thoughts on “It’s All in the Cards”

Here are some thoughts on the book It’s All in the Cards by Chita St. Lawrence. This is a great book for someone who wants to get quickly started with reading playing cards. I’ve found it to be a good foundation for me, and I’m carrying forward some of the method while incorporating other material.
The book was a very enjoyable read, starting with the history of her card-reading method and how it began, and traveled through five generations of women to the author herself. I didn’t like her statement that women have that extra something, that “women’s intuition,” that makes them the best readers. (I think she was explaining this mainly in the context of why gypsy women read cards.) Other than that, I liked the book.

Her method is interesting. It consists of up to three spreads. First, a quick read by cutting the deck and reading two cards at the cut; a 5-card reading in a Y-shape; and finally an in-depth reading of 22 cards, most of which are in pairs. So there is card interaction, but not the same as doing a line of 4+ cards. This is the part I had trouble with, because although pairs can be descriptive, I find it more appealing and helpful to read card triplets.

One thing that initially struck me is that Ms. Lawrence uses the K and Q to represent the querent and the querent’s significant other. (Like the Man and Woman in Lenormand.) Her K represents a father/son/younger man, and Q is similarly mother/daughter. Then the J is expectations. So the red face cards are already a departure from the usage that most people else seems to use, which tend to group people by age, color and/or temperament. I have found her court descriptions very helpful, and incorporate her basic face card usage as I work with other systems.

The cards are supposed to talk about whatever they want; the querent, which Ms. Lawrence calls the Principal, is not to ask a specific question. For the 5-card layout, cards are drawn in pairs at first until a pair with the significator ( K or Q ) turns up. The meaning of the pair differs depending which of the pair is on top.

Someone once mentioned that Chita’s meanings and system are straightforward and uncomplicated. This may be true, but Chita does write that the fewer descriptive words that a card has, the more the reader can get out of it (or words to that effect). I think she expects the reader will get a feel from the overall cards layed out in a reading, with experience, and not be limited. She perhaps doesn’t feel it necessary to dwell on this, and she even writes that the peron will learn the basics of this method then “be on your own.” In other words, only experience will be a real teacher.

This also fits in with some views on tarot that I am familiar with, namely that it’s better to only have a couple of keywords per card rather than extensive lists of meanings which jostle each other and hamper the reader’s intuition.

Lawrence includes a lot of sample readings, which is both helpful and interesting. I liked them a lot. A lot of these are presented as practice exercises, where the learning reader should layout and interpret an example spread, then compare to how Ms. Lawrence would interpret it.

All in all, I find her approach appealing. It seems a bit simplistic for me, as I am fond of having “systems,” and things like timing cards and interaction that can provide more detail. As given, this method seems fairly straightforward and high-level event-driven. Yet it’s easy to get started with, I really like the sample exercise style, and I think this book could carry someone a long way in card reading. I’ve had some good success with accuracy in reading for people with this method. I also suspect that someone who uses this system over a longer period of time will get quite a bit out of it; more than might be written in the book.

Only time and experience will tell. The person who isn’t interested in memorizing a bunch of attributions and definitions will especially like this book. It even includes a one-page “tear sheet” at the end, which makes for a great reference to have on-hand while reading, when reference is needed. I have no problems recommending this book to a beginner or someone looking for something a little different.