Six Things I Learned about Tarot from Lenormand with Mary Greer

I can’t tell you how excited I am to welcome Tarot super-star, Mary K Greer, to the My Tarot Club community! I have admired Mary’s work ever since I started learning Tarot when I was 18. She is an inspiration to all Tarot readers with her grounded approach and her extensive Tarot knowledge. What’s even more beautiful is that she really is a lovely person. I had the pleasure of meeting Mary for the first time this year at the Readers Studio and was touched by how friendly and open she was.

Enough of my lovefest! Here’s Mary, sharing her insights on how Tarot readers can draw on the insights of the Petit Lenormand.

The “Petit Lenormand” is a deck of 36 fortune-telling cards featuring simple images like a dog, house, anchor – that first appeared in the 1790s in Germany. It was redesigned in 1845, soon after the death of the French fortune-teller, Mlle. Lenormand, co-opting her famous name for promotional purposes. Although Mlle. Lenormand used a variety of card decks, she never created her own nor passed on her reading methods.

The Lenormand deck originally had a single sheet of instructions containing specific card meanings and a single spread. It came with every deck in a half-dozen languages until quite recently. Thus, the original meanings and method are clear, well-known and still used today. By contrast, Tarot was originally a card game, with fortune-telling meanings, techniques and occult symbology added nearly 250 years after its creation and regularly re-conceptualized ever since.

Imagine my surprise to discover how close the traditional Lenormand method is to the Golden Dawn “Book T” instructions. It seems “Book T,” on which both the Waite-Smith and Crowley-Harris Thoth decks were based, is very close to 18th century cartomantic techniques that are largely ignored or forgotten by modern Tarot readers, to our great loss.

My own experience of Tarot has been enriched by learning some of the original interpretive techniques preserved in the Lenormand reading method, and I hope yours will be, too.

Six Things I Learned:

1. To get concrete, specific answers from Tarot, take a page from the Lenormand book and use a precision language with concrete meanings for each Tarot card. For instance, in “Book T” the Two of Pentacles is simply “change” or “harmonious change.” It isn’t travel, juggling, play, or having your cake and eating it, too, or even weighing options, but simply a somewhat positive indicator of change. This gives results that are more of the “plot” of the story rather than emphasizing the story’s theme and motivations as Tarot often does.

2. Lenormand has several cards that are specifically seen as negative or positive without resorting to reversals. Yes/no predictions and advice are determined by the presence of such problem or success cards, which also positively or negatively affect the meanings of cards near them. Ask very specific, well-phrased and time-delimited questions and read the omens. For instance, the Five of Wands is a clear warning of disputes; it doesn’t need to be more than that. An adjacent card will tell us what the dispute is about.

3. Combine card meanings in pairs, in a set order. By focusing on simple, limited meanings for each card, more emphasis is placed on combining the meanings of two or more cards to create a single concept. For instance, change by itself means little without another card to tell you the kind of change and where it is taking place. For example: Two of Pentacles and Five of Cups could potentially give us,  “lost options” or  “disappointment in change.” The key is to keep it simple.

4. Rather than reading Tarot in positional spreads in which the primary emphasis is on combining question, card and positional meaning, read Tarot like Lenormand in pairs, lines and blocks (rows and columns of cards), where each card affects, changes, and advances its immediate neighbors, forming sentences and paragraphs that recount events as they cycle through danger, success, change, loss, honor, betrayal, etc.

5. Use the Significator in a more a active way. In Lenormand, the Significator (or a “topic card”) shows you where the action is: whatever is closest to it assumes the greatest importance. For instance, to answer a question with Tarot, simply look through a shuffled deck for your Significator and read a couple of cards on either side to get your answer.While Lenormand teaches us that the entire deck is relevant, the most important information lies closest to the Significator (or topic) and spreads out from there.

6. The Golden Dawn’s “Opening of the Key” method of reading Tarot is actually very like a Lenormand reading. One cuts the deck into several stacks (a stack for each planet, chakra, sephiroth, astrological house, or element, etc.) and reads only the stack containing the Significator emphasizing the cards to either side of it. One can then “count cards” from the Significator and “mirror” the cards in pairs from each end of the lineup to discover additional important factors.

So, while Lenormand can certainly provide psychological and spiritual messages, for the most part it is concrete and specific. It’s great for finding lost objects, describing a sequence of events and warning of upcoming opportunities and difficulties. With Tarot we tend to be on a metaphysical journey, while Lenormand scouts the landscape looking for clear paths and pitfalls. Ideally, one can read both (even in the same consultation), but the reality is that we can apply things we have learned from one to the other, making do with whatever is at hand.

About Mary K. Greer

With more than ten books and 47 years experience in Tarot, Mary K. Greer pioneered many of the reading methods used today, including reading Tarot for yourself and methods that are interactive, transformational and empowering. More recently she’s been exploring the lives of cartomancers throughout history and discovering the pleasures of the Lenormand deck. She taught Tarot at universities and colleges from 1974 to 1989 and has since traveled the world teaching and learning, more recently reaching out through webinars and on-line classes.

Visit her blog at http://marygreer.wordpress.com and courses at http://globalspiritualstudies.com/tarot/mary-k-greer/ where you can join a new round of Lenormand studies.