A “Lenormand Whodunnit” Real-Life Case Study

AUTHOR’S NOTE: For those who are interested in my Lenormand “cold-case” approach, here is a real-life example reading.

Not long ago I was contacted by a woman who saw my past missing-person work and was asking for help with an unofficial inquiry she is heading up on behalf of a friend. She acknowledged that the individual in question has been missing for almost two years, so they are in “body recovery” mode and no longer expect to find him alive. Due to the circumstances of the disappearance, I figured it for a criminal event rather than a matter of him having run into an accident or other random misadventure. I performed three readings (posted here), one with horary astrology and two with the tarot; all three suggested that the victim is buried in a shallow grave somewhere in the countryside. After developing my Lenormand “cold case” investigation methodology, I decided to apply it to this situation. I’m not showing the preliminary layout here, just the final series of cards.

In this reading the Woman as “base” card probably does not indicate a female perpetrator but rather the individual who initiated the search and is the driving force behind it. With Fish, the suggestion is that she has been swamped with an abundance of potential leads (it’s unclear whether a reward has been offered to the successful informant but that would certainly be an incentive for receiving plentiful input; I suspect she is awash in “helpful hints’).

Rider is the card of “verbal tips,” and with Crossroads it offers the clue that a road leading out of the missing person’s city of residence into the countryside would be a good alternative path to follow. (The “tipster” could have been me and my previous insights, which are reinforced by this pull). As you can see, I’m using a bit of free-association here to come up with “countryside” but at the very least Crossroads suggests that they need to “branch out” in their search.

Letter (usually indicating written testimony) beneath Woman makes me think the querent is taking all of this information “under advisement” and isn’t rejecting any of it out-of-hand. She has it under control and is working through it.

Book with Mice shows the deteriorating condition of the evidence as time passes, such that the answer may well become unknowable. The “countryside” is a vast place in that region and any traces or signs will surely fade the longer this goes on, so prospects look bleak.

However, the doubled emphasis of Key in the “solution” position reminds me of Shakespeare’s words in The Merchant of Venice: “truth will out.” Despite this vote of confidence, Andy Boroveshengra notes “As a rule, it says ‘Yes’ to whatever is to its left, so negative cards become more certain.” This isn’t saying anything we don’t already know: the Mice is going to busily erode any proof of the individual’s location. In short, it could take a miracle, but Key/Key mirroring Woman/Fish strongly augers that one of her many tips will hold the answer despite efforts by the “perps” to diligently hide their tracks (Book/Mice mirroring Rider/Crossroads). I noted earlier that rumors of the missing person being “in the water” (echoing the Fish symbolism) may have been started by those involved to create a false trail.

Interestingly, my previous mention of “a man who knows something but isn’t talking” didn’t resurface here. I decided to do a one-card follow-up reading with the Man as the “base” card, asking “What’s up with this guy?”

With three appearances, “a woman’s” fingerprints are all over these readings. In this case I think the Woman represents the mother of the victim rather than the querent, and the man in question is known to her as indicated by one of my earlier readings. There is a very real possibility that she is “covering up” for him in some way. The implication I got from past conversations is that her son, the missing teenager, was mixed up in some things he should not have been (the phrase was “leading a double life”), one of which seems to have involved a cousin. If the Man is in fact a blood relative, an argument could be made that the Woman wants to protect him if she has convinced herself that he isn’t the “perp” or an accomplice. Although this pairing looks suspicious, there is no evidence to indicate that they might be “in it together” to any greater extent.

Originally published at http://parsifalswheeldivination.wordpress.com on September 22, 2023.