“It Was A Dismal Day” — A Lenormand Work Song*

(*With apologies to Paul Simon for co-opting “It Was a Sunny Day.”)

This scrap of nonsense was lodged in my head, so I figured I had better flush it by writing something. ( Sings in his best “Weird Al” Yankovic voice)

It was a dismal day (Clouds)
The boss-man poked me in the eye (Snake + Whip)
And many a curse was heard (Cross)
From the jokers passing by (Birds + Fox)

(Further apologies if you identify as a “boss,” but this is more about rhyme and meter than office politics, and rhyming couplets — even borrowed ones — that aren’t doggerel are hard enough to come by. On the other hand, we all know what “rolls downhill,” and a nasty boss can be “lower than snake sh . . ” well, you get the picture!)

AUTHOR’S NOTE: I would venture to say that all of us have had days at work when it felt like nobody was on our side and we were fighting a losing battle. In a more general sense, when reading tarot cards and encountering a series of truly dismal insights, I strive to cast the narrative in as constructive a light as possible (I won’t try for “positive” if that quality can’t be squeezed out of the cards), always attempting to give my sitters something to work with. This sometimes amounts to crafting shrewd “weasel words” that convey the message without making it feel like being hit over the head, one of the earmarks of a skilled diviner.

With Lenormand the challenge is intensified because all of the cards have well-defined positive, neutral and negative meanings, making it difficult to twist some of them into a vision of “it’s all good” encouragement. If the Moon is our work card and it is preceded by the Whip and followed by the Coffin, we would probably assume that a temper-tantrum or “blow-up” will end in demotion or termination (unless the Coffin is followed by a fortunate card like the Clover, in which case it might just mean a reprimand.) It’s not easy to do the “sow’s-ear-into-silk-purse” translation with such ominous signs to accommodate.

Because Lenormand can be so brutally honest and literal, there isn’t much wiggle room to dress up its bluntness with a gloss of breezy affirmation. Where presentation skills may be able to rescue a cheerless tarot reading, with Lenormand they may just dig a deeper trench as we plumb the depths looking for a glimmer of hope. I sometimes find it better to talk about cutting one’s losses instead of trying to claw a way up out of the hole. As a non-mystical form of divination, Lenormand doesn’t even offer psychological excuses for our mental discomfort. (For that reason it can be terrible at describing what someone thinks or feels, which I consider to be a misuse of its potential anyway.)

Those readers who were weaned on tarot will most likely find this a disheartening attitude, but it’s what I like about Lenormand. Intuition and free-association play a very small role in its interpretation, which allows us to depict an “ending” as what it truly is and not merely as a negotiable “transformation.” There are fewer “soft landings” with Lenormand’s more negative cards than there are with its tarot counterparts, although positive cards like the Sun are just as buoyant.

Lenormand is a powerful tool for exploring the dynamics of any pragmatic situation. Its parts mesh perfectly when there are no philosophical or spiritual “soft” issues to gum up the works. Ask it whether someone will get what they’re after and it will give you its best shot; ask it what that person is likely to think or feel about the situation and all you may get is gibberish from which you will have to “intuit” your answer. In my book, that’s no way to run an oracle.

To wrap this up I’m going to repost a slightly edited passage from a 2019 essay of mine titled “When Bad Is Bad.”

“As the saying goes ‘You can put lipstick on a sow but it’s still a sow,’ or similarly and more bluntly, ‘You can’t polish a turd.’ What works with tarot in finding the silver lining in any threatening cloud, due to the multi-layered flexibility of each card, doesn’t find nearly as much traction with Lenormand, where the range of card meanings is much narrower and their interpretation much more structured. Also, free-association from the card illustrations, which drives so much inspired revelation in the art of tarot reading, is frowned upon with Lenormand imagery (a particular bone of contention for tarot transplants). Attempt to reinvent the narrative landscape too strenuously and you no longer have a bona fide Lenormand reading.”

Originally published at http://parsifalswheeldivination.wordpress.com on October 15, 2023.