Lenormand and Lost Items
AUTHOR’S NOTE: I haven’t used the Lenormand oracle much for tracing lost objects (or people) since horary astrology works so well. But I occasionally come across online requests for help with lost-item readings, and as a result I thought a little harder about its potential. (Apparently I’m not the first to do so, but to my knowledge nobody else has likened it to horary.)
I’ve been considering how to use Lenormand cards most effectively for this purpose, and am wondering whether we might apply them in a way similar to horary astrology by using the visual images in addition to the textbook meanings. For example, in horary the Sixth House is the house of “small animals,” which could be envisioned as “where the pet (dog, cat, gerbil, parrot, etc) lives;” in Lenormand the Dog could mean “at your best friend’s house” but also, more literally, “near the doghouse.” The Whip as a “bundle of birch rods” might suggest “in the broom closet” or utility room (not many of us have a “debating room” or a torture chamber). I recently proposed the Anchor as meaning “on the ground.” Not all of the cards would lend themselves to this, but I think it has possibilities.
I did an example reading based on an actual case I had a few years ago. I successfully helped a British woman find her missing brother in Paris using horary astrology, and here I’m trying to replicate it with randomly-pulled Lenormand cards. Her brother had mental health issues and was a life-long ne’er-do-well (there is a more vulgar modern term for it that starts with “f” and ends with “p”). She was in a hotel in Paris and didn’t know what to do next. I told her the horoscope said he was located to the East of her hotel, not far away, and in some kind of institution; the chart suggested injury so I assumed it was a hospital. She set out toward the East and the first institution she came to was a jail — and there he was!
For this Lenormand reading I pre-selected the Man as the central focus card and pulled a four-card cross. The horizontal line was Tree + Man + Mountain, suggesting a man with health issues (mental health would qualify) who is in a state of “arrest” (Mountain). On the vertical axis, with Scythe at the top we might use the British term and say the police “nicked” him, clearly putting him in jeopardy (Scythe above Man). The Rider at the bottom shows he is waiting to hear about his status (but it could also mean “She is coming for him”). I recall that he was arrested for vagrancy, which didn’t show in the reading unless it could be indicated by the wandering Rider. (He had apparently gone to Paris on a whim with little money and no plans.) Man + Mountain can be read in a couple of ways: using 1960s “hippie jargon,” we could say that “the Man” (person of authority) has him in custody (Mountain), or alternatively that “He is his own worst enemy.”
I believe if I had done this card reading at the time of the event, I would have concluded that he was being forcibly detained as shown by the Mountain and wasn’t simply hospitalized, and that there was some threat hanging over his head. This would most likely have narrowed the search to nearby “houses of correction” as the most obvious places to look so the querent wouldn’t have to blindly chase around after infirmaries. I would not immediately have picked out “East” from these cards, but she could have looked up “nearest jails” and gone from there. However, in my personal (“astrological”) approach to direction in cartomancy, left means East and right means West, and here the figures in both the Man and the Scythe are gazing to the left, so there is that to consider.
Originally published at http://parsifalswheeldivination.wordpress.com on August 1, 2023.
