“Mystic Mercury” and the Lenormand Deck
AUTHOR’S NOTE: I’ve made a conscious habit of avoiding all esoteric correspondences (astrology, occult number theory, etc) when using the Lenormand cards for divination. But I recently came across an interesting coincidence.
On the Hermetic Tree of Life, the planet Mercury corresponds to the number 8 and its “mystic number” is 36, which is achieved by numerological extension in the same way the number 10 of Pythagoras is iterated: 1+2+3+4+5+6+7+8. That just so happens to be the number of cards in a Lenormand deck. Since Lenormand reading is (or ideally should be) an almost entirely literal and logical affair with little resort to intuition, Mercury seems like the perfect “patron” for its practice. For the most part I’m a traditionalist when it comes to the imagery, but I would love to see a Lenormand deck with the Mercury glyph on the backs of the cards, if only to confound the purists. (In a more utilitarian sense, because Lenormand cards are never read reversed, this visual cue would allow us to maintain the deck in an upright orientation.)
I often mention that I lean more toward the analytical than the allusive in my tarot reading, and this is particularly appropriate when interpreting Lenormand cards, which are decidedly non-mystical. They should invite no imaginative free-association from the images, and deck designers should know better than to muck them up with extraneous features that have nothing to do with the core meaning and that only confuse the narrative. My favorite example of the latter is putting human figures in cards that don’t require them, apparently as a way to either “humanize” the point-of-view or make the pictures seem more “charming.” My gut reaction in every case is “Arrgh!”
Although it is preferred (but not absolutely necessary) that they be artistically compelling, we should not approach the cards primarily as works of art but first-and-foremost as purveyors of information. When done right (and many of the decks by Lynn Boyle are good examples) the images will display a simplicity and economy that eliminate any possibility of misinterpretation. The Dog card should be easily identifiable as a faithful friend or trusted advisor and nothing else; one of the worst versions I’ve ever seen depicts a woman walking a small dog on a leash across a park, a tableau for which there are three possible interpretations and the least obvious of them involves the dog. Another specimen — although it is a classical one — is a Moon card that shows a full moon riding over the sea with a ship, a height of land and maybe some clouds sharing the landscape. Unless done carefully with precise attention to scale, at first glance it can beg the question “Is this the Moon, the Ship, the Mountain or the Clouds?” Personally, I don’t like having to work that hard to decipher the intent.
As an astrologer well before I was a tarot or Lenormand reader I’m partial to clear-cut delineation, and Lenormand cards at their best offer a crispness and clarity that are much sharper than the layered density and parabolic complexity that characterize the tarot cards. While by design and usage they present symbolic snapshots of ordinary life experience, when read as intended they also avoid entanglement in convoluted (and often murky) philosophical or psychological debates of the conjectural kind. For example, I find them even less effective than tarot cards for figuring out what another person thinks or feels. I might be able to detect with some accuracy what will happen tomorrow, but I would have to look elsewhere for intimations of how I, my client or their love interest might feel about it. Lenormand excels at practical detail but — although tarot converts can’t help but try — it is not much good for the “squishy” stuff that involves mind-reading. It’s a classic example of the computer programmer’s acronym, “WYSIWYG:” what you see is what you get.
Originally published at http://parsifalswheeldivination.wordpress.com on March 22, 2024.
