“Tarotizing, Psychologizing and Extemporizing” — The Bane of Lenormand
AUTHOR’S NOTE: I’ve been busily engaged in the online Lenormand community, and three of my main concerns about the modern approach to reading the Lenormand cards are in full view.
“Tarotization” (my own word for it) is the tendency for Lenormand neophytes arriving from the tarot majority to bring all of their interpretive baggage with them and apply it liberally. The classic case is the Moon card, which in Lenormand has nothing to do with the emotions or with confusion and uncertainty; yet time and again those tarot-based assumptions are trotted out in readings. It’s enough to make me tear my hair out in frustration! The Lenormand Moon has to do with recognition and honors received, public reputation and — by extension — employment where we have the opportunity to demonstrate our worthiness; this can be expressed more generally as “how people see us.” That’s it, end of story.
Some modern deck creators feed these misapprehensions by “dressing up” their cards with all kinds of extraneous details; one of the worst examples I’ve seen is the Dog card that shows a woman holding a parasol and walking a small black poodle on a leash across a park. Yikes! Conscientious Lenormand mentors consistently point newbies at the “Philippe Lenormand Sheet,” the original “little white book” that was packed in with most Lenormand decks for over 100 years, but it feels like they are “shoveling against the tide.”
My second issue is a much bigger “fish-fry.” Lenormand excels at practical divination, my description of which is “action-and-event-oriented” prognostication. Yet there is an enduring fascination with bringing “thinks or feels” questions to its doorstep. I’ve always considered these inquiries to be “psychic fishing expeditions” and exercises in wish fulfillment. “What does Joe or Mary think or feel about me?” is really just a veiled substitute for “Does Joe or Mary like me?” but seekers are afraid of the answer to that bald-faced query so they bandy euphemisms and hide behind the cards rather than pursuing the old way of simply asking a “friend of a friend” to find out.
Finally, as I study the example readings posted for comment online, I find that adequate effort is seldom put into explaining each card of the spread in brief, pithy — and, most importantly, dispassionate — language that is linked by an overarching theme or focus. (Some of this is due to the reader’s inexperience, but I’m sure just as much can be attributed to old habits dictated by mystical tendencies [see Tarotizing].) Many attempts are made to take the reading in philosophical, psychological or wholly intuitive directions that add little to its clarity and economy, and there is much embellishment with unsupported assumptions — the “extemporizing” of the title. I for one recognize that my primary responsibility is not to romanticize the situation in poetic language (I do enough of that here), but to deliver on-point insights that speak plainly and directly to the question. I admit to using a little “creative license” when invoking the Lenormand canon — usually in the form of metaphors and analogies that energize my narrative — but there is always a demonstrable link to the traditional meanings. I try to avoid flouting one of the cardinal rules of traditional Lenormand — “Thou shalt not extemporize” — but I like to view Lenormand as a “living institution” within rather strict bounds.
I’m not convinced that the tarot is particularly effective at mind-reading (which a good many of these questions at least peripherally involve) or “psychological profiling,” and I double-down on this premise with the Lenormand cards. They just don’t lend themselves to it and trying to force-fit them into this mold seems unnatural. Yet it is what the vast majority of querents appear to be interested in with both the tarot and Lenormand. It certainly offers lots of job security for the enterprising fortune-teller, but what someone “thinks or feels” is a rather ephemeral subject. Do you mean right now or in perpetuity? Humans are notoriously inconstant (even fickle) in their emotions so this is too much of a moving target for me. On the rare occasion that I find myself up against one of these reading scenarios, I’m tempted to advise the hopeful sitter that “The cards say that Joe or Mary doesn’t think about you at all, he or she is barely aware that you exist,” which would be mean but not necessarily inaccurate.
I know what you’re thinking but I’m not really a heartless bastard, I just have my “bullshit meter” dialed way up and I have little tolerance for half-baked sentimental excursions into such idle conjecture. The whole debate reminds me of a scene from the movie Reds where a frenzied czarist sympathizer shouts at journalist John Reed, “Revolutionaries, Comrade Reed! Revolutionaries!” as the Bolsheviks storm in.
Originally published at http://parsifalswheeldivination.wordpress.com on July 15, 2023.
