The Marginalized Significator: Five Solutions
AUTHOR’S NOTE: A unique challenge occasionally arises when throwing a Lenormand Grand Tableau in which the Significator Card (SC) lands in the far-right column of the layout with no cards to its immediate right. This results in an irregular matrix of surrounding cards that sheds a few of the interpretive angles typically present with a more symmetrical internal placement. (To be precise, this will be the case with any peripheral position but the right side is the most consequential to the flow of the reading.)
As I learned it, the Significator is the “alpha” in the room and all roads lead to and from it for the purpose of integrating the rest of the cards. I do read other independent “themed” clusters like the Clouds array, but for best effect I like to see them refer back to the “alpha pattern” via one of the subroutines (knighting, mirroring, intersection, etc). I look at the GT as a network of cross-connected influences (essentially a complex spider-web, in which plucking a strand sets up a vibration at the center); the more indicators that are shared, the more coherent it becomes.
If one follows Andy Boroveshengra in treating the left-to-right progression of the reading as describing factors that are declining in influence (those cards to the left of the SC) and issues that are of increasing importance (those to its right), this perimeter location leaves the reader with no place to take the developing narrative and no recourse but to seek answers by examining what went before. While this retrospective scenario may in fact be germane to the querent’s affairs, it usually isn’t why they’ve come for a reading. They’re seeking fresh insights about their future, not a moral lesson on their past failings no matter how valuable that might be, so an historical rehash should not be the primary thrust of the narrative). This vulnerability only occurs at the right-hand boundary of the layout since other marginal positions still retain a forward-looking dimension.
Solution #1: Current thinking is to just suck it up and “read ’em as they lay,” filling the void on the unpopulated side of the SC with creative extrapolation from previous observations, in effect gazing back on the cards to the left for inspiration when peering mystically into the unplumbed darkness on the right. While this reflection definitely has its place when the querent has nothing more pressing than unfinished business to resolve, in other cases it risks producing a lopsided narrative that can run afoul of subjective bias since there are no directly-applicable cards on the right to analyze. My personal opinion is that it should not be treated as the whole story when there are compelling ways to bring the array into alignment and give the reader more to chew on. I have a nuanced outlook that views the cards as a metaphysical tool, not necessarily an infallible oracle, and if there is a more productive (and pragmatic) way to use them I’m going to consider exploring it.
Solution #2: The conventional fix for the perceived problem is to simply pick up the cards, reshuffle and lay a new tableau with the hope that it doesn’t happen again (and if it does, the reading should be abandoned for the time being). This is what the computer programmers of the last century called a “kluge,” a clumsy workaround that gets the job done, but it is far from perfect. In the past I’ve used this fallback approach but recent conversations on the Lenormand websites have convinced me that there are more imaginative ways to address it with the cards already on the table.
Solution #3: Suppose, for the sake of argument, that we just flip over the layout end-to-end such that the Significator that was on the right border now sits all the way to the left, without changing the top-to-bottom orientation. (See the second photo below, in which the Man is the SC.) While this adjustment will remove the “fading influence” segment of the spread, the querent can fill in those details from personal experience as necessary since they are mainly background impressions at the time of the reading. This creates a kind of “reverse flow” in which the pattern is reconfigured with all of the cards that were in the overloaded “prequel” zone being moved into the “coming events” spotlight. This accomplishes the goal of shifting the original focus of the inquiry toward emerging conditions without having to project what might be “out there” as an artifact of purely intuitive speculation. I’m intrigued by this idea because all of the original subroutines except the temporal sequencing and the “four corners” remain in place, with the difference that the proximity considerations now evolve in the direction of forthcoming circumstances rather than regressing into relative obscurity. The reading becomes “all future” and the past is let go. (Before anyone squawks, I realize that changing the order of the cards amounts to heresy, but as noted above I’m an experimenter and a pragmatist; the next solution largely takes care of that objection.)
Solution #4: Another way would be to consider the layout as a continuum or “belt” in which the column to the far right wraps around and segues seamlessly into the one on the far left, never missing a beat; thus the left-hand cards that were originally in a “very far” relationship with the SC become much nearer to it and take on greater relevance. The SC as-dealt could first be studied for “near/far” implications to its left, and then reimagined as sitting at the other end of its row, enabling the “near/far” extension to its right that was lacking. A pertinent maxim might be “What goes around comes around.” (See the bottom photo below.)
Solution #5: Finally, there is the notion I got from Caitlin Matthews that involves “transposing” the necessary number of cards from the opposite side of the spread — left, right, top or bottom — to complete a nine-card “box” centered on the SC. This creates a mini-tableau within the grand scheme (the bulge it causes reminds me of a “dormer” on the side of a house) that gives the SC a little more contextual presence in the previously untenanted direction. In the original spread (top photo below), the Letter, the Heart and the Rider would be transposed to the right end of their rows, enclosing the Man. Since they were relatively inert when so far away, this will crank up their predictive urgency (think of it as “in your face” as opposed to “behind your back.”
Of these alternate solutions, I’ve used both the “reshuffle-and-deal-again” method and the “transposition” approach to restore symmetry, but I’m becoming fascinated by the “mirror image” concept of just flipping the spread. My second choice would be the continuum or “belt” array because it yields the same SC status as transposition while the rest of the cards on the left remain in their original sequence but become less distant. Here is what they would look like. (All images are from the Blaue Eule Lenormand, copyright of Konigsfurt-Urania.)
Originally published at http://parsifalswheeldivination.wordpress.com on September 8, 2023.
