The “Wild-Card Tableau” — A Tarot-Lenormand Experiment
AUTHOR’S NOTE: I seldom use tarot cards in combination with Lenormand cards in a reading, but the minor merger I’ve come up with here looks like something I can live with.
Cartomantic theorists are always looking for effective methods to bring tarot cards and oracle cards together in a combined reading. Lenormand writers have proposed various ways to do this, often by mingling the two decks in a single “mega-pack.” I’ve found this to compromise the integrity of both systems so I never do it, instead preferring discrete, deck-specific segments or chains. But here I’m introducing tarot “pip” cards (called “Minor Arcana” by esotericists) in a rational way that feeds into the Lenormand narrative without bumping any of it out-of-alignment except for the knighting arrays. (I’m using only pips because they echo the pragmatic nature of the Lenormand cards.)
The “wild cards” of the title are the two tarot “pips” I’ve inserted into the standard 3×3 tableau to offer conscious and subconscious depth to interpretation of the Focus Card and the “four corners.” As they affect the significator, the upper card is the cerebral driver and the lower one is the emotional vehicle: one provides psychological motivation and the other a centering gravity and traction. Think of them as the “inside track” to understanding the mental/emotional forces underlying the situation. This arrangement agrees with the usual practice of considering cards above the querent or subject card to show galvanizing forces that influence its direction and those below it as factors that can be steered towards its goals.
As contributors to analysis of the four corners (the 1–3–9–7 series as I read it), they have a dual role. The conscious stimulus sits between the first two cards of the clockwise rotation, lending them explicit focus at the start, but also knights to the last two, keeping them on-track right to the end; the subconscious leverage lies between the last two cards, bringing an implicit devotion to the final push, but also knights to the first two cards, steadying them in the early going. They provide a kind of metaphysical “glue” that joins the functional centers, supplying a sense of shared purpose in the first case and one of common structure in the second. They have no other duty in the narrative, which should adhere to the normal sequencing of a 3×3 “box.”
An additional benefit of this rethinking of the layout is that the odd-numbered (“unitary”) and even-numbered (“binary”) numerological assumptions of Tarot de Marseille writer Joseph Maxwell are brought into the spread via the knighting shuffle; one creates a more dynamic emphasis at the “four corners” while the other is more harmonious as it affects the rows and columns. For this reason, I would recommend using TdM pips for this exercise.
Originally published at http://parsifalswheeldivination.wordpress.com on September 18, 2023.
