Cards meaning and intuition

The earliest sets of meanings are all compiled and translated into English by Anthony Louis in his ebook: Lenormand Symbols. Search on amazon.com for < Louis Lenormand > and you'll find it. Keep these original meanings in mind when expanding into more modern meanings.

As Le Fanu said, I closely examined the readings in several FB groups and mostly found that the traditional readers were far more likely to give correct answers to specific questions where the actual outcome was later reported.

One thing that so-called "intuitive" readers often do is ignore the question and even the cards drawn. If someone asks, "Our dog is lost; where can we find him?" you'll get answers like, "Your dog has been feeling neglected and really misses you. He needs an herbal supplement." What????

Teheuti said:

One thing that so-called "intuitive" readers often do is ignore the question and even the cards drawn. If someone asks, "Our dog is lost; where can we find him?" you'll get answers like, "Your dog has been feeling neglected and really misses you. He needs an herbal supplement." What????

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So true. Only when you respect the question you can get the right answer. It is so different than tarot.

Mim said:

This oracle's system is really fascinating.
Thank you very much, Teheuti and Barleywine for those other suggestions. I found a french channel on YouTube that provides free lessons from the very beginning to wider readings and I hope it'll help me.

It seems complete and concrete, I think it'll hit the match for me. But I'll have a look on this other channel and try to get here and there a bit more about the Lenormand.
By the way, I wonder if I shouldn't try to get a classical deck to work. Do you think Under The Roses is a good one to begin with or should I get the traditionnal Petit Lenormand deck ?

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Under the roses is fine if you don't use the playing cards meaning (I'm sorry for my Dutch/English here) that is also displayed on the traditional Petit Lenormand deck. I know a lot of older readers who only use the playing card indications and don't look at the visual at all... but that can also be that they know their cards so well, they don't need to.

Thank you very much for your answers. I'll then stick to the traditionnal keywords and search for the proper method.

I couldn't find Louis book about Lenormand in the french Amazon store but I just bought a Kindle edition of this one ;
Lenormand Sixty-Six Cards (2015 edition) An introduction to The Petit Lenormand. Author : Andy Boroveshengra.
I hope it'll fit my needs. I'll let you know as soon as possible, I'm beginning its reading tonight.

I can clearly figure out that Lenormand is as far away from Tarot as riding is from swimming... No way I could use my experience within Tarot-reading here. And I kind of feel it could instead be a burden to carry some Tarot uses while experiencing Lenormand. I'll have to face it and get rid of some intuitive approach I may try to apply from Tarot to Lenormand.

Torann, please, feel free to Dutch/English with me as I kind of frenchify any english sentence I try to build - that's just my froggy style.
And thank you for comforting my little Under The Roses deck as I find it so cute and beautiful.

I don't have the Under the Roses deck, but from what I've seen online and some of the reviews I've read, it might not be the best beginner deck. It's definitely beautiful, but a few of the cards are a bit more ambiguous than I like.

I think a Lenormand deck should have very clear, uncluttered images in which the symbol is the prime focus and the very first, if not only, thing you see when you glance at the card. This becomes very important when you get into the larger spreads, especially the Grand Tableau.

For example, both the Snake and Book cards in Under the Roses prominently feature a woman. When I first glance at those cards, I see the woman, not the snake or book. If I'm reading quickly, that could throw me completely off. At a minimum, it could subconsciously influence my reading.

Similarly, I prefer the image to primarily evoke the traditional meaning of the card. In Under the Roses, the Whip card shows a woman in dominatrix dress. While sex, and particularly sex with "whip" overtones, can be one of the interpretations of the Whip card, in my experience, that card is more about fights and arguments, often ones that recur. It can also mean repetitive actions (which can include sex, of course), and -- to bring in the aspect of the broom, rather than the whip or birch rod -- a clearing away (of emotions, usually, but also possibly of dirt or clutter). So, while I certainly wouldn't call the dominatrix wrong, to me, it doesn't evoke the primary meaning.

Once a reader has gotten very comfortable with the core meanings of the cards, the clarity of the images becomes less important. I know many readers who love Under the Roses for its beauty. For the same reason, I'd stay away from "theme" decks art first, too.

But, to start out, I'd strongly recommend a deck that sticks very closely to the traditional images. There are many to choose from. My personal favorite beginner deck is the Piatnik. A lot of people swear by the Dondorf, Stralsunder, Blue (or White) Owl decks. If you prefer more contemporary art, the Zingdoodle deck is great (though I'm not sure if it's still available), as is the recently released Maybe Lenormand (which includes a bunch of cards from other traditional fortune-telling card systems, but you can simply remove those to make it a Lenormand deck).

This site http://www.wanderingoracle.com has a couple of decks based on older decks (the Wust and Stralsunder) but with very contemporary coloring. I like their Wonderwust deck a lot -- the way it's colored makes the symbol really pop out so you can see it easily. They also have a deck (I think based on the Wust) you can download for free and color however you want to make your own deck.

Ultimately, you should use whatever decks you're comfortable with. Just bear in mind that, unlike tarot, the symbol is the important part, not the art or your intuitive reactions to the picture.

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Also, Anthony Louis's book is excellent for learning traditional card meanings, but he doesn't really teach the process of reading Lenormand.

There are some great courses on cartomancy.net (though I think that site is having some technical issues at the moment) and a couple of excellent books. You've already gotten the recommendation for Andy Boroveshengra's book. The others I'd suggest are Caitlin Matthews's book, The Complete Lenormand Oracle Handbook, and Rana George's book, The Essential Lenormand.

Personally, I think Caitlin's teaching system is better, but opinions appear to be pretty evenly split between the books. There are many reviews and posts about Lenormand books on this forum that can help you decide which is better for you.

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Mim said:

I can clearly figure out that Lenormand is as far away from Tarot as riding is from swimming... No way I could use my experience within Tarot-reading here. And I kind of feel it could instead be a burden to carry some Tarot uses while experiencing Lenormand. I'll have to face it and get rid of some intuitive approach I may try to apply from Tarot to Lenormand.

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I find that intuition plays a very small part in my Lenormand reading, perhaps only in blending combinations of more than two cards and having to decide on which "adjectives" to apply. I also think it's a mistake to try to bring in tarot notions like shadow cards, base cards, clarifiers, quints, etc. I don't use them in tarot much, and I see even less need for them in Lenormand. (Obviously, the GT doesn't permit most of these anyway since all the cards are out.)