What Questions are best asked of a Lenormand Deck?

dancing_moon

Dancing_moon, this is also super helpful, particularly the highlighted. One of the things I love about Tarot (and PCO) is just that experience of connecting the dots and filling in the gaps with free association. I think I'm still not ready for the fixity required by Lenormand. At least it feels like fixity to my inexperienced eye. And your comment about "they just wouldn't budge" is very resonant. I feel like I'm up against a bit of wall. Which is, of course, my own obtuseness lol.

Interesting that you comment about Lenormand being for 'down-to-earth' matters as this is not one of my strong points. I work hard to keep all those details straight. I can do it fairly well but it's an effort. So perhaps I need to go a lot slower here.

Lenormand has become very rewarding to me when I stopped treating it like poetry and focused on the maths of it. :D In a way, it's almost like deciphering a message written in a foreign language: you know what each word is supposed to mean, and you try to reconstruct a coherent phrase. If you try to 'cheat' and go Humpty-Dumpty way, it'll simply fall apart and won't make any sense.

You can say it's fixity, but this very 'fixitiness' makes it more precise and factual than Tarot, IMHO. Anyhow, worth a few more tries for sure. :thumbsup:
 

Madrigal

Excellent analogy, dancing_moon. I used to enjoy translating French poetry into English and vice-versa so your description gives me something familiar to refer to. I also feel like I had a very modest little breakthrough with a two-card draw this weekend and that is encouraging.
 

Padma

It's really a mental hurdle to move past. You kind of just have to say to yourself: my Lenormand deck is purely utilitarian, and I'm going to use it like I would use a knife and fork - accept it's form and function and use it how it was designed.

I thought this was a perfect description of using the Lennies. I struggled the same way you did at the beginning, Madrigal, but I have learned to turn off my tarot brain, and just use the little deck for what it is good for.

Myself, I find it unbeatable for predictions, and I also find it a lot of fun to use in combination with tarot cards - using the tarot cards as the story telling board, with all its depth, then throwing two Lens for the purely utilitarian fortune telling aspect below each tarot card in my spread. It can be very insightful, and in a way, it can really help you see the division and divide between the two systems.

With small daily draws, you have to be aware of the Lenormand's tendency to be very literal, as LittleOne pointed out! I have also found the Lenormand's are not great at giving advice, as one would approach tarot, say, from a question point of view - so I will ask it very literally "what happens for me today?" or "will the package arrive this week" or whatever question I want an answer to. I use the tarot cards for advice,not the Lennies :)

I find the Lens are a great little "weather predicting" tool, so to speak - I look at the cards in the morning, to see if I will need an umbrella...or a sun hat...or snow boots...or patience! :laugh:

ETA Love Dancing_Moon's take on it, as well. She is right - it is the limitation of the language that makes it succinct.
 

Madrigal

Myself, I find it unbeatable for predictions, and I also find it a lot of fun to use in combination with tarot cards - using the tarot cards as the story telling board, with all its depth, then throwing two Lens for the purely utilitarian fortune telling aspect below each tarot card in my spread. It can be very insightful, and in a way, it can really help you see the division and divide between the two systems.

This is precisely how I arrived at my little breakthrough this weekend so thanks, Padma, for affirming that trajectory :D