Rules of Lenormand

Sometimes i wonder when i read posts in the forum, or other places. And i wonder about why is there often people say you can read any way you want. Is it not rules in Lenormand we all need to follow to get a good and correct answer? or the way a question is asked, unclear questions give unclear answers.

Example is spreads, as far as my understandings go, there are rules how to read a spread, Rules that was put down by those who made the spread the first time. And then i wonder why is it often that people dont follow those rules?

Any thought about it?

Amanaki

We'll, I'm not one for rules. I don't have any real familiarity with Lenormand but if I saw rules I would be very unimpressed.... I can be a Tarot purist but I refuse to be dictated to by cardboard or the people who put images on it. It's a creative medium and I refuse to see anything but guidelines in the literature

I think it is connected to approach of divination.

It's important to remember that Petit Lenormand is actually one method of reading a German set of playing cards. Where Petit Lenormand is most popular, there is a stronger connection to cartomancy and its pre-Occultist roots as a whole. Combinations, counting, pairing, tableaus, distance all feature in these systems historically and still do.

So the rules are not seen as dogma but actually just general consensus held within several connected methods of reading playing cards (including tarot).

To non-continental readers this is at odds to what they are more familiar. Their 'intuition' is mutually exclusive. So they pour scorn and often lie and claim the traditional methods are doctrinal and inflexible which is actually completely untrue! This is how the nonsense of schools appeared, also.

one of the big rules of Lenormand is the combining. It's about the combined meanings of the line in front of you. However I know people who break that rule and don't use combining and a different method.

I think with divination we have to find our own rules that work for us and give us the best results. However there is always classical purists in each system and they would frown. My technique is always experimentation. What improves your readings, what seems pointless?

If you are asking the Lenormand a yes / no question, you are probably not going to get a result which is as good as asking about a whole situation. I see both areas here, a good question and finding a method that works for you.

There are rules in Lenormand. The problem is that each author/teacher has their own rules which differ from each other to a greater or lesser degree. So whose rules do you propose we follow? Rana George's? Rana wrote a great book, and if one wants to follow one particular teacher's methods, Rana's would be a good choice.

But Rana uses a mixture of very traditional methods, less traditional methods, and completely new methods which she made up. Nothing wrong with that, but when you say "Rules that was put down by those who made the spread the first time," clearly Rana's book doesn't conform to that standard.

I paid for my decks and books. That means I get to decide for myself whose rules I follow. I can make a decision, change my mind, make up my own rules, or use a mixture of different authors' rules. If anyone doesn't like what I do, then it's their problem, not mine. If you think my readings are unclear because I don't follow the rules you want me to follow, then you are perfectly free to not ask me for readings if I post in the Readings Forum offering readings.

Instead of telling us what to do, I'd be more interested in hearing about what you do. How do you read? What have been your experiences? What problems have you run into, what successes have you had, or what questions do you have?

Lee said:

There are rules in Lenormand. The problem is that each author/teacher has their own rules which differ from each other to a greater or lesser degree.

Click to expand...

This is where you enter into the grey area. What are you classing as the rules? I've found that a lot of the 'rules' we are meant to endorse, traditionally, are modern.

I mean I talk to other traditionalists all the time - several authors, too - and we can follow each other and agree most of the time.

I never think of rules in any divinational context as iron-clad, but more as a "conceptual framework" to help me orient myself. If I didn't observe something like that with the Grand Tableau, for example, I would find it truly chaotic, kind of a blur of bits-and-pieces. Structure is useful as long as it provides an aid to navigation and understanding. It becomes dogma when it tries to reach beyond those objectives in a prescriptive way. That said, since I've seen Lenormand described as more "analytical" than "intuitive," some kind of orderly protocol is implied.

First of all. Thank you to all of you who answer to my questions

Zwdrex.

I wonder why you would be unimpressed with Lenormand if there is rules?
In my opinion it has to be some form of rules in a system.
But maybe you like to call it guidlines instead?

Andybc

Thank you for your answer, i understand what you mean.

danieljuk

Yes i am agree that Combinations is important to understand, and its some rules about how we see the different combinations. But even here people dont seem to be agree with each others.


Lee.

I do read and try to learn Rana Georgs way of using the Lenormand cards yes. But that said, i dont see her teachings as the only way to become a good reader. And yes i know she have some new thinking in her teaching. In a perfect situation i would love to learn the Lenormand as it was told in the beginning when it was first used, but it seems to be a big task.

My biggest problem was when i found that Lenormand had a French , German, Belgium, and a system from Holand. What should i choose, but when i bought Rana Georges book i i felt it was a good book for beginners like my self.

Of those readings i have done i had good feedback and if the person was not totally agree with me i looked at the cards again and saw if i had missed some info. And i noticed that a few times i had missed a few things, and it made more sense then.

I think the main rule is consistency. As in, you can change the rules to suite your way of reading but then be consistent about it.

Amanaki raises some really good points, especially in connection to these 'regional' approaches, and the problems students face.

The idea of these national schools were largely invented by monoglottic Anglo-students. Not all German readers use the Anchor for work just as not all Belgians use the Moon. There is no such thing as a 'work' or a 'sex' card, as in one card, let alone such a thing defining a school.

Lenormand whilst being consistently very popular in Germany, Belgium, Brazil et cetera (Lenormand is actually not that popular in France) never inspired as many books when compared to other systems. So the few that did appear, before 2000, proved highly influential resulting in some consistency but far from such fixed schools.

It doesn't serve a student well to try and see such rigid definitions to singular cards in a construct system.