Three Card Combo Exercise

My favorite spread in learning LeNormand is to chose a significator, the Gentleman in my case, reinsert in deck, shuffle, and go through the deck until coming to the significator and reading the three cards before and the three cards after.
I agree with the consensus that one needs at least three cards to put together an interpretation.
In this spread, I start the “alphabet” closest to the significator.
For each card I come up with about three to six key words. From them I form simple lines. Some combinations allow multiple interpretations and try to come up with as many as practical.
For example: In one reading where I merely asked what to expect for the next few days. I drew Ways + Stars + Scythe - Gentleman - Fish + Mountain + Ring.
Reading back from the Gentleman, I interpret “Loss of vision and direction”. Forward, “Financial challenges in partnership.”
This reading pretty much wraps up my feelings about my job.
As a further exercise, I may mix and match the orders of the cards to perhaps come up with a different interpretation. If I reverse the order (from the significator) of Ways + Stars + Scythe, I may come up with “Pathway and direction terminated (or decided)”. With Fish + Mountain + Ring reversed, I may come up with “Contractual obstacles in business”.
Typically, the order from the significator seems to be more relevant.
I may also take the two cards on each side of the significator and come up with a simple two-card combo interpretation. In this case Scythe + Fish = “Cuts (or decision) in business and finance. Reversed? In this case, even if one turned the keywords around in a sentence, the meaning appears to be nearly the same.
I suppose this post could go under “Readings” but wanted to highlight the exercise in three card mix and match.
What say you?

So this has me thinking...(as Lenormand always does ) I also do a similar spread, but I always read the cards left-right, regardless of the significator.
It appears you found a way to get messages that resonate for you. Well done!

I like the idea of reading backwards from the key card to the left, and forwards to the right. Very interesting!

SOOOO nice! Thank you so much for sharing. Do you mind if I copy this exercise in my files ?
And sorry if this sounds dense but how do you decide which direction to read and/or which cards to pair up ? I'm assuming it's intuitive but wanted confirmation .

ana luisa said:

SOOOO nice! Thank you so much for sharing. Do you mind if I copy this exercise in my files ?
And sorry if this sounds dense but how do you decide which direction to read and/or which cards to pair up ? I'm assuming it's intuitive but wanted confirmation .

Click to expand...

Copy? No problem. It's all up for discussion.

As far as which direction to read, I suppose it's intuitive. Sometimes the meanings or the "sentence" one puts together makes more sense reading one way or the other. Sometimes the meanings can be taken both ways with little difference. Kinda like foreign languages reversing noun/adjectives for example.

I used to work all possible combinations but found most irrelevant and distracting. I stick to basing my readings on adjacent cards. As far as my personal spread is concerned described in the initial post, I generally but not always, read away from the significator. This is something I found that works for me but don't profess the methodology as anything established in the mainstream.

This is not to say that I don't run into a difficult reading every so often, whether it be I just ain't in tune or just need more practice. But we all like them "aha!" moments and of course do them again.