I find reading for other people to be both challenging and rewarding.  Recently a dear friend asked me to read for something that I strongly dislike reading for – pregnancy.  I agreed, and prefaced the reading by explaining that not only do I not read pregnancy well, but it’s not something I am comfortable reading for.  It was a “take it with a grain of salt” type of situation.  It turned into a wonderful learning experience.

I started the reading in my “traditional” way – a line of five cards.  The question I asked was “Is Mrs. K pregnant?”.  Much to my surprise, the first card out of the deck was the Key.

The Key is one of my favorite cards, because it provides the most concrete answer.  When I see the key, the answer is yes.  The key could also imply a successful undertaking.  Both uses would apply beautifully in this case.  The next few cards bothered me terribly and left a very bad taste in my mouth.  So I decided to try something different.

Most die hard Lenormand enthusiasts like to use the Grand Tableu, which is a method of laying all 36 cards and reading them based on placement and in combination with other cards.  Treppner teaches other methods of reading using this spread such as knighting.  If you are interested in learning to read the rather daunting GT, Treppner’s methods are outstanding and I highly recommend them.  The GT is something that this humble reader is incapable of muddling through.  It is simply too much information for me to process because of my personality.  So every six months or so, I will throw one out and look at it.  One will never develop a comfort level with something that they never attempt.  To this day it still overwhelms me.

There are other wonderful methods of reading – the very wise Madame Seaqueen has several, with her most popular being the “Simple Trigger” and has even created a new blog devoted to layouts here.  For the novice, her spreads are more realistic than a Grand Tableau.  Even if you are a more experienced reader, these layouts are also far more realistic in practice.  Spreads are like guides – each card placement assigns a layer of meaning to the card placed there.  And make no mistake, even a spread with few cards deserves respect – you don’t need to use the entire pack of cards to get the answer to your question.  Sometimes, less it more.  Many times too many cards makes for too much confusion.  

When I am reading cards makes me think of a line from The Last Samaurai:  “Mind the sword, mind the people watch, mind the enemy, too many mind… No mind”.    This has always been the case for me.  I do much better with “no mind”.  As a result, I do better without traditional card spreads.  This is the main reason I have always stuck with Sylvie Stienbeck’s “no layout” method.  I have modified it to suit my purposes and it works quite well, especially when I do phone readings – it’s a lot easier to get the information to my client without a lot of dead air and wasted time.  In this instance it wasn’t working for me at all.  It’s never worked for me when trying to read for this situation.  So I modified it again.

While I was shuffling, I thought to myself that I was going to throw my cards the same way I always would.  I would be looking specifically for the child:

So what was different?  I told myself: “I am going to recite the months of the year from February and move forward.  Whatever month the child falls on will be the month Mrs. K will give birth.”  The answer was “September”.

Not being satisfied, I decided a second approach.  I would throw the cards the same way I always do again, only this time I would count to 13 (which is the number of the child card).  The thirteenth card would tell me the month she would give birth.  And lo and behold the card that fell was the Bouquet:

But wait a minute….  Doesn’t the bouquet mean “Spring”?  Well, yes.  And no.  For timing purposes, most often it would mean Spring.  The bouquet also has an Astrological reference, and the one I use (taken from Treppner) is Libra.  This has always worked very well for me.  My beloved German grandmother was a Libra, and loved to garden.  When I looked at the bouquet I immediately thought of her gentle smiling face.  I had my answer.

I shared the information presented by the cards with my friend who was overjoyed.  Apparently, she would be due around that time if she were currently pregnant.

For many years I used to become stuck when reading because tradition spreads didn’t work well for me.  I didn’t know any other way to use cards, so many times even though I would read for family and friends and have very good results I would stop for a while and take a break.  Trying to read the spreads would exhaust me, and I never felt comfortable using them.  Reading for others without confidence is a dangerous thing.  As years have gone by and I have learned more about cards and methods, I became more confident.  If you are an enthusiast like I am and finding yourself stuck, don’t give up!  There is a method out there that will work for you too.  Sometimes it just takes time to find it or for it to find you.  Using non-traditional spreads and modifying them as I need to has been invaluable for me.  I still love to attempt more structured spreads in the hopes of being able to develop more of a comfort level and to grow in my practice.  I am just happy that I finally found something that worked well for me.

Wouldn’t you know she called me this evening to tell me she took a test and is expecting?