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I am back.
So many thinks have happened since I stopped writing – I hadn’t stopped reading, but I hadn’t been enjoying it the way that I should have. I actually started to write on more than one occasion and then decided it just wasn’t time. So yesterday I asked “Should I return to writing about cards” and received a very positive response. And then my son awoke from his nap, LOL…
I decided today to ask about myself and my emotional condition. I don’t particularly like reading for myself. I often find it difficult to be objective. Part of my hiatus involved learning on an emotional level – learning to trust myself, and learning to let go of my pre-conceived ideas about people and situations around me. I, like many people tend to drag quite a bit of emotional baggage around, and it’s time to allow myself to leave it behind so I can grow as an individual again.
I have been growing in my cartomancy practice as a direct result of this, and being able to recognize the difference between picking up on a situation, and picking up the feelings around a situation. I think this is very important when you’re reading for others – it’s very easy to become influence by the person you’re reading. You may pick up on what THEY think is going to happen (especially if they themselves are emotional at the time you’re reading for them – something I do not recommend). It is what they feel is going to happen – sometimes they may be correct, but other times their hopes and fears are just that. Discernment becomes especially valuable in these instances.
Because I suffer periodically with melancholy I decided to ask about a particular situation that has been causing me some concern. I decided I would only throw three cards. I shuffled, cut and threw the first three cards at the top of my deck.
Key - Lady - Anchor
#33 The Key – I always view the key as an affirming card – it is my “Yes!” when I read, it’s also a card of success and successful undertakings. Keys also open doors of course, and lately I have felt somewhat locked in.
#29 – The Lady – represents myself. I always love when I throw a set of cards and my representative card appears in the center. To me that is a very good omen and gives me a sense that I have connected with my concern well.
#35 – The Anchor – I usually use the anchor to mean employment or work (I most often use Treppner’s interpretations) but I have found it very often to represent other things. It’s hard to explain how one makes that determination – it’s more of an instinctive feeling to me than anything else. I have had it come up in readings to mean a weight or burden, often imposed by people outside of the questioner. I have also read it to mean grounding in it’s most positive definition. It’s a secure feeling – the long hard journey is over, now is the time for both celebration and rest. You are at home once again.
I felt very pleased when I saw these three cards. The lady faces the key, so my focus will be on the positive aspect of the situation in question. I will be more focused on my success than being depressed. There may potentially be work involved (and I know for certain there will be) but I will be pleased with the fruit of my labors. I will feel more grounded and more at home. To me this throw is all about successful undertakings and positive outlooks.
What a wonderful gift for my return to blogging, eh? 
Being I woke up in an absolutely horrid mood, I figured what could be better than to throw some cards? Generally I am not an optimistic person, but I figured things couldn’t get much worse. But they always can…
What’s this all about? Well, the anchor is work (to me that is – many people use the fox for employment instead). The cross often pertains to grief and the child new beginnings.
And here begins our lesson. I thought this might be a good opportunity to illustraite how three different schools of thought would interpret these cards, and how important it is when reading to maintain an open mind.
When I went on my hiatus from reading for others, I invested in a membership over at waldfee.net which is a very extensive website as far as Lenormand and several other card systems are concerned. I had become familiar with it back in 2005 if I recall correctly. It’s exclusively in German so I have to use several online translators, but I feel it’s quite worth it. It was very important to me to be able to find additional resources to draw from. Part of what I’ve always had trouble with as far as English resources are concerned are the combinations. Waldfee has many that aren’t typical in any of these books.
Why is this important? Well….
When you read, you hope it’s going to be coherent. When I read the Lenormand, I think of my layout as a sentence where each card represents a word or phrase. This is why I like to read using linear type spreads. Now, I will demonstrate why this becomes challenging when using the different resources that are out there.
Reference #1: The Secrets of the Lenormand Oracle
“Anchor+Cross: Lasting sorrows, painful life experience, religious lifestyle”
“Cross + Child: Communion, baptism, birthing pains”
Now, it’s VERY important to note here that Sylvie Steinback (the author of this book) uses the Fox to represent work. I started reading using Sylvie’s method. It’s a very good one as far as I am concerned (I still use a variant of her “no layout method”) but because I had some background in what I would guess are traditional German meanings (and anyone more knowledgeable out there – please do correct me if I am mistaken) a lot of her meaning didn’t work well for me. This is one of those instances. If you’re a beginner to the Lenormand (or just looking for what I would consider to be a more “hip and updated” version of reading with these cards), this is a very good jumping off point to learn from. I know of many people who swear by Sylvie’s method and this is where they stop because it works beautifully for them.
Part of reading cards is really about connecting with your medium of choice. This way, when you lay out cards the meanings will be evident to you. Through interacting with many wonderful people over at The Art of Cartomancy forum I have seen this fact to be illustraited over and over. There are people from all over that come there and share knowledge and it’s so interesting to see how people view the same cards I use. There is no “wrong” way to read them – everyone is different. The important thing to do is find YOUR way of reading….
Had I stuck with Sylvie’s methods exclusively, the cards I threw probably would have been different. Once you and your cards agree on a language together, they will speak the one you’re familiar with. In my case, everything is “a work in progress” so the cards and I are still perfecting our conversational methods, lol…
Example #2: The Treppner Course
“Anchor+Cross: This work is destiny”
“Cross + Child: A child/young lady has a cross to bear”
Could this work for me? Well, I suppose it could but it’s not entirely clear what work it is that is destiny. I have several different “jobs” if you will. Having a cross to bear also wouldn’t fit – I am not what I would classify as a “young” lady, lol. This surprised me because usually Treppner’s method works well for me and it is what I use for meanings most of the time. But I started to run into things like this where I wasn’t too clear on the meaning. Rather than throw more cards (and further confuse myself) I decided to try looking for alternate meanings again. If you are interested in learning about the Lenormand and using the Grand Tableau in particular I would VERY highly recommend this course. It is worth the money spent in my opinion, and this course really helped me to move forward with my reading as a practice.
Example #3 Waldfee
Anchor+Cross: (this is roughly translated in both cases): An end to one’s occupation, layoffs due to work reduction.
Cross+Child (this is what struck me): A fresh start in 3 weeks. An important new beginning.
Both of these examples really hit home for me, which is somewhat unfortunate. Both my husband and I have seen enormous slow downs at our respective jobs due to the gargantuan mess that the US ecomony has become. It’s probably not helpful that we work in different divisions of the same very hard hit sector. My husband’s job has already seen multiple layoffs. Mine has not yet and my employers are working dilligently to avoid them.
The Child/Cross combination is reassuring – at least there will be a fresh start in three weeks though I am not entirely certian how this will impact us. Because (of course) this was very unsettling I looked at the bottom of the deck. What did I find?
Everything for a reason, I suppose
After having thrown cards a few times and getting what I felt were appropriate responses to what was in my mind, I decided to ask the Petit Lenormand the aforementioned question….
Here was what I got:
It’s really kind of amusing, but here’s what we have:
Whip+clouds – discussions that go no where. This has been the state of my relationship with my husband. I feel like he rarely (if ever) listens to me, and it can be quite aggravating (and occasionally costly). For example we had a discussion about the roast chicken I was going to make for dinner. I had just finnished preparing it – butter under the skin and lemons and rosemary in the cavity in addition to a few other things. We hung up. My husband called me back not more than 20 minutes later to ask if I wanted to go out to eat tonight. I think I was silent for a full 30 seconds before I reminded him about the discussion we’d just had. Sometimes I wonder if it might be more fulfilling for me to talk to my dogs. At least they have an excuse – namely that they can’t speak English.
Clouds+Moon – depression. Ah yes, it has reared its ugly head. This is nothing new for me – I deal with it every year during the fall. Fortunately it hasn’t been too bad this time around, but then I have been preoccupied with other things.
Moon+Anchor – this combination intrigued me. According to some schools of thought it can represent addiction. Thankfully that is one problem I don’t have! If we consider that some people believe that the moon is representative of fame, it could be fame through work (again, not a likely option for the lowly Countess, lol). OR it could be emotional work – working with people’s feelings. That’s what I was doing with my readings, and it’s quite emotionally draining as well (which could also be another meaning if we look at the moon as feelings and thoughts and the anchor as “tieing one down”).
Finally Anchor+Birds – Work+worries? Yes, that does fit. Weighted down by worries? Check. Working with phone calls? Check again. It all depends on how we choose to view the birds.
This seemed to work on so many levels. So I flipped the deck over, and what did I find?
Indeed!
Simply put, all other things being equal, the simplest solution is best.
For nearly a month I have been having connection issues with my place of business that has prevented me from getting much of anything done. It was coming to a head today, when my very dilligent friends in our IT department finally threw up their hands and told me to switch my internet service provider. Fortunately they did think about this again and decide to contact my service provider’s help desk. Their rational was that it had to be the ISP’s issue. Why? Occam’s razor of course. Everyone I work with who is off site (like myself) they explained, had the same set up that I did, the only difference was my service provider. ”Not so”, I said. ”I can assure you no one has the same set up I do.” Occam’s razor couldn’t apply the way they were thinking, but it did apply the way I was thinking. I have a variety of cables and devices strewn around my desk that control the internet, how it flys through my home, and how it interacts with my phone. It is so ridiculously complicated that I am the only one who understands how it works in our house (and that’s because I set it up!)
In the midsts of all of this, and since this has been going on forever (so it seemed) I threw some cards hoping that the outcome would (finally) be a solution and I could get back on track. Here’s how they fell:
Book – Mountain – Flowers – House – Anchor
I was very pleased, but hesitant to celebrate but the cards (and another person’s fresh view of the situation) did not disappoint.
There was a secret (book) that was causing the block (mountain). The book reflects to the anchor – people at my job (anchor) were not able to figure out the problem (and the book is facing away from all the other cards). To my surprise (flowers) the block was in fact removed, and it was caused by my set up at the house (mountain reflects to house). The block has been removed, and I can work from my house again (anchor).
What it all boiled down to (which my friends in IT didn’t consider and which I did think was too simple a solution) was that the way the devices were attached was causing an issue. So we moved one device’s position in the line up, and like magic the block was clear!
While to you, dear reader, this may seem quite mundane, I am thrilled to pieces that I can finally get back to being productive. And the added bonus? Everything else I am doing that involves the internet is faster – not just work.
Sometimes we must learn to appreciate the mundane, because it gives us a break from all the typical insanity life brings, lol.
Have a wonderful and joy filled weekend!
I am going to see how this works for me. I got the idea from Tarot Dame’s blog. Instead of my 5 card draw, I am going to do a combined five card Lenormand draw with a three card Shustah draw in conjunction. Here was what I came out with:
Shustah: Death, Gemini, Destiny - Lenormand: Sun, Cross, Garden, Anchor, Ring
First the Pages of Shustah:
Red 1 (Death) is the card of endings (the angel of death is carrying a scythe).
Black 3 (Gemini) has a time frame of 5/20 – 6/20, and is a card of high energy, movement, adaptability and communication.
Black 13 (Destiny) is the potential self brought to manifestation. Truly I have a very difficult time with this card and the book meaning. It’s the second time I’ve drawn it for my blog.
So it sounds as if there will be an ending and rebirth that will happen rather quickly, however this is meant to happen so that personal growth can take place. Or that’s my take… Now on to M’mselle…
The sun could be indicitive of summertime. It is also the card of great luck. The cross speaks of challanges and destiny (interesting). The garden (or park) could be a meeting or something in the public arena. The anchor is work (your job) or could indicate stability. The ring is a marriage, relationship or contract. So far this is quite promising. Now, for the second layer…
Sun + cross+ ring to me is a lucky contract or agreement and this is “meant to be”. The cross + anchor solidifies this for me as it is about work and that destiny is at play. The garden + cross again could be a funeral though the other meaning is an important (cross) event (garden). Garden + anchor could indicate a job in the public. The anchor + ring is an employment contract.
I have to admit that this is puzzling to me, but I began throwing similar cards last night and just decided that I was getting goofy and needed to go to bed. These cards are very positive but I have a hard time comprehending what this could be about. If I am to take both together, the Shustah reading would lead me to belive that this would potentially rock my world. I guess I will wait and see. Of course, any commentary is always appreciated…
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