#lenormarch

[akalashi]

Day 6

The only Lenormand deck on my wishlist right now is The Scrying Ink. I like when artists cross over and make different kinds of decks. I’ve enjoyed when the same artist has made a Tarot and Oracle deck so I think I’ll like if a there’s a Tarot and lenormand deck done by the same person. Especially if the symbols are borrowed from the Tarot deck.

[akalashi]

Lenormarch Day 5

I don’t have enough decks yet to know what doesn’t really work for me. I like the bigger cards and I like the smaller cards. I like the minimalist approach and the elaborate approach. I think I like having ‘traditional’ cards so I can learn easier. 

[akalashi]

Lenormarch Day 4

Up until last night, I only had the Fairy Tale Fortune telling cards which are beautiful in their own right but when I’m learning a new system, I want to dive in and have some of the traditional stuff that goes with it (such as the clouds being dark and bright and the significators facing a certain direction). 

One of the metaphysical shops that I don’t get to often because it’s so far away from my house happened to be right next to the restaurant I was going to to celebrate my birthday dinner and so I got to stop there. They had fewer Lenormand decks than I thought they would and more than I thought they might, all at the same time.

I was torn between 4 decks: Gilded Reverie Lenormand, Blue Bird Lenormand, Under the Roses Lenormand, and Pixie’s Astounding Lenormand.

I was really drawn to Pixie’s Astounding Lenormand even though I don’t like the art on the Rider Waite Smith tarot. I also liked the idea of Under the Roses (and heard great things about it) but some of the imagery was a problem for me. Finally, I heard that Blue Bird Lenormand didn’t have the verses on the cards and that was the most intriguing part of that deck for me so Gilded Reverie it was!

They were all really small decks. I didn’t know if they were the mini versions of these decks or if this was the only version of the decks. I’d heard that having a small deck is great for doing the Grand Tableau though so I was exciting to have such a small deck in comparison to the one I already had.

There’s another deck that I’m hoping to get in the future, if I take to Lenormand at all, but that’s about it. 

[akalashi]

Lenormarch Day 3

So far I have exactly 0 books on Lenormand. It had never been interesting enough for me to spend my money on it. I have spent tons and tons of cash and credit on tarot cards, tarot books, joining tarot associations, subscribing to Tarot forums. 

On one of the tarot forums I frequent there is a small subsection for Lenormand that I have only checked out recently. The information there seems to be as good as the tarot information in the tarot forums is. They talk about houses though and I haven’t come that far in my learning to know what exactly they are talking about, but between watching the Lenormarch Video and reading the forums, I at least knew that the Cloud card should have storm clouds and bright clouds on it, so when I finally bought my second Lenormand deck I gauged it’s viability on that.

I have since ordered  Learning Lenormand: Traditional Fortune Telling for Modern Life by Marcus Katz. I’ve enjoyed a lot of his books about Tarot (some of them really turned my world upside down; how he reads the Celtic Cross for example) so I’m hoping for some of the same of that but for Lenormand. I would have purchased his Lenormand as well but I don’t like such large images of the playing cards interrupting the art of the Lenormand card.

[akalashi]

Lenormarch Day 2

I’ve known about Lenormand almost as long as I’ve known about Tarot, which is about 2 years. I probably knew about Tarot before that, but that was when I took the plunge.

Tarot seemed easier to find resources about. There are spreads all over Pinterest which was where I was frequenting at the time and Tarot decks were easy to find. I dove in with that. Along the way I heard about Lenormand but I hadn’t quite sussed out what made it different than Tarot.

At one point, everyone on my Tumblr feed seemed to be posting about the Fairy Tale Fortune cards and I had seen them at my Half Price Books so I ran out to pick them up. Their colorful and not really scary pictures led me to work with them in other ways rather than their intended use (which was fun!).

Right now though, I was presented a challenge. As I learn about divination, because I had gotten ‘too good’ at tarot, I had to learn a new divination system. I was lined up to learn about Runes (I’d found runes and the rune book to go with it for only $10 in a second hand shop) but then this #Lenormarch challenge came around. I figured I could do both at once -- my personal challenge as well as this Tumblr challenge. 

So far I’ve pulled a couple of cards just to test the waters and I realized that I was already making the grave mistake of reading into the cards too much. I also realized that I had done the same thing when someone else had been experimenting with Lenormand here on Tumblr -- the fox and the letter. To me it looked like a spirit companion was trying to communicate. Now, as I don’t know much more, I would think that it would be someone is being deceitful and you’ll soon learn of it. 

[lenormandsalon]

Day 5: DECKS! What Lenormand Decks do you have or have had that didn’t work for you and why? What makes a not so good Lenormand deck for you? This is the only deck I own that I can't get along with. Not a fan of the art style or colouring. No playing card inserts. I don't like the poems on the cards. All the cards either mean the best thing ever! Or absolute disaster. These were originally in German, and I can only imagine that some of the subtlety got lost in translation. The Blue Owl on the back of the deck that gives the cards it's name is adorable, and the LWB is good. That's about the best I can say for it.

[lenormandsalon]

Day 4: DECKS! What Lenormand Decks do you have? What makes a good Lenormand deck for you? These are my favourite decks, clockwise from left, The Enchanted Lenormand Oracle, Piatnik and Pixie's Astounding Lenormand. The Enchanted Lenormand is beautiful, very dreamlike images, each in it's own crystal ball on a background of twigs and leaves. The deck comes in a box, with a very good book, a sheet printed with all the houses, to help with Grand Tableau and 3 extra cards, replacement man and woman, and The Diviner which can be used as a signifier. The cardstock is thick and the cards are very glossy. There is a slight misprint on The Mountain. I fixed mine with permanent marker. The Piatnik is my baby. Beautiful art, my favourite card is The Fish, they are BONKERS. I'm not convinced that the artist had ever seen actual fish. The LWB that comes with the deck leaves a lot to be desired, but I really recommend this deck to anyone interested in starting Lenormand, I have never had a problem reading them and I will always rave about this deck to anyone who'll listen. Pixie's Astounding Lenormand is my newest deck. I'm pretty smitten. It's made from the images on the Rider Waite tarot deck and other images by Pamela Colman Smith, which is really bloody clever. It comes in a tin with a fairly substantial LWB. Mine is a reprint, and some of the images are greatly improved from the first edition, definitely worth a look if you're a Rider Waite fan. My favourite decks all have playing card inserts, and are fairly traditional. I don't get on with decks that "reinterpret" the original images too much.

[eternalathena]

I found this pack of “Gypsy Witch Fortune-Telling Cards” shoved into a corner of my bookshelf yesterday while I was gathering my Lenormand decks to photograph them for the #Lenormarch challenge. These aren't like any Lenormand decks that I have seen around, but they're pretty similar and there is mention of a “Mlle Le Normand” in the LWB. Has anyone ever read with these?