With most of us stuck at home at the moment with little end in sight, time on our hands, and a need for perhaps deeper contemplation than usual, why not distract yourself from the ongoing crisis by practicing your Lenormand readings?
Below is a list of ways you can use your cards, ranging from getting to know them better individually to more ambitious readings with more cards —or even devising your own.
Given this crisis has also forced a lot of us into a more contemplative and reflective mood, most of the exercises and practice readings that follow are generally focused more on personal use of the cards than on fortune telling, but you can adapt them as you wish.
Here are some ways of reading you could try:
Use A Single Card As A Journaling Prompt
Additional Benefit: Getting To Know The Cards At A Deeper Level
- Pick a card randomly from your deck. It doesn’t matter which deck you are using. To get the most out of this exercise, it is best NOT to refer to Lenormand meaning lists. It’s important to access your own experiences and feelings.
- Spend some time focused on contemplating just that card and the symbol it conveys. Just look at it. Not the design of the artwork necessarily, although that may help, but focus more the main image in the card. What does it make you think of? Does it bring up any memories for you or mental images of your own or anything in your life? What words, things, people, might you associate with it? How does it make you feel? What, if any, emotions does it bring up for YOU? What is the energy of the card? Try and get down deep.
- When you are ready, take a piece of paper or a page in your journal and write the name of the card at the top. Write about any thoughts on that card and what it represents to you. Try to focus less on the style of the artwork, and more on the energy of it. For instance:
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- How does this symbol show up in your life?
- What memories, images, thoughts does it conjure for you?
- What kind of energy does it have?
- How does it make you feel?
- What associations do you have with it?
- Is the energy of this card in your life now? If so, in what ways, and what do you think it has to tell you?
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- OR as an alternative, you may be a fan of the free-writing style of journaling, where you access the unconscious through writing without stopping and getting down whatever comes to mind. Yes, even if it seems random, misspelled or ridiculous. To journal like this use the card and your contemplation of it as a start-off point. When you are ready, set a timer for 10 minutes and write WITHOUT stopping or lifting your pen from the page, or fingers from the keyboard. You may be surprised at what the exercise uncovers for you.
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Two Card Combination Readings
Additional Benefit: Practicing Simple Card Combinations In Different Contexts
You can learn a huge amount about the cards just through doing regular two-card readings. Here are some ways you can use pairs of cards:
A. Actions or Advice For The Day
- Ask the cards to give you some advice or an action to take for the day
- Pull two cards at random from the deck
- Read the two cards together as a combination, and try and make them an instruction, piece of advice, or thing to contemplate rather than a prediction. This can be tricky but it’s great practice!
Check out this post for a reminder on reading your own card combinations.
How To Make Your Own Lenormand Card Combinations
B. 2-Card combinations for different life areas
If you want to expand this, you could try deciding on, for instance, three of your life areas you’d like to think about. Say, Love, Career, Friends and Family. You can pick as many as you like, but three is more manageable.
Now, for each different life area, pull just two cards at random. Try and read each combination in relation to that life area specifically. This should help you with reading cards in context.
What do the cards tell you about your life in that area?
C. 2-card combinations for different personal predictions
This is a variation of the life areas exercise, but this time, you can make it more predictive. Get each pair to represent something that will happen today, for example:
- A person I will speak to today
- Something positive that will happen
- Someone that will annoy me
- A piece of news I will hear
Make a list of whatever you want to know, and draw pairs for each. Then check back later and see how accurate your cards were!
Three, Five and Nine Card Readings: Use Personal Development Questions
Additional Benefit: Practicing the main layouts in a personal development context
I won’t go into detail here about how to do the basic Lenormand readings, but do take a look at the Card Layouts pages for instructions on how to read the different layouts if you need help. All of these readings can be used either for predictive purposes OR for more in-depth self development type questions.
Here are some useful questions you might ask the cards that are more about self-development than prediction:
- What do I most need to know at the moment?
- What should I work on or be thinking about more at the current time?
- How can I best overcome this challenge that I’m facing?
- What will best get me through this difficult period?
- What are the positive things in my life I can focus on or explore at this time?
- What can I learn about myself from the current situation?
Grand Tableaus
Since they can take a huge amount of time to complete, a period where you have a lot of time on your hands is ideal for big readings like this one. For step by step guidance to the Grand Tableau, check out these posts:
How To Read The Grand Tableau Part I
Now, Grand Tableaus aren’t necessarily just predictive, and can be used in different ways. One advantage is they can really get into depth on different life areas. Take a look at this post here for things to know about the GT, which, although very detailed and usually time-consuming, is a pretty flexible reading.
Understanding A Grand Tableau Reading: 10 Things To Know
GT Readings To Try:
- Personal Grand Tableau readings which are ‘set’ to focus on influences around you personally for the duration of the crisis. You can also do them for friends and family.
- Country or worldwide “News” readings like the one I did for the UK at the start of 2019, which can be an interesting exercise for any would-be Nostradamuses among you on predicting world or national events. You can check out my posts on that reading here:
Using Lenormand For Predictions: What I Learnt From Predicting The News
UK 2019 Grand Tableau Reading: Results
Creating your own spreads
Additional Benefit: Personalising the Lenormand experience
Finally, if you are an advanced and confident reader, how about creating your own personalised versions of the layouts? You can do this in all sorts of ways, but how about trying to adapt some of your favourite and most useful layouts from other reading systems like Tarot?
Now, usually, I advocate keeping them totally separate as the systems and underpinning ideas are different. However, with some creative thinking, you might be able to come up with personalised layouts that make the most of both Lenormand and other cartomancy systems. Try to incorporate the following aspects of Lenormand into any new layout or readings you come up with:
- Make use of pairs and combinations rather than single cards
- Try to incorporate the storytelling aspects of Lenormand, so for instance, moving from situation a to situation b.
- Remember that Lenormand is usually more direct, blunt and down to earth than Tarot and less esoteric. How might you incorporate that directness into readings?
I hope all my readers and their loved ones are able to stay safe and well during this challenging time.
Love and blessings
Lozzy xx