Often students want to know how we use the Lenormand houses according to the ‘master method’ that’s inspired by the card significations for a pique playing cards deck. It’s simple. Say you have these cards as part of the line that forms the ‘destiny cards’ in the grand tableau: Cross, Woman, Star, Heart.
Straightforwardly we could say this: ‘you’re looking at a whole lot of grief, but things will clarify to your heart’s desire.’ This all sounds good, but what the heck does it mean? What is the heart’s desire? We could ask the querent, but often when it comes to knowing what the heart’s desire is, we discover that it’s far from obvious to them. So we can’t just assume that by flinging such a line to a person, it will automatically make sense to them. How do we get more specific then?
Looking at the house the Heart fell within, we notice that it’s in the house of the Cross designating illness. Ay, the heartache… The house of the Cross hosting the Heart mirrors the card of the Cross in the house of the Key for negligence and indifference. So now we infer that the heart’s desire may be connected to being acknowledged. A heart invested in the inevitable – suggested by the Cross that the Woman is looking at – is at odds with the state of being ignored. For what does it also mean to say that it’s inevitable that you’re ignored? So there’s a tension right there that, on the one hand tempers the Cross in the Key, and on the other hand excites the Heart in the Cross. Very vexing.
What of the Woman herself? She is in the house of Fish for favors flanked by the Star in the house of Anchor for ambitions. So we can say this: The heart’s desire to not be ignored must favor the inevitable – which includes being ignored – if better days are to be experienced. That is to say, the woman must consciously and religiously – as per the Cross – pursue the inevitable – also per the Cross – rather than merely accepting it as her fate – the Cross idea again… In other words, the inevitable must be part of her crossing of aims. As any act of unconditional surrender requires faith, the woman must favor her ambition to clarify her ideals so that the heart’s desire and aim to not be ignored can be crossed with its own paradox.
Now, this may sound like some complex philosophizing, but if you think about it, you’ll see what I’m aiming for, namely to demonstrate that the houses, in their adding temper to the cards, can turn the power to act around. Here we go from passively looking at grief – and hoping to resolve it in accordance with the heart’s desire – to actively favoring the grief’s inevitability, so that the conditions that subject the heart to its ache can be placated by the force of self-reflection. That is to say, insofar as the Woman in the house of favors can actually favor herself, she has the possibility to bring down the house of indifference through a simple mental move. That’s it.
The idea of the houses lending temperament to the cards that fall into them comes from my own reflections on the Lenormand cards, explored in my courses and in the third volume in the Read Like the Devil trilogy dedicated to the Lenormand cards that will soon launch.
Meanwhile, the point is that while we read lines in cartomancy – using all the cards we fancy, from playing cards and tarot to fortunetelling cards – we also read between the lines. By this I don’t mean to say that we read some invisible text between the lines, as we metaphorically do in verbal communication, but rather that we read the visuals as a concrete manifestation of it. The Lenormand houses give us exactly that opportunity, as they function as a temperate space for the reading between the lines.
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Cards: A Helium Poet Lenormand, second edition, by Camelia Elias.
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