Keywords and Lists…

A few days ago, I threw a few Lenormand cards for a question asked by a friend, and that made me reflect about the usefulness of keywords. His daughter, college student, had a big test coming and was wondering if the result would be a success.

For starters, I do not like yes/no questions, I believe questions that can empower the consultant are much more useful. But, who am I to decide what someone else wants? So, I started by putting 3 cards on the table…

The Mice, the Stork, the Bear.

My response was “she’ll get past the small annoyances and upsets, and will accumulate enough knowledge to be in a powerful position for the test. The best strategy would be to learn in small sessions, little bits at a time.”

First, and this is one of the many points where I rejoin one of my preferred teachers, Camelia Elias, I never use anymore lists of positive and negative cards. I find it a better idea to just read the cards than rely on arbitrary lists.

For instance, for the 3 mentioned cards, and without naming them, most books have mice negative, stork positive, and bear neutral. That gives a neutral for total, meaning what? Too close to call? Not only, but the response depends on how the question is asked. You see, you also have to ask the questions in a positive way to use these kinds of methods. I find that really too limiting.

In this reading, I used “knowledge” for the Bear, a “keyword” usually associated with the Book. I have also a few problems with lists of keywords. The same way lists of combinations will limit how you see two cards, a list of keywords will box you in some system and will be counterproductive when trying to interpret the cards and expand your knowledge.

Even if I learned in a traditional setting, I always privilege common sense, and I prefer looking at the core concept of each card and in my opinion, looking at how it behaves is a much better approach. These is a major difference between remembering a list or understanding where all these definitions come from.

Let’s take the example here.

Mice are small critters. What do they do? If they infest your house, they will start nibbling and damaging everything they find in their path. And not only food, trust me. They will also destroy paper and many other things. And they will leave droppings behind. And reproduce quickly. That’s why most people associate mice with stress, annoyance, things eroding, theft, …

Storks are migratory birds. As soon as the weather becomes too cold, they will relocate for the winter to a warmer place, and will come back when spring comes, when the weather becomes nicer again. That’s why they’re usually associated with positive changes. And the legend also associates them with babies. Using keywords only, how many times do we see someone saying pregnant every time the stork is present in a spread? If only I had a dime each time, I would be rich!

In nature, bears are powerful animals that hibernate when comes winter time. They’re strong, powerful and greedy, and very protective of their cubs. I will let you guess where all the usual definitions come from. Just using common sense when we look at the basic concepts of what a bear is.

Just one usual definition can seem strange in the usual suspects. Most french readers associate bear with money, but it has nothing to do with the bear, the reason for this association is cartomancy; the bear is the 10 of clubs, apparently a sign of money in the french system. Personally, if we look at money, I would see more the bear as savings or long term investments rather than day to day money, due to the bear’s behavior, which is to accumulate and makle reserves for the winter and when he hibernates.

Now, it becomes much easier to see where my initial interpretation comes from. The first part “she’ll get past the small annoyances and upsets,” is easy to understand if we look at the stork behavior, part of their diet is to eat small critters, and in this particular spread, we can see the stork looking at the mice. By eating them, we get rid of these small pests, so we’ll lose the annoyances and stress related.

Next, we have “ and will accumulate enough knowledge to be in a powerful position for the test.” This is exactly what I was describing in a bear’s behavior. And of course here, as we’re talking about a test, the accumulation is about knowledge.

And finally, “The best strategy would be to learn in small sessions, little bits at a time.” The same way mice nibble at things.

Deck: Mlle Lenormand Wahrsagekarten, by Piatnik.