Lenormand Houses.

When doing a past, present, future grand tableau with Lenormand, a popular technique to enrich the interpretation is to use houses. The houses are defined as if they were arranged numerically from 1 to 36 on the tableau, the Rider representing the first card in position 1, up to the Cross at position 36, the last position.

Houses and their respective cards.

Each one of these houses act as a container, ruling what’s going on in a particular position in the grand tableau. In fact, when interpreting, the meaning of a card that falls in a particular house is modulated by the definition of the house, coloring its interpretation.

For example, traditional definitions for the Star are success, guidance and hope. The Start will always mean that, wherever it falls in the grand tableau. But the interpretation will be colored by the house it falls onto. For the sake of simplicity, if we consider the houses values being the same as the cards, the Star in the house of the Sun, for instance, will show a brilliant success; while in the house of Mountain, it will still show a success, but difficult to obtain, or delayed.

In contrary to the cards, which can be interpreted in combination or several together, a house is always interpreted alone, without influence from the neighboring houses.

There are two popular methods to interpret the houses. More than 200 years, Lenormand started as a parlour game, as it has become usual to give to a house the same interpretation as the card itself. Thus, for example, the house of the Rider talks about news, visits, …

The other method of interpretation is usually referred as the master method. The description is contained in a book from 1875, “L’oracle parfait ou le passe temps des dames”. As Mlle Lenormand is mentioned in the methods explained in the book, the interpretation given for the houses has also become quite popular. In this system, and my guess would be because the book talks mostly about playing cards, the houses have a definition quite different than you would expect for the Lenormand cards. For instance, the house of the Key is defined as indifference, a very different concept that what the Key usually refers to. Later on, it was discovered that L’oracle parfait is itself plagiarized from another book that was published in the 18th century.

Over the years I have used and tested both ways of using the houses. As far as I’m concerned, and at least as being consistent in using one system or the other, I do not see much difference in results. Of course, each proponent of such or such method will defend their choices and will give convincing arguments, but there is no clear winner or loser when interpreting. The most important point is to be consistent in always using one system, the one that we feel we are the most comfortable with, and stick with it. Occam’s razor, as the first method describes the same values for the cards and houses, and as I like simplicity when possible, I have selected to use the same definitions for the cards and the houses.

Even if the houses are mostly used in the grand tableau, they can have some other useful uses. They could be used a placeholder with tarot or a different oracle, where the interpretation would become a mix of the two different decks used. They can also be used with smaller spread, using two Lenormand decks, one actin as house, the other as the regular reading.

In his constellation, the french author Kevin Meunier uses extensively a system of houses with the 22 major arcana of the Tarot de Marseille. I will publish at a later date an example of this spread, with explanation on how to integrate the houses.

As usual in most divination practices, the best advice is to practice and experiment, and keep what works for us.

Happy experimenting with the houses to all.