Playing Detective with 36 Cards

Grand tableaus and Lenormand are a match made in heaven. And while it can be useful to do a general purpose grand tableau, these always leave me with a taste of not enough, they give you a little bit of information here and there, but not precise enough. The job is nice, the marriage is not, just generalizations. 

Where I find that the grand tableau really shines, is when it serves as the evidence in front of our eyes to reply to a specific question or concern. This is what I call playing detective with 36 cards, as all the cards are centered around a specific domain, and we can roam amongst all these to find all the evidence we need to reply to the consultant’s request.

Daniel, a man in his 40’s, married with one child, is on a long term work assignment abroad, and is asking to get some clarity on his marriage.

I always start the interpretation by looking at the corners, as they show external influences around the situation, the two middle cards, and the first three cards. They set the tone for the whole tableau.

For the corners, we see that something unknown is revealed (book – letter) over some painful arguments (whip – cross).

The first three cards, whip, paths and tree, talk about discussions leading to unhealthful choices for the long term health of the marriage. If we add the two middle cards, child and sun, we see that his child’s happiness is an important aspect in his relationship.

Already at this point, something seems quite wrong in the marriage, as we see arguments and secretive ways, all these leading to bad choices.

Let’s start by looking what’s going on with the ring, as the reading is about his marriage his marriage. The ring is in the house of the birds, small upsets. Fox on top shows some deceitful actions, leading to small complexities that put the marriage in danger (child, snake, scythe).

Daniel is in the house of heart, the heart itself is in the house of paths, and the snake is in the house of man, the house of Daniel. Maybe we could already stop here, Daniel’s heart is going two ways, the snake being generally seen as the other woman. In addition, the snake, who knights to the heart, intersects the heart in the house of lilies, which among other things, represents sex. In addition, lilies below the man, with the heart on top, we’re looking at a lack of virtue in the heart department. Case closed, there’s something fishy here.

Daniel is on the right edge of the tableau, we cannot see what’s coming for him. In that case, some readers prefer to reshuffle. Personally, I never do. If he is on the right side, there has to be a reason for that, and the cards insist that it might be more important to analyze why something happened rather that talking about where it’s going.

So, what happened here? The man mirrors the tower in the past, he felt isolated, alone. The distance created problems and an unknown situation with his wife (ship, clouds), and he started looking for opportunities to play some seduction game (child, sun, heart, clover). And now, we find him with an upsetting secret (book, birds), painful (cross).

Daniel and his wife intersect respectively in clouds and cross: trouble, uncertainties and pain.

We see his wife burdened by an unhealthy and stressful situation (tree, mice), the marriage has become a storm for her (clouds) that she tries to control (key). We find her in the house of letter, communications with her husband seem important, but looking at her past, we have letter and coffin, a lack of news. The problem might be linked to the fact that the snake is right in front of her, if she doesn’t know yet about that snake, she’ll know soon. Especially that that’s exactly where she interacts with the ring, big concern for her relationship, especially with the snake just on top of the scythe, threatening to cut that marriage to pieces.

In her future line, we can see that she wants first to give a pleasant image of the marriage to the entourage (garden, lilies), she does not want to show what’s going on, but long term there is some lasting pain (anchor, cross).

What is very interesting here, is her near future diagonal, is that she might react to what is happening. Child, moon and rider might really show a new romance for her, or some real interest in the heart department. If we go down from that diagonal, we see mountain in between the rider and Daniel. That rider becomes an enemy for Daniel, especially with that mountain in the future of the ring, a real obstacle to that marriage. 

Long term diagonal, we get the scythe, in the column of the ring, that marriage gets the axe. And that’s exactly what shows the fate line, what remains long term, her solution against the other woman (key, snake) is to cut (scythe, woman) that happiness (bouquet, lilies) at home in view of all (house, garden).

Coming to this point, that might explain why we don’t see any future for Daniel. Things are dire in the relationship department, the marriage is on the brink of collapsing.

Distance and isolation have created a wall between them, with a lack of communication. Instead of a stable home life for Daniel (house, anchor), the recent past (rider, mountain) shows that that distance and loneliness have been the number one enemy to the mariage, and the root of all problems.

Where doest this leave us? To having diagnosed a bunch of problems leading to the current situation. Diagnosing what happens is a good first step to understand a problem. From there, a second part of any session should be to look for advice and what can be done. This could be done with Lenormand, Tarot or anything else. It is my belief that, even if these systems a different, Lenormand is not only a predictive tool, but also a great system to find root causes and advice on them. If the next article, that’s what I plan to do with Daniel’s situation…

Deck: Lenormand oracle cards, by Alexandre Musruck.