As we’ve seen in grand tableaus, using the houses is an invaluable technique, which can give a lot of precision in our readings. With a little bit of imagination, it is certainly also possible to use houses in smaller spreads.
But first of all, let’s give a reminder of what the houses are. Houses act as a container for the card landing in it. There are two very important notions involved by this.
First, contrary to how we interpret a spread, a house is not influenced by its neighbors. It keeps its definitions, and nothing else. For instance, the house of the heart is about love, and even if the mice are in a neighboring house, the house will remain about love, not stressful love. The neighboring house of mice will have no impact, like it would have on a regular spread.
Second, it colors the card that falls in the house, it does not change its interpretation. If, for instance, the sun is a success, it will remain a success whatever house it falls down. It might be a beautiful success in the house of the bouquet, or a painful success in the house of the cross, or a success giving hope in the house of the star. In all cases, it will remain a success.
There are two main styles of definitions for the houses. Either giving them the same definition as we use for card meanings, or using the definitions used in l’oracle parfait, what is commonly called the master method.
Now that we have defined what a house is, it becomes easy to define a strategy to use them in a small spread.
One solution I don’t like, would be to do like a grand tableau, and start at house one for the first card in the spread and increment the house number by one for each following card, until we reach the last. My problem with this approach is that we limit the possibilities by using only the first houses.
The approach I prefer is to use two different decks, one for the houses, and one for the spread. That way, houses can be selected randomly.
The procedure is easy. A number of cards corresponding to the number of cards in the spread is drawn randomly from the first deck; they will act as containers, as the houses. Then, the second deck is used as usual for the spread, putting one card on each house position.
Let’s do an example with 5 cards. What should I know about traveling internationally this year to see my family, considering the current situation? The top deck represents the houses, the bottom one, the regular spread.
As we are experimenting and because I find the extra information useful, I decided for this experiment to use the definitions used in the master method. I will mention them while interpreting.
Looking quickly at the spread without houses, it seems quite negative. The letter could certainly be the airline ticker, which could be obtained successfully, as it is followed by the sun.These are the good news, apparently this can indicate with some certainty that the border will be open and so, the possibility to travel is there.
These two cards can certainly also show successful communications when over there. We’ll come back to this aspect later.
The last three cards tell of another story. The tree is of course a big indicator for health. It is there as a warning that healthwise, the situation is far from perfect. Clouds and mice will of course show how unclear the situation is and stressful. With the dark side of the clouds turned towards the mice, the stress could be quite intense.
If we look at this one descriptively, instead of left to right, we can see that the main focal point is the tree, reminding us about the health implications. Looking at the first pair, the sun becomes clouded, a successful trip becomes quite unclear and problematic. The other pair, letter and mice, tells us about stressful communications. Something is definitely stolen, and it has to do with communication. That makes me wonder what kind of contact I could have over there with people, this might be the sign of another confinement.
So, while the trip can be a possibility, it might not be the best idea to travel.
Let’s see what kind of details we can add with the houses.
With the letter, we get the house of the bouquet, which in the master method, represents associations and contact with others. This, already gives a big confirmation that most of the contact I would have during this trip will involve some kind of distance, at the letter is usually the significator for communication at distance.
The dog is about pleasure. This is interesting information too, even if communication over distance, it would still be a pleasurable success. I’m not really surprised, as I could not travel for two years, even with no close contact, it would still be nice to meet my family.
The snake is about injustice. Totally true. The health situation can be seen as a real injustice, there’s nothing even a tiny bit positive about what is happening healthwise around the world. That snake, like covid, is really poisoning the situation.
Lily is about disgrace. Nothing really to add here. Everything is unclear, a very disgraceful situation we are in. Together with the previous pair, that expresses the problem very well. Travelling under such conditions feels disgraceful and treacherous.
The house of ma is about endings. The stress of traveling in such conditions seems to be too much, I will probably end the project and report it early next year if possible.
Decks: CartaMundi Lenormand for the houses, Mondnacht Lenormand for the spread.
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