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Ordinary Cards, Read in Combination

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Ordinary Cards, Read in Combination

Cartomancy is divination with cards that are not tarot, and its most developed form works quite differently from tarot in a way worth being precise about.

The Petit Lenormand is a deck of thirty-six cards with plain, concrete images, the Rider, the Clover, the Ship, the House, the Tree, the Clouds, the Snake, the Coffin, the Bouquet, the Scythe, the Whip, the Birds, the Child, the Fox, the Bear, the Stars, the Stork, the Dog, the Tower, the Garden, the Mountain, the Crossroads, the Mice, the Heart, the Ring, the Book, the Letter, the Man, the Woman, the Lily, the Sun, the Moon, the Key, the Fish, the Anchor and the Cross. Each has a narrow, largely fixed meaning, and the meanings are read in combination: cards are laid in pairs or lines, and a Ship next to a House reads differently from a House next to a Ship. The full spread, the Grand Tableau, lays out all thirty-six at once and is read by position, distance and direction of the figures.

That is the key contrast with tarot. A tarot card is a deep symbol with a wide interpretive range; a Lenormand card is a narrow word in a sentence. Lenormand practice is closer to reading a language than to contemplating an image, and it is generally more literal and more concerned with practical circumstance.

The ordinary fifty-two-card pack is also read, with suits carrying settled senses, Hearts for feeling and relationship, Diamonds for money and messages, Clubs for work and activity, Spades for difficulty and conflict, and numbers and courts each assigned meanings. This is the oldest and most widespread form of card divination in Europe and the Americas, and much of it is folk transmission rather than published system.

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