Ad Astra

 In handling the cards, it has been observed that the cards will respond according to the users impression of them, which is summed up in what I call „Ingrainment“, a combination of the impression the cards picture makes on you, your experience of their dynamics when appearing in a reading, and the associations (suit, element, numbers) and their respective interpretations. In short, what I describe as „Ingrainment“ is the accumulation of your personal experience of the cards essence as perceived by you in encountering it during your life, which then serves as a seed sprouting from the cards on the table - in this analogy, they serve as a sort of ferment to your Ingrainment.

For me, it is the main factor in readings and the reason to approach „the art of reading“ from the observation of the impact a certain picture on a card has on the reader, as it has shown over time that the cards in a pack align themselves according to the way the reader perceives them, in short: „Ingrainment“, as defined above, plays a major role in how the deck speaks to you.

Affinity, also, should not be disregarded, as you are more likely to build a connection with something you „hit it off with“, it helps you going the long way when you have a likeable partner by your side. If your partner is not likeable, developing trust will be a challenge. The pack of your choice is that partner when it comes to readings. Or, as Tchalai Unger put it: „Proficiency is attained when complicity arises.“

With that said, let us continue.

After venturing a bit into the technical aspect in the last post, let us briefly look at the „way of assigning meanings to the cards“ from a perspective of „what was before you“ - where, in playing cards, you are vastly at liberty (even the fixation of the spades as the trouble suit is a mostly franco-anglophone thing, it diminishes as soon as you encounter the leaves instead of the spades, as in south-german or hungarian packs of playing cards), it becomes more tightly knit with the tarot cards, and most tight with the lenormand, or so one could think.

It is not at all that easy, the cards are not as defined as it is often staged to be – additionally, the individual perspective of the reader towards the cards on the table, best tempered by experience, as stated in the beginning of this post, plays a far greater role than commonly accepted.

The use of the cards for various purposes (playing, fortune telling, contemplation, spellcraft, starting fires) is far older than any related tradition still intact, rooting in the utilisation of tokens which serve as a stand-in for a more or less specific idea, the reading of it is done by the observation of what is going on in between the stand-ins and how the ideas they represent align themselves with each other (supportive or impeding, in varying degrees of severity).

In the long course of time, whatever packs of cards available have been used as tokens, adjusted by their makers according to what they had in mind – what exactly is subject to assumption, it is not transmitted in a tangible way. You may have stumbled upon sentences going: „If we take this as this, which we know from there, we can safely assume that it must have been that“. And then, the assumption is thrown out of the door and taken for a fact, which is proven as soon as it continues with „Seeing as that is indeed that“ and so forth.

Where it becomes intangible, everyone is on her own, you either agree with others or do not, at the end of the day, if you are a reader, what matters is that the way you see the cards of the packs you utilise enables you to make sense of the layout, preferably with some precision, which arises primarily from familiarization, in other terms: to do a thing over and over again.

Each individual has its own delineation of the cards they use, although there are similarities, which does not come as a surprise, seeing that we mostly deal with the same matters: Love, Prosperity, Chance and Change, for good or for bad.

On the Lenormand packs, there are two authors where the matter at hand can be easily seen:

One is Iris Treppner, her free course available for download here, the other is Andy Boroveshengra, here is the link to the meanings as presented on his website.

Both learned from a member of their family, and both added their own insights as to how the cards work. However, the differences could not be bigger (well, they can, but let us mind the poor frame), as seen in their assignement of positive and negative cards, where Treppner goes for a whopping 25 positive cards in the deck, while Boroveshengra makes do with 9 of them. Where it comes to the negative cards, they are closer, 7 for the former, 9 for the latter. However, there are more differences, for illustrative purposes, we will look at one of them: Good ol' High Tower (card 19) according to „T'nB“, where Treppner clearly assignes it the function of governance and therefore has it to stand in for whatever concerns matters where authorities/the state is involved, thereas Boroveshengra does not seem to utilise that delineation, rather going with the meanings of the „Phillipe Lenormand Sheet“, with an emphasis on „long life and old age“ - please note that both did deliver their readings with precision!

About that „Phillipe Lenormand Sheet“, apart from it having nothing to do with the actual Mlle Lenormand, it is from 1848, more than 100 years after the „Game of Hope“ has been published, so the actual original meanings which Mr. Hechtel had in mind (most likely inspired by his wife*) are, as a matter of fact, lost. One could assume that the description of the cards on how they are used to play the original racing game may hint at their use for fortune-telling, if it strikes your fancy. I have some qualms with putting labels like „true“ or „original“, to me, it is mostly speculative. But that does not need to concern you if a meaning for a card rings true for you, for if the „ringing“ reverberates/swings strongly enough in you, the card will function accordingly in the deck you use anyway – which most likely will be an entirely different story for the next person.

Onwards to the tarot, ever so ripe with „this, not that“...

Here is the „Liber T“ of the Golden Dawn, found on Benebell Wen's blog.

Here are Monsieur d'outre tombe's „Meditations on the Tarot“, found on us.archives.org.

Here is Paul Marteau's „The Tarot of Marseille“,translated into english by Kitos Digiovanni.

The first one (Liber T) is the source material, or rather point of departure, of both Crowley and Waite, and whichever one you are familiar with, you will see their digression and emphasis, again, shaped by the artists they worked with and what they had in mind.

Actually, while reading the Liber T, I humorously found myself wondering if it was perhaps the pack described in it which gave rise to plenty of Angel-Oracle-Deck's which can be found on the market.

The Meditations on the Tarot do not offer up divinatory meanings, but rather the record of a man contemplating the tarot with his understanding of Christian Hermeticism as the guiding light.

And lastly, Paul Marteau's text is one of the major influences for french readers with their preferrence of the Tarot de Marseille, a standalone to this day.

All three of them are here to give an idea on how one can go about assigning meanings to a pack of cards. One puts an emphasis on linking them up with astrological associations (and there are way more than the ones of the GD), anotherone contemplates them from the perspective of the esoteric way he holds dear (and there are way more esoteric ways than only his), and yet anotherone favours the arrangement of colours, the gesture and position of figures and numerical values (and there are way more meanings you can assign to the above specifics than covered in any book).

You will also note the discrepancies each has with the others, as well as the similarities.

I hope you will find a way of your own, which you hold dear, and serves well for you in talking with inked pieces of paper about whatever is brought to the inquiry.

*): They appear to have had a family tradition of reading cards „for amusement“, seeing that one of her cousins or sisters, I do not remember which exactly it was, did marry a „mechanicus“ of Nürnberg, who thereafter also published „fortune telling games“, prior to Hechtel – this is, no wonder, all assumtpion. It was in one older forum for tarot where I found the above narration and a couple of documents which serve as the base for it, once I have successfully rummaged through the documents where I assume to have put it, you will find the link here.