The deck is a little wonky, but profoundly stunning. It’s easily one of the most aesthetically pleasing Lenormands I’ve ever seen (and I’ve seen scads!) Is it one of those pretty but unreadable things? Not at all. Let me explain:

The numbering is not standard. That’s not an issue for most of us.

There is no Cross card, but there is a Cat card. Since Cat meanings in cartomancy are identical to Fox meanings, having a Cat in the deck is like having two Fox cards. So, for myself, I use Cross meanings. Why? It balances the deck, and “full stop, burdens, suffering, illness” fits the ferals we see every day.
(YES, my town needs TNR.) That’s my take. Do as you see fit.

Perfectly round insets, crazy sigils, lovely linework and tints. Feast your eyes a bit.

The Esslin is available HERE

And while we’re on the subject, Lauren is talking about doing a Wirth. A good, working, no glitter one! Put me down for several copies – imagine a side of these Wirth majors with your Lenormand! ❤

Gather round, people. I want to tell you about a deck that has already earned a place of honor on my kitchen table (along with the Ensslin and the Wirths. (The Thoth, Kippers, and Sibilla have their own special box on my nightstand.) But this thing – THIS THING! lives in my always-on-the-table Moscow Mule mug. It’s the deck I consult when I wake up and have coffee. No mean feat to earn that spot!

It’s not just a deck I like, it’s important. Why? Well, I can imagine Mr. Valenza being nagged to make a Lenormand, but he didn’t. He came up with something original. And he called it an oracle deck (I will be cackling maniacally posting Mildred Payne spreads at those oracle groups where everybody is into Doreen Virtue and the like! I should sign up for a few when I finish this. Bwaaa hahaha.)

It reads well. It doesn’t have a set tradition, everybody is using their own methods, but it seems to be readable right out of the box for most. I read it from a background of Lenormand, Kippers, Sibilla, etc. I watched some youtube videos and others are reading it differently. But everybody can use it.

It comes with suggested meanings, not so lengthy and detailed as to be impossible to remember, but varied enough to work. Read them, take what you need, and go from there.

The main deck and the expansion pack come with a backstory, and lots of bells and whistles:

The story goes like this:
“Young Mildred is thought to have created her childlike yet fascinating oracle circa 1928 while a patient at Fenwood Asylum.
*(Her father committed her into the facility, believing her to be insane for talking with imaginary friends.)
While at Fenwood, Mildred never stopped contacting her “friends” with her handmade oracle.
*(Fellow inmates called her “Millie the Red Witch”)
Mildred kept her tiny deck hidden from authorities in a secret pocket.
*(Although her fate is unknown to this day, some think Mildred perished in the Great Asylum Fire of 1933. Others are convinced she started the blaze!)”

Source: Deviant Moon

We have photos, we have information. There may be a Mildred tulpa out there by now. Maybe she’ll come visit you.

Or me. Mildred loves me. I am not sure how I should feel about this.

The backs are a puzzle that tells you a little more about Dear Mildred. The main deck does this. You have to include the title card and the Mildred photo card for it to work.
They’re not lined up perfectly, so parts may look a little off, but the positions are correct. (My coffee table is not perfectly flat, it’s “rustic”. I wanted hardwood, not veneer, and rustic was affordable.)
Some of the little captions are “The girls wanted to be like Mother”, “I died”, “Her nipples had eyes”, and “A body behind the shed”.
*throws final shovel of dirt on the grave of those Doreen type decks and walks away whistling*

And here is the puzzle from the expansion pack, if you’d like to communicate with Mildred. I’d advise you to be nice to her. I’m told she likes to burn things.

I can’t say enough about this deck. If you liked the Deviant Moon and/or the Trionfi Della Luna, you’ll love this. If you didn’t get on with those, you’ll still love this. And there’s the puzzle of Mildred and her haunted doll Claire (is the grave under the noose hers? Claire’s? Or a red herring?), and deciphering all that magical script.

It’s FUN. But it works – Mildred can hone in on secrets like nobody’s business.

The stock is sturdy, and though it’s not linen, it’s slippy. Jumpers are not uncommon (Mildred? Is that you?) A bit tough to riffle (it may soften up in time) but perfect for an overhand shuffle.

I like this thing so much, here’s a free line of five for all you guys (so somewhat over-generalized, but WTH) for the coming week:

Moving away from the lunacy of the last full moon, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and all the general crazy, and looking forward to a peaceful holiday season. But wait – it’s threatened by the axe. Whether the axe hanging over your head is a retail job or toxic family members, hold on to the candle, be that little flame all by itself. If you can avoid retail hell and dinner with Grandpa Pennywise and Great Aunt Annie Wilkes (“Now we must rinse”), do it. To hell with ’em, let ’em get offended. If not, keep your head down and get through it (but don’t take any shit off of anybody!)

Dove reflects Moon and Candle, so if you’re “into stuff”, shake up your Peace Water and get your mojo on. Boot reflects Axe, so any upcoming problems will be the kind you walk into yourself. Watch your step.

Alternately, Boot + Axe could throw a monkey wrench in your travel plans. Just something to watch out for.

This deck will spawn many, many copycat decks with numbered single images, backstories, and puzzle backs, but there can only be one Mildred. Don’t be fooled by poor imitations, go here: Deviant Moon

Unboxing video from Kelly:

Expansion Pack:

I’m still getting used to this deck, but so far it’s living up to its promise. Having Mildred around is like having your own private intelligence agency. If you didn’t see something coming, it’s because you didn’t ask her. This is a little draw I did last week.

Let me explain my situation a bit first: I have a regular job because it’s a dependable way to keep the bills paid. I do readings as well. A reader’s income fluctuates wildly – sometimes I make more than enough, other times there are dry spells. You never know if the month is going to bring imported cheeses or ramen. The landlord and the utility company like to get paid every month and are capable of making life quite hellish if I don’t comply in a reasonable amount of time. So I do both. You need more than one stream of income these days anyway.

There is a guy at my job – in my area, no less – who does not bathe. He stinks. I mean STENCH, since he hasn’t bathed or showered since last summer. Every shift is 12 hours of pure revulsion.

He is also lazy, has a rotten personality, and he’s a pathological liar. He sat there and kept eating when a lady nearby him was choking in the cafeteria. He’s dumb as rocks. He likes Trump. In other words, somebody I don’t want anywhere around me. I’ve complained about him all the way up the chain of command. Others have complained. I wrote an email to HR.

The draw was asking if he would be out of my work area that week.

The Key hints that he’ll be gone, but the other cards hint that it won’t be in that time period, and that’s exactly how it happened. Foot in this deck is about “footing” – stability and balance – not movement (that would be Boot – people are generally shod if they actually go anywhere.) Here, I think it’s literal, as well as his footing there being threatened. It’s tormented by the Devil and his Pitchfork. Factory could be the actual job. It also hints at “more and more” foot pain. He says he has plantar fasciitis. Maybe he does. Maybe that’s a lie, too – he’s morbidly, MORBIDLY obese, and that will do a number on a person’s feet, but I don’t feel sorry for him on that account. He eats three lunches at once and drinks three sodas with them. All he would have to do is cut out the sodas and he’d probably drop 100 pounds without doing anything else. There are other people working there who are almost as big. I’m sure their feet hurt, but they don’t use it as an excuse to remove their shoes and socks in the cafeteria, pick their feet, and then make a grab for other peoples’ chips, nor are their hands filthy. (He knows better than to try that with me. I make no secret of my loathing. I’d stick his hand with a fork if he did that. But he does it to others. People are keeping their chips in their laps now.)

But anyway, he’s there for that week, but the situation is extremely unstable and he won’t last much longer.

A lot of changes happen when we’re away for the holidays. So it might be as soon as January.

There is also the fact that I took time off between our days off, there’s a block of almost three weeks when everything will be up to him. He will have to do the scrap reports, clean, do the paperwork, keep up the board with the hourly numbers, etc. And he won’t.

Oh, and my email to HR. And complaints from a lot of other people.

And as clear and simple as these cards are, they’re also multifaceted. I posted this spread on facebook when I did it, and my good friend (and top tier reader!) Madame Nadia remarked that it looked like Hotfoot work. But I’m not saying I did that. If I had, I wouldn’t say too much about it.

We were having an interesting discussion over at the Cartomancy Forum and I thought I’d post it here. Longish, meandering version: Donna Maritata

Short version: somebody wrote a bogus book (that will sell nonetheless, because there’s next to nothing in english) that “updated” the Sibilla’s Donna Maritata (Married Woman) to “Independent Career Women”.

And THAT, friends, totally loses the card essence.

She’s a person card, and she’s married or in a committed relationship (with a human, not a business), Giovine Fanciulla is young, Nemica is malicious, and so forth. Very simple. Cards that depict various livelihoods might describe her, but they could just as easily describe any of the other people cards.

Anyway, if you made her “independent”, you’d need another card for a stay at home mom, one for a woman drawing unemployment, one for a woman collecting disability, etc. And you’d have to do that with all the other people cards. Giovine Fanciulla as a working girl, a trust fund kid, a young kept mistress, etc. The damn deck would be a couple of feet thick. Just learn to read combinations. FFS.

Anyway, people go to jobs to get money. If a better job comes along, they leave and go to that one. We don’t give a shit about The Company – why should we? They don’t give a shit about us. Fuck them. We work because we don’t have a choice, other than homelessness.

And when we get home, we still have as much housework staring us in the face as a postwar housewife. We just don’t have the time or energy to do it as well as Mom did. (My generation’s moms used to iron sheets. SHEETS. I barely get to iron anything.)

I would certainly hope that everyone cares about their family much more than they care about some sociopathic corporation with no ethics, that just wants to work them down to a crippled up pile of nothing and throw them away like garbage.

Trust old Stella – it’s better to be nice to your kids than your supervisor. And never, ever assume that the Important Things have evaporated just because we’ve been forced into the workplace!

Hello all – I’m here to discuss cartomantic simplicity. It may be seeing a minor renaissance.
Caitlin Matthews has a new book , Untold Tarot: The Lost Art of Reading Ancient Tarots, and Toni Puhle’s review of it really drives the point home.

Some of us are “system readers”, meaning we have meanings for each card and rules for when the cards fall in certain positions. This has always been called “traditional” reading, which has spawned many, many internet fights with people who try to say that tradition is frozen in time and outdated (it isn’t). But in any case, “system reader” is a good descriptor and I give props to Toni for it.

Even the Crowley Thoth can be read in that manner. After all, you have to remember the paths, elemental dignities, etc. (Which I am no wiz at, as my memory appears to be stuffed already. But I can see the beauty and incisiveness of the Thoth – as a system reader.

There is much discussion, nit picking, and hair splitting on internet forums, facebook, etc. over details in the Tarot – is the man walking away on the RWS Six of Cups leaving the past behind? Etc. It all seems irrelevant to me. Waite’s PKT gives a nostalgic interpretation. Crowley (who spilled the s00per seKrit Golden Dawn meanings, lol) simply calls it “Pleasure”. Who actually gives a f*** about that guy walking away?

That brings us to – well, everything else.

,

What is happening here? Do we need all manner of esoteric noise?

No. There is a brunette woman (me) who is catching flack from coworkers, but she’s staying on top of it.

Cards are actually very simple. Don’t overthink them.

Petit Oracle des Dames bridge sized edition available here The Cartomancer

Another deck I want to mention is Patrick Valenza’s Oracle of Black Enchantment, the latest installment in the Mildred Payne cycle.

Like all of Valenza’s decks, it reads flawlessly right out of the box – eloquent, is this not?

(Look at that mess. I do need to mind my P’s and Q’s, lol)

The crazy thing is that Valenza has stated that he doesn’t read. But all of his decks have that precision, like they were designed by a constant reader.

The OBE is available here Deviant Moon Inc.

Anyway, my card reading philosophy is rooted in Lenormand and Kipper. (A man is a man, unless context absolutely doesn’t allow. He’s not “qualities you should take on”, or “advice”, he’s a person. Yes, I started with Tarot, but it took Lenormand and Kippers to show me what cartomantic precision actually is! I don’t fault Tarot itself, I fault modern reading styles.) Approach things that way, and the answers are right in front of you. *wink*

I’m about to advise you to get this book. , Untold Tarot: The Lost Art of Reading Ancient Tarots But the deck in the image above isn’t an ancient Tarot. It’s a Lasenic Tarot, first published “between the Wars”, and full of Wirthy occult goodness. (From what I gather, Lasenic studied with Wirth.)

For you shoppers (and I hope you are here for something besides that!) the deck can be purchased at Pyroskin, the pouch is from Baba Studios,

Now, an occult deck by a strange and wonderful man is by all means worth study and contemplation. Lasenic certainly has my attention! (Karen Mahony once shared this gem at AT: “certainly many occultists hid everything (Madame de Thebes was killed by the Nazis, Lasenic was questioned about occultism by the gestapo and escaped – in what we now recognise as true Lasenic style – by EATING the charge papers when his interrogator left the room for a minute. The super-efficient Nazis could not cope with this and let him go – wonderful story and apparently true).”

But even the Buddha didn’t sit under the Bo Tree all his life. Sometimes we have to roll up our sleeves, put on our high boots, and wade into the poomp: the dirty dishes, the bills, the crazy lady across the street who hates your kids, the middle management guy who thinks he can grope the help, etc., etc. ad nauseam.

And that is where Untold Tarot comes in. This is the best book for reading TdM-type decks that I have come across. It’s an actual, pragmatic card reading manual. There’s a disturbing tendency in Tarot literature -old as well as new – to talk and talk but not give any useful information. You don’t see that in this book at all. There is no such mumbo jumbo going on here. It’s all useful and clear:

“The Fool shows you what you are not taking seriously, which will be the card he faces.”

There’s history, too, and it’s always interesting and relevant to reading the cards, never dry or tedious.

She separates this from GD/Crowley type reading. This has about as much in common with RWS or Thoth as Kipperkarten does.

If you feel the need to (at least temporarily) jettison elemental dignities, hermetic Qaballah, etc. and just want your Tarot to talk to you like your Lenormand does, this is the book you need.

I also want to add that even though it’s a paperback, the pages are stitched in. Better quality than I see with a lot of hardcovers! This book will stand up to years of constant referencing.

Caitlin has truly outdone herself this time, this is the pip-Tarot book I’ve been waiting for. Color me impressed!

I misplaced a pocket knife the other day.

It’s just a little toothpick-style Buck, it’s inexpensive, and I have others. But it’s the kind of thing I use for a lot of little jobs, and I miss it again and again when I don’t have it.

It had to be in the house somewhere. I searched the room where I last used it (the kitchen, where I’d opened something with it), and the little box in my bedroom where I keep it handy, along with a couple of heavy-use decks and a bit of jewelry. Nothing.

So I pulled the three cards shown above, asking “Where is my Buck toothpick knife?” I didn’t preselect any cards (though I suppose you could do a Lost Man using the Scythe for a pocket knife), I just wanted something small and clear. The key to using the cards to find a location in your house is simplifying everything: keep the spread small and uncomplicated, and remember that the interpretation is often literal, or almost literal. It’s so simple, it can be tricky. I’ve seen that time and time again.

The simplicity of this type of reading is my reason for posting it. People post these lost object readings all the time, but I really wanted to underline how they need to be pared down to a very basic interpretation. It’s not like reading on most other subjects. It’s more like the cards are trying to show you a little snapshot of the location.

My first thought was the kitchen. Clover could be the little african violets on the windowsill, and Bear sometimes relates to food – but it tends to be absorption rather than cooking, and besides, I’d already searched the kitchen. So I turned my full attention to the center card, the Bear.

The only literal bear thing here is a teddy bear that my grandson left. It’s on a high shelf where my dog can’t reach it, awaiting his return. The shelf is in a room I use for storage. I installed a closet pole under it, and I have some dresses hanging there.

Then I remembered: I wore a flannel dress for a short trip to the store the other day. I changed into an older dress when I got home, since I had housework to do. The flannel was still clean – I only had it on for about 30 minutes – so I hung it back up.

The flannel dress was hanging almost directly below the teddy (Bear). It was in between a red dress (Heart) and a green dress (Clover). And the knife was in the pocket.

A flowing narrative about a brief romantic encounter with a burly man (or minor luck for your beloved mother, if you read the Bear as female), or a love of high finance and a little luck playing the market, or whatever, is appropriate in certain contexts. But forget all that when you can’t find something. Sometimes a heart is just red, clover is just green, and a bear is just a bear.

Imagine, if you will, a deck published by Grimaud sometime between the late 1800’s and 1917 or so, very roughly coinciding with the Belle Époque. Imagine the strange old art, the fantastic vibe.
Now imagine it’s not yet another Tarot, but an astrology deck. Yes, there are “Majors”: the planets, ascendant, nodes (split into ascendant and descendant) and Part of Fortune. The “Minors” are three cards for each sign – one for each decan.

And it’s an easily readable deck. I’m decidedly not an astrologer (and if I were to deep dive into that particular field, I’d do classical, not modern) but it doesn’t matter. I can approach this as a cartomancer with my smattering of astrological knowledge, and get a clear reading out of it.

The LWB is printed on extra cards, and it’s useful (in spite of such curiousities as “Synthetically, here is the meaning…”, lol.)

It’s an easy deck, but it’s so NOT new age, so NOT “What’s your sign, baby?” (EW.) It predates all that. It’s more elephant-at-the-Moulin-Rouge. A Having Fun In Paris kind of deck.

There are several spreads included in the instructions, but you’re really only limited by your imagination here. There cards can supplement any other system, or stand on their own.

And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to play around with these some more.

Le Tarot Astrologique is available here https://thecartomancer.bigcartel.com/product/le-tarot-astrologique-c-1927-astrology-tarot

“About astrology and palmistry: they are good because they make people vivid and full of possibilities. They are communism at its best. Everybody has a birthday and almost everybody has a palm.”
—Kurt Vonnegut

It was the face on the box that caught my eye as I was browsing. I thought it was Charlotte Brontë. And there were wolves and hands and trailing vines…I had to find out what this was.

As it turns out, it’s not Charlotte. It’s Emily, the Wuthering Heights sister. The book that spawned multiple film adaptations and that Kate Bush song.

Any one of the Brontës would be a clear indication that this deck is not here to lead you down the primrose path with affirmations and assurances that Your Angels Love You and everything will be All Better. It promises to SAY what’s wrong, and if it delivers good news, well, you can bank on it.
The same could be said of Toni Morrison. Or…

Virginia Woolf. Agatha Christie. Sylvia Plath. Emily Dickenson. Sappho. Anaïs Nin. Flannery O’Connor. Mary Shelley. People I’ve read, people I need to read. The collection is by no means complete, but it’s a pretty damn good sampling of female authors.

There is another set of cards in the deck, “The Witches’ Materials” Little everyday things to drive the plot along, so to speak:

It’s a substantial deck with some size and weight, and it’s linen. The box is sturdy. All in all, above average quality.

by Katy Horan and Taisia Kitaiskaia. And there’s a book. You don’t need the book to read the cards, but it looks like a good book.

This is a reading I did on facebook recently, on the fly. I will quote it here as is, neither adding to it nor editing:

“September 16 at 1:42 AM

It’s early yet, but I’ve done early pulls on elections before and they’ve worked. All of my election pulls have been correct except 2016, and the fault in that one was the way I worded the question – Hillary DID win the popular vote, and that’s what the cards reflected.

Even as sick as everybody is of Trump, the GOP is encouraging more Russian interference. And a lot of the Berners are being pissy and threatening to once again sit this one out, or worse yet, vote Trump if Sanders doesn’t get the nomination. So I threw some cards to see what the actual results/aftermath of the next election will be, and ugh, there’s some nasty ones here.

Boundaries of the spread are Tree + Mice, failing health (hmmmm….) and Stork + Birds. Stressful change, but maybe an older couple moves? Let’s look at the inner diamond and see what will happen.

Snake + Anchor + Clouds + Man + Coffin. It’s too early to say who the Snake is. (Warren? I’d be OK with Warren.) Whoever she is, she’s not going away. (Anchor). Trouble (Clouds, and if you use the dark side, it’s definitely facing the Man) for Trump, and there’s the good old Coffin, the end, finis.

So even if they rig this one, we won’t be getting 8 years of this shit. It won’t be a pleasant time (all those nasty cards) but one way or another, he’s out. Maybe he’ll literally croak. You’re all invited for cocktails at my house if that happens.”

What’s interesting is that I got comments from other readers who are getting essentially the same thing – nasty cards around Trump, and a woman who contributes to taking him out. None of us know for sure who she is yet, but she’s apparently very real.

I could parse this further, but I think I’ll just let the reading stand as is and see “which way the cat jumps”.

Until then, I leave you with this song:

“Hey now, hey now
Don’t dream it’s over
Hey now, hey now
When the world comes in
They come, they come
To build a wall between us
We know they won’t win…”

What are you guys getting? Leave me a comment!

There is a scene early in the film Red Dust where Clark Gable goes to toss a drunk worker at his rubber plantation into bed, and discovers that Jean Harlow has taken up residence there. She kicks the drunk to the floor, and the exchange goes like this:

Harlow: You’re not going to leave the corpse here?
Gable: It’s his room. Didn’t you know?
Harlow: Honest I didn’t. I just took the first room the houseboy showed me. Oh, please you guys. This place is full of lizards and cockroaches as it is.
Gable: One more won’t hurt. Come on, lets have it. Who are you? Where’d you come from?
Harlow: Don’t rush me, brother. I’m Pollyanna, the Glad Girl.

She means it sarcastically – she’s a stranded hooker (yet the most ethical and compassionate character in the movie. It’s a great film.) And I was intrigued by what it was referring to – a Depression-era advertising shill? Some cartoon lady who was glad because her floors were shiny, or her dishes were super clean? So I googled.

It turned out that “Pollyanna the Glad Girl” is regular old Pollyanna, the eternal optimist. She’s pathologically optimistic.

From wikipedia:
“The title character is Pollyanna Whittier, an eleven-year-old orphan who goes to live in the fictional town of Beldingsville, Vermont, with her wealthy but stern and cold spinster Aunt Polly, who does not want to take in Pollyanna but feels it is her duty to her late sister. Pollyanna’s philosophy of life centers on what she calls “The Glad Game,” an optimistic and positive attitude she learned from her father. The game consists of finding something to be glad about in every situation, no matter how bleak it may be. It originated in an incident one Christmas when Pollyanna, who was hoping for a doll in the missionary barrel, found only a pair of crutches inside. Making the game up on the spot, Pollyanna’s father taught her to look at the good side of things—in this case, to be glad about the crutches because she did not need to use them.”

It’s all well and good to find some little silver lining in a bad situation. But to paint the whole thing with a broad brush and say it’s a positive – NO. If your partner punched your teeth out, I hope you wouldn’t say that they were a bit crooked or stained anyway, and now you can get some lovely caps. I hope you wouldn’t stay with him and hope to win him over and mend his ways with your “positive attitude”, the way Pollyanna did her creepy old aunt in the book. Would a qualified therapist tell you to do that? No, they’d try to get it into your head that you need to GTFO.

That book is from an era when kids weren’t supposed to feel sad, or angry, or disappointed, they were supposed to SHUT UP. Fred Rogers grew up in that era, and he dedicated his life to countering the idea and telling kids that it’s OK to FEEL things. I highly recommend the documentary “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” You can rent it on amazon prime for a pittance – about $2.99. Here’s Mr. Rogers winning over a hardassed senator who was all set to refuse him funding. I think Senator Pastore was raised with similar rules, and he could relate:

A majority of people here in the US are uninsured, or underinsured, and can’t afford quality, certified counseling or therapy. So people seek out reassurance from readers, aspiring readers, bad readers, all kinds of readers, in card reading communities. Often free, from new readers trying to gain experience, from incompetent readers, from readers following the lead of others. The good, seasoned readers are outnumbered by the bad ones, and people will cherry pick what they want to hear, anyway. And this phony reading is becoming normalized. It’s not difficult to find articles like this one https://www.dailydot.com/irl/tarot-cards-facebook/

Reassurance is not therapy. Therapy is, by all accounts, HARD. People who tell you everything will be OK and you’re doing the right thing (even if you aren’t) are not therapists. We’re venturing into pathological things like co-dependence and denial here.

I’m here to tell you that you’re better off with NO treatment that with BAD treatment.

Card reading – real card reading – is predictive fortunetelling. We don’t pretend to fix people or “make everything all better.” When asked what the cards say, we interpret them – AS IS. Death or the Coffin are endings, not “transformation”.

We’re living in time-space, and that means loss sometimes. Think back to your past. Even if you made it to this point without being truly, horribly abused in any way, you’ve experienced pain. People die, pets die, bad things happen sometimes. That’s just the way life is, it HURTS, and we need to acknowledge that, not stick our heads in the sand and go “LA LA LA LA LA – NOT LISTENING!”

I can’t reassure anybody that everything will be OK without lying. “Everything” is NEVER OK. But this lowlife fortuneteller (with about as much respectability as Harlow’s hooker Vantine in Red Dust), can do everything in her power to Keep It Real. It’s helpful – I rely on reading for myself, and my clients say that they’re helped by readings – but it’s NOT therapy.

The only thing it has in common with actual therapy is that it acknowledges when something is wrong.

If you really feel called to become a counselor, here are the requirements to be licensed in your state. “Owning a Tarot deck and practicing on the internet” is not one of them. https://careersinpsychology.org/how-to-become-a-licensed-counselor/

OK, the picture doesn’t really express exactly what this is about. It’s Robert Johnson at the Crossroads, the place where all that stuff you labored at finally falls into place and you become badass. If you’re not a Lenormand badass by now you won’t be. But there’s a “Where to go?” element to it, too. That fits, so I used the image.

This has been primarily a Petit Lenormand blog. There’s been other stuff, sure, and lots of it, but it’s always come back to Lenormand. And a lot of us want to take a break from writing on that.

I feel that it is now safe to do so, since the 2011-2013 gangbang has come to an end long since and there ARE some of you out there who GET IT. As for the others, let them pound sand. Let them post bad readings on forums, let them sing the praises of the Dreaming Way and Under The Roses. What they do is nothing to do with me, or the Lenormand method, for that matter.

I’ve explained it many times over. I’ve told you to get Andy’s book, or, if that doesn’t do it for you, get Rana’s. I’ve had a Q&A going for years upon years, and it’s still open, but I just want to do something else.

I’m seriously considering going back to the Grand Jeu. It has issues, yes…the racial stuff that one finds in an 1840’s deck is appalling. But it’s complex and violent enough to keep the crowd with the veneer of new age white light away.

I guess that’s what it takes to keep the idiots away: complexity and violence. (A sad commentary, don’t you think?)

Don’t get me wrong, I will always USE Petit Lenormand. It just works too well. If you learn the system, the method, and the card essences, something that’s been explained many times over, nothing beats it.

But I don’t have any more to say about it at the moment.

What do you guys think? Do you want to do this for awhile?

Don’t look away…
Years ago, when I started blogging here, some of my first posts were on the Grand Jeu. I shared what I knew and tried to figure out the rest. In time I moved on and wrote about other decks, but I’ve continued to use this deck over the years, in spite of the fact that I still have some questions about it that have never been answered to my satisfaction and probably never will be. The deck is accurate – it WORKS, even with the unanswered bits – and it keeps you honest.

I know that when blogging about something, the Standard Operating Procedure is to set yourself up as an expert and pretend to know everything about it. I see a lot of blogs like that, but a quick read-through usually shows that the author knows very little. I’m always happy to find people who know something. A good reader grows, changes, and revises. And I totally get those people who take down their blogs and youtube channels and put them up again in a different form (the ones I admire most do that!) and I would do the same, but I’m lazy and justify that by letting the old stuff stand as a record. It’s here, warts and all.

It’s very difficult to sugarcoat with this one. It’s full of myth: Jason and the Argonauts, Isis and Osiris, the Trojan War…these stories still resonate. People will still read them, watch movies about them. Seriously, virtually any rando you ask has seen bits of THIS:

Myth is full of war, murder, rape, torture, exploitation, and some profoundly dirty dealings. But here we are: people RELATE to that. It still happens, and as much as I’d love to be back in Mayfield with Ward and June telling me about Wally and the Beaver’s latest peccadillos, that world doesn’t exist now – it didn’t even exist then, for a lot of people. A wise lady once said, “Soft dreams are for soft times.” Or, as another wise lady once said:

A lot of card reading advice I see tells people to put a positive spin on the reading to the point of absurdity. And I totally understand not wanting to be the bearer of bad tidings – but our job is to deliver the message the cards give us. Once, when I told a man I was a card reader, he asked, “How can you lie to people like that?” I answered that I don’t lie – I’m paid to tell people what the cards say, and I do that.

We step aside, and we relay the information. That’s basically all that’s required. And even if you feel obligated to “fix” people (and that is not, and should not ever be, the function of a card reader), you owe them your honesty.

The Grand Jeu isn’t ALL carnage. Thee are some very lovely cards in there. But there are also cards that will keep us honest, in no uncertain terms.

“It’s too hard!”

OK. If you say so. Be a Barbie girl in a Barbie world, you do you.
But I just want to mention that a lot of people use the Thoth. Yeah, that’s right: do you think all of them can play around with the paths like this guy? http://www.tarotforum.net/showpost.php?p=4312387&postcount=17 And what of the Hebrew letters and astrological stuff?

I’m not saying that you should be an Angeles Arrien read-off-the-pictures-and-ignore-the-literature type. That woman made some regrettable mistakes. But as long as you understand the large and small illustrations, you can get answers out of this deck. The flowers, playing card insets, constellations, geomantic signs, and letters are different expressions of the same concept – just like the Thoth correspondences are. They are useful and not to be written off as unimportant. But everything in time. Are you game? Let’s do this!

Next: Part 1, a breakdown of the card images

The question is rhetorical, of course. The Thomson Leng Tarot has been around since 1935. The art is very 1930’s. And while the RWS is theatrical (some of the scenes are actually taking place on a stage), the Thomson Leng is cinematic.The extra card shown above reminds me of those prologues you see in movies from that era. Here’s one from 1938’s The Adventures of Robin Hood (starring Errol Flynn and the marvelous Olivia deHavilland, who recently left us at the age of 104):

The Thomson Leng was originally published in 1935 as a promotional giveaway for a womens’ magazine in the UK. You can see the RWS influence – some things are almost identical – but some cards are quite different and there are other influences at play. Compare the arrangement of the Rods suit symbols to the corresponding cards in the Knapp Hall, published 6 years earlier:

I think using this deck could really open up the Knapp Hall. For all of Manly P. Hall’s wisdom and erudition, he wasn’t helpful in this regard at all:

and so I’ve been falling back on TdM/playing card meanings. It will be good to have a better understanding of the suit symbol configurations.

As it turns out, both the Thomson Leng and the Knapp Hall are influenced by Eudes Picard:

(Photo/scan credit to Philippe at http://www.tarotforum.net/showthread.php?p=4352748 )
(And wouldn’t I love to get my hands on a copy of THAT deck!)

The elements are switched around – Swords are water, Cups are air. Additionally, the Fool is numbered 21. So if you’re heavily invested in doing it differently, this might irk you. But I just view it as vacationing at a place where the rules are a little different. “When in Rome…”

There may be some Vera Sibilla influence, as well. I wish I knew who drew the TL, I think they must have been pretty knowledgeable! This was in the 30’s, long before the internet, which makes it all utterly amazing.

All of this geeking out is fun, but it’s important to remember that this is a reading deck, designed for housewives and single working women, most of whom were surely hoping to become housewives. There’s no nudity other than one exposed boob on the World card, lol. And these women had questions about what will happen and cared not one whit for occult correspondences, the historical sources for the ideas behind the deck, or how/if the Fool should be numbered. They just wanted to tell fortunes, and the Thomson Leng delivers beautifully.

The reproduction includes spreads from the original instructions. Here’s one that Mary Greer blogged that looks fun: it has cards you can’t look at or “all the favorable indications will be reversed!” https://marykgreer.com/2009/07/16/the-eastern-cross-spread-thomson-leng-deck/#more-1755

They’re interesting, as spreads go, but when the rubber hits the road I don’t care much about spreads, and I wish they’d included the meanings, which are available free in PDF form where the deck is being sold. just scroll down: https://www.tarotcollectibles.com/store/p148/Thomson-Leng-Tarot.html

Those are the REAL treasure, purely cartomantic, stripped-down fortunetelling meanings with no filler, self-help pop psychology or new age platitudes. No tough esoteric nuts to crack, either. Here’s an excerpt:

When I was researching the deck online, I saw that someone said these were “wonky meanings”. Has Tarot fallen that far? Are practical meanings concerning things that people actually ask about considered “wonky”? Ghaaa.

That’s one thing I would have done differently, I’d have certainly included those meanings with the deck! The other thing is that this deck would be sumptuous in linen. The original was linen – in 1935! And going by photos I’ve seen, it was that old style cambric/linen finish that actually looked like woven cloth, not the tiny raised squares that pass for linen nowadays. But the stock is still excellent and the cards fan and shuffle beautifully. And they do make the PDF available on the website, so I really can’t complain too much. I hope they take these things into consideration for future editions, though. It would be enough to convince me to buy a second copy!

Here are more images. The Majors:

And a few notable Minors:

I suppose we have time for a quick test drive! Let’s do a fun one: Will Trump go to prison?

I like the Torah that the Great Priestess is holding, it suggests a reckoning. And she’s a card of secrets – what new information will come to light? The 5 of Swords is a card of loss…ours? We’ve collectively lost a lot because of him. But it could also be his loss. And the final card – hahaha, I love that the way that bound bundle of yellow wheat looks like his hair, and it’s hemmed in on four sides and guarded by a lion. But I’ll check the LWB since this Tarot is so new to me. “Power and plenty, with a fine chance of health and happiness, will be yours.” It’s obviously a harvest card. We will harvest what we have cultivated, and in his case that’s lies, hate, and greed.

The cards don’t promise prison. But there will be consequences. Seized assets and imposed limitations at the very least.

All in all, I love the deck. The 30’s are my favorite decade and I adore things from that era: movies, Art Deco, fashions…well, everything except the appalling racism, grinding poverty and the rise of fascism in Germany. But (with the exception of racism, we still have a lot of work to do to eradicate that) I think that for the most part, people dealt with those things effectively. Of course history repeats and these things are rearing their ugly heads again, but I like having a historical template of what worked. It’s a very relatable time. And the deck seems relatable, too!

You can purchase the Thomson Leng (and download the LWB) at this link: https://www.tarotcollectibles.com/store/p148/Thomson-Leng-Tarot.html

Recently, the card reading du jour fashion has been for the Wellness Model. You can see what it’s all about here:
https://www.today.com/health/tarot-therapy-why-some-believe-cards-can-help-mental-health-t165649

Garbage, isn’t it? Doesn’t predict, doesn’t tell you anything. It’s all Dr. Phil -style unqualified therapist garbage and cold reading common sense like “People will try to lowball you – don’t let them.”

If you want therapy, go to a qualified, state-certified therapist. If you want a reading, go to an actual reader, a fortuneteller. “Readers” who claim not to tell the future are NOT ready for prime time. though that never stops a LOT of people. So many that they glut the market: “I have a direct line to the angels!”, “Psychic life coach!”, “Tarot therapy”, “Wellness!” etc.

Real readers are crowded out by such nonsense. Our listings are buried, and even if seen, clients often don’t know the difference. Why call the guy who knows the Thoth backwards and forwards, complete with all the correspondences (or this old Lenormand reader, for that matter!) when you can Skype with the woman with the funny eye makeup, great boob job, and impressive collection of crystals who claims to be a 7th generation psychic?

I made my whole living reading cards for awhile. But then a massive number of people piled on and I had to get a job in a factory. Are they better readers than me? No. Can they even read cards at all? In most cases, no. It’s not about ability, it’s about promotion and trends.

I get an occasional reading request, and I work an occasional party. It does help.
But I’ve been reading cards since the early 70’s, and if you don’t mind me tooting my own horn, I’m pretty good. But I’m not fashionable right now. And that’s OK.
I’d rather do factory work than compromise my ethics.

Jealousy? Absolutely not. I have no desire to be the Dr. Phil of cartomancy. The idea repulses me.

As stated, readers tell the future and whether your fortune in a particular area will be good or bad. That’s just what reading cards IS. Believe in it, or don’t.

Wellness people lay cards on the table and spew crap. Your choice.

Hello all – I’m here to discuss cartomantic simplicity. It may be seeing a minor renaissance.
Caitlin Matthews has a new book , Untold Tarot: The Lost Art of Reading Ancient Tarots, and Toni Puhle’s review of it really drives the point home.

Some of us are “system readers”, meaning we have meanings for each card and rules for when the cards fall in certain positions. This has always been called “traditional” reading, which has spawned many, many internet fights with people who try to say that tradition is frozen in time and outdated (it isn’t). But in any case, “system reader” is a good descriptor and I give props to Toni for it.

Even the Crowley Thoth can be read in that manner. After all, you have to remember the paths, elemental dignities, etc. (Which I am no wiz at, as my memory appears to be stuffed already. But I can see the beauty and incisiveness of the Thoth – as a system reader.

There is much discussion, nit picking, and hair splitting on internet forums, facebook, etc. over details in the Tarot – is the man walking away on the RWS Six of Cups leaving the past behind? Etc. It all seems irrelevant to me. Waite’s PKT gives a nostalgic interpretation. Crowley (who spilled the s00per seKrit Golden Dawn meanings, lol) simply calls it “Pleasure”. Who actually gives a f*** about that guy walking away?

That brings us to – well, everything else.

,

What is happening here? Do we need all manner of esoteric noise?

No. There is a brunette woman (me) who is catching flack from coworkers, but she’s staying on top of it.

Cards are actually very simple. Don’t overthink them.

Petit Oracle des Dames bridge sized edition available here The Cartomancer

Another deck I want to mention is Patrick Valenza’s Oracle of Black Enchantment, the latest installment in the Mildred Payne cycle.

Like all of Valenza’s decks, it reads flawlessly right out of the box – eloquent, is this not?

(Look at that mess. I do need to mind my P’s and Q’s, lol)

The crazy thing is that Valenza has stated that he doesn’t read. But all of his decks have that precision, like they were designed by a constant reader.

The OBE is available here Deviant Moon Inc.

Anyway, my card reading philosophy is rooted in Lenormand and Kipper. (A man is a man, unless context absolutely doesn’t allow. He’s not “qualities you should take on”, or “advice”, he’s a person. Yes, I started with Tarot, but it took Lenormand and Kippers to show me what cartomantic precision actually is! I don’t fault Tarot itself, I fault modern reading styles.) Approach things that way, and the answers are right in front of you. *wink*