On Learning

I have been thinking a lot recently about the subject of learning Lenormand.  This came about after having read a book that was supposed to help me become a better card reader and which resulted in me feeling hopelessly confused and question the whole endeavour. The experience fascinated me rather more than perhaps it should have done. Especially as I have subsequently felt all the joy and colour of Lenormand drain away and with nothing much left except the urge to analyse what happened. How can the learning experience have this effect on things? I then remembered – as I often do  - the experience of learning tarot in a vacuum, early 1980s, just me and my books and decks, nobody correcting me, propelled forward by my own thirst and good old-fashioned study – heck, even some memorising because not all of us have gypsy aunts -  and I realise that this method of learning doesn’t exist anymore. We couldn’t even return to it if we tried. The world has changed, we have changed. Learning is something you drag other people into. But back to Lenormand. How best to approch it? All I know is that I have to get myself into a certain state of mind to withstand the iminent onslaught of definitive books. I have two options; either become an expert within a couple of months (or less) so that nothing can threaten my foundations and destabilise me. Or bolt the doors and sing very loudly. I have this unnerving sense that I have to make myself somehow immune. You’d think that with all the information out there things have never been better and yet it all looks set to accelerate into gobbledegook.  But why does it feel harder to learn Lenormand now than it ever did? Partly there is so much to have to bookmark and not get round to reading. There is so much to put into “favourites” and then never look at again.  So many online courses to print off, bind beautifully and put on the bookshelf.  There are so many systems to set off against each other; French? Dutch? Peruvian? Pose a question out there – what does my bonsai think of me? – then post a three card spread and you will get a plethora of interpretations that won’t help you in the slightest because there are as many interpretations of Lenormand cards as there are people reading them. A daunting thought. Or maybe I should say – even more overwhelming –  there are as many interpretations of Lenormand cards as there are people dreaming of making a deck. I have a sense of it all being very oceanic and of myself being rather at sea.  So what is the solution, beyond the despair and door bolting? I confess I feel like creeping out the (unbolted) back door. By that I mean finding another oracle that nobody else really knows or has laid claim to yet, something obscure, historic and forgotten to be deciphered undistracted on my own terms. Digging through my stash of oracles I have a few that attract me, traditional oracles that nobody really talks about. Like the Modiano Nuova Cartomanzia set (“le corti d’amore”), 52 cards with a hotch-potch of Sibilla imagery, modernist illustrations mixed with crude, possibly Hungarian Biedermeyer derivative engravings.

Or – even better – some oracles I found on the flea market without instructions. Now there’s something that casts down the gauntlet. Fabbri/Orbis did a series of oracles in conjunction with Lo Scarabeo circa 2001 (I have spoken of their publications before) and they didn’t come with instructions – a dream! – though I suspect that as they were part of a magazine series the magazines contained the instructions and I am lucky enough never to have set eyes on them. How much more exciting not to have instructions. I can make them all my own, research and translate the original meanings much as I did with the Modiano Tarocchi di Alan from Trieste. One of these Fabbri/Orbis decks is a (French?) Romantic Oracle which I know absolutely nothing about (see the very end of this post). Another is a “gypsy” sibilla with fairly straightforward images (see immediately below) but with 32 cards, not the 52 cards of the “Vera Sibilla”. It dates from 1870, with lithographs by Johan Conrad Jegel of Nuremberg;

I find myself thinking that this might be the way forward. A lesser known oracle to make your own, nobody to ask about, no different “schools” to clash with. I often wonder where Lenormand learning will be within the next few years? And I wonder what this human urge is to lay claim to things – a sort of colonisation –  and how genuine the pleasure is in teaching. This heady rush intrigues me, what Lenormand learning means to people at this precise moment in the history of tarot. That’s the nub of it. It is a fascinating phenomena. But all this talk of how “to the point” Lenormand is merely echoes what people have been saying for ages about their tarot decks; “I know you think my favourite doey-eyed deck is fluffy, but lordy how cruel my deck is to me! It tells me such wicked home truths!” All this learning, all this talk of learning, all this vowing to learn, sprawls and ties us up in knots.  I have no idea how people do actually learn with all the contradictory subjective sources out there and not always knowing what to ignore and discard. I battle with the compulsion to shut down and reach for one of my decks sans instructions and not tell anyone which one it is so that nobody can put me right. I battle with this feeling that Lenormand is pushing itself away like boats from my shore, when only a short while ago I felt I had a grasp of things. And I’m sure there are more layers to come, more planetary, hindu and runic associations, more obfuscated sources as people clamour for what could be called “original” meanings when the horse has long since bolted and ’tis too late, too late. Decans were paired up with Lenormands in 2007. How traditional is that? It seems all we truly know is that the cartomancer herself read with a piquet deck (that’s 32 not 36 cards) and there was a “tharot” deck listed in her possessions (according to Dummett) and that historically and geographically Etteilla’s system was floating around at the time so maybe, just maybe, she was familiar with it, 1786-ish. But storks and dogs and little bouquets are so much more endearing. And of course Etteilla is so difficult. We will shortly be at the stage where we will be saying “but it doesn’t really matter if she herself didn’t use the system we invented for her; that’s not the point!”. Hence far better to go for a completely clean slate and choose another deck, go for unchartered territory and make it work for you  however you want it to. That’s what she did anyway. And if it’s good enough for her it’s good enough for me.

Fairy Lights Tarot

Where oh where do I stand on fairy tarot decks? Or faerie tarot decks. Or maybe even fae tarot decks. I just never know. As a working male who ventures out into the real world every day in suit and tie shouldn’t I really be eschewing them? Or at least if I do have any fairy decks might it not be better if I kept quiet about them? I (rather guiltily) think sometimes that this should be the case and in all honesty I hadn’t been paying much attention to this particular deck by Lucia Mattioli (the same artist as Tarot of the Secret Forest) and published by Lo Scarabeo. I sort of knew it was going to be published but very often I switch off from that giddy pre-launch obfuscating effervescence that surrounds decks and only give them my full attention once they are available to have, hold and make up my own mind about. This was certainly the case with the Fairy Lights Tarot. However, I was on my way home yesterday and called in at the local esoteric shop and there it was in the cabinet. I had no idea it had already been released and as I always like to support my local shop when I can – plus the experience of buying a deck in a real shop on the spur of the moment is always infinitely more satisfying for me than it coming in the post – I decided to take it home with me.

My first impression was of an extraordinary homogeneousness of mood and feel. This is a deck that must have been conceived and designed as a whole. It doesn’t feel like a deck with cards that have been ploddingly designed one by one to illustrate somebody else’s system, but rather a deck that is very much a world unto itself, a coherent entirety that has been faceted like a diamond into 78 parts. That feeling of harmonious unity struck me immediately. 78 slices of a haunting, ethereal world. What is unique to this deck (from what I have read) is that all cards have their natural pair and when they appear together in a reading, it gives an added richness, a coupling, a slotting together of halves. I have not had the deck long enough to work out which pairs match up but an example of how it works can be seen below. Part of the wonder of working with this (now shuffled) deck will be seeing cards thrown together randomly and complementing each other. I shall discover the pairs as I go. So there will be many surprises in store.

What is wonderful about Mattioli’s artwork is how textured it looks, the shadows, washes and application of paint. Some of the tones and smears remind me vaguely of the backgrounds to the Minors in the Haindl deck. A certain muddiness, a backdrop to set the atmosphere, but at the same time you can tell that the artist has an enviable command of her medium. You can see daubing and impasto and blotches and recognise that this is a deck whose artwork is very accomplished. Whether you can read with it or not will very much be a personal decision, as what will govern this deck’s readability for many is more likely to be the fact that it isn’t explicitly Rider Waite Smith in the Minors. Or if it is, I’m not quite detecting it. But I find the Minors exhilarating in their freshness and vivid intuitiveness. There is such a strong mood here that you’d be doing the deck a huge disservice by looking for Rider Waite Smith traits in it. If you want Rider Waite Smith, choose another deck. If you want to luxuriate in something otherworldly, something to unravel  - or maybe what others sniffily call “more of an oracle” – then this deck may be quite an exciting deck for you to work with. It bothers me when a deck gets called more “oracle” simply because it isn’t recognisably Rider Waite Smith. This feels like a tarot deck to me, but certainly of the more experimental variety.

Then there’s the name. As far as fairy decks go, you don’t get much wispier and diaphanous than the name of this one, the Fairy Lights Tarot.  Unlike the Paulina Tarot – another deck I love – where you can convince yourself it’s not entirely fairy, this one is fairy through and through, despite the fact that the gossamer wing count is actually quite low. Some of the cards, such as the Nine of Pentacles (further up this page) have a pleasingly 1900s fairy feel to them, almost Arthur Rackham, like faded children’s book illustrations. Others feel more timeless. One of the reasons I love this deck is that it reminds me that fairiness doesn’t have to be an exclusively feminine domain. The Emperor, Hierophant, Knights and Kings in this deck have a very male presence and are not at all wispy. There are swirls and rotating clouds of glowing fairy lights which surround the figures in the cards, shafts of light pierce down from above, as in the King of Cups below. The deck is much less murky than the Tarot of the Secret Forest. I loved the dark brambles of the Secret Forest when I first got it, the sense of a mysterious realm beyond the garden gate, but I was never really able to read successfully with it. I found so much of the imagery quite samey. This one feels more varied yet it has the same sense of mystery and I love the booklessness of this deck. Some of the meanings of the LWB appear to show a certain affinity with the Rider Waite Smith cards (e.g Seven of Swords, “taking something that is not yours will never lead to success. Protect yourself against thieves and maintain your own honor as well”) even if the image does not always seem to reflect that. But I think this deck probably works its magic best without any manual or instructions, just the enigmatic imagery. As if we are lost in that world and are trying to make sense of it for ourselves with nobody else giving their version of meanings, because it is such a visual deck, sometimes icey, sometimes airy and exotic (see the camels in the in Two of Wands above, approaching a night time oasis under a scattering shower of fairy lights) but always richly symbolic. There have been quite a few interesting deck releases recently. Only last week I bought the Mibramig Magical Tarot, and I am anxiously awaiting the Illuminati. This deck, the Fairy Lights Tarot stands out as one that I really want to read with, really want to explore, to let my intuition run wild, haul up the heavy anchor of conventional, accepted tarot wisdom and float free awhile.

Middle card shows card backs.

Tarot 3D

Yesterday I called in at my local tarot suppliers (Esoteric Shop? Magic Shop? New Age Shop? Metaphysical Shop? I never know) idly wondering whether any of the new Lo Scarabeo titles might be in stock or whether there would be any surprises lurking for me, and promptly stumbled across this little gem. On reflection, it may not be everybody’s idea of a little gem but there was something weirdly compelling about it from the moment I laid my eyes on it. In stock they also had (among other things) the new Golden Universal, the Book of Shadows Tarot, Volume II and a very interesting-looking new Lenormand set from Brazil, but once I had picked up the Tarot 3D, by Davide Corsi/Lo Scarabeo, I just couldn’t put it down. It’s gimmicky, it’s kitsch and (I told myself, wrongly as it turned out) it’s a one-gag, disposable Majors only deck which I shall probably never use. Still I couldn’t put it down. The Brazilian Lenormand kit almost won out, but no. It was this deck that had me in its grip, and its grip was tighter. The box had me captivated from the start. It features the Magician on one side, Justice on the other, both with eerily expressionless, waxy faces, a mixture of rigamortis and slight shock, reminiscent of the faces on blow-up dolls. The deck uses a technique which is described as “lenticular print technology…which places a plastic-like lense over the card image”. To you and me that means they look a bit like those 3D images of Christ on the cross and Hindu deities; you know, the ones that sometimes move. Or those souvenir bookmarks and rulers you can buy of the pope where if you tilt the image back and forth he seems to be blessing the viewer. It is of course worth mentioning that you do not need 3D glasses to view them with. I’ve also seen pictures of waterfalls using this technique, hanging in Indian restaurants, sometimes with a wall clock incorporated (because if it isn’t going to be pretty it might as well be useful). Generally though, this technique is a mainstay of religious kitsch. Here it is incorporated into tarot imagery and I surprise myself by how much I like it, by how impossible it is to put down. I cannot wait to read for someone with this deck. I just know they’ll be as seduced by it as I am.  It is so utterly strange and yet fascinating to behold.

The images are exactly the same as the Majors from Corsi’s Pictorial Key Tarot (one of the few Lo Scarabeo decks I never bought), but with 3D treatment. The back – see above – is also the same (with no 3D treatment). The cards themselves are thick. Anyone who has ever bought a 3D postcard of Christ or the Virgin Mary or Ghanesh or the Pope blessing will recall that this material is quite thick so the cards are thicker than normal, but not so thick as to make shuffling difficult. I secretly wish it were a full 78-card deck but then I think shuffling might be an issue, as these Majors alone, when stacked, are probably only a little less thick than a standard 52-card deck. The images themselves are impossible to photograph. The 3D-ness must be something optical that the human eye supplements; feed it through a camera lense and the images appear flat and out of focus, as the photographs here demonstrate.

This lenticular technology needs the human eye to make it work. Held in the hand, they come alive – some more successfully than others. When they work, such as in The Hierophant and the Wheel of Fortune, you get the sense of peering into a box, an intriguing, self-contained little world that if you could just crane your neck a bit more, you’d be able to look around, see more detail and actually see behind things, behind the Hierophant’s throne or the Devil’s pedestal. A couple of cards don’t quite work as well as you feel they should. The Fool I suspect is supposed to be handing his rose to the viewer, beyond the confines of the card, but it doesn’t quite work that way, as there is a slight loss of focus and it has to be tilted at a very specific angle in order to bring out the depth of field. I discovered that with very bright, directed light and if you find the right angle, all cards can look good. Even so, some are better than others. The Tower is superb; dizzying perspective and a brooding cloudy sky while the figures tumble out of the bottom of the card. These cards would create quite an impact during a reading; the ghostly Hermit, the bulge in the Hanged Man’s trousers, the bucolic background landscapes, all in 3D. There is an undeniable novelty factor of course, though I don’t see anything wrong with that. Anything that captivates the querent and brings a smile to their face can only be a good thing. For those who use Majors only decks, this one would make for an unforgettable reading. I personally would like to use them simply for contemplation or as something to have on my altar to look at, because they amuse and mesmerize me. This must the longest and hardest I have stared at a new tarot deck in ages. It’s odd, it’s trippy, it’s laughably artificial with its fake perspectives and glazed stares but it’s a deck you cannot take your eyes off, and for that we should applaud it. With so many tarot decks nowadays it’s an effort to look even once.  Give your clients a reading they will remember forever, deal out the 3D Tarot and watch how curious they’ll be to peer into the realm of these kitsch vignetted archetypes. For what this deck sets out to do I consider it to be a resounding success and – once more – Lo Scarabeo bring us something new to the reading table.

Lost and Found; what the cards said

I lost my iPhone this week. It then found its way back to me in an astonishing stroke of luck, though that didn’t prevent me from suffering 12 hours of acute anguish while the drama unfolded, during which time I sought the cards for some sort of pointer or consolation, anything that might help or distract me. I received some very interesting results from the cards, which only became apparent with hindsight. It all started when I decided to call in at a shopping mall after work to do some errands. I was using my phone as I entered the mall so during the convulsions of my later panic I couldn’t even delude myself into thinking “oh well, maybe I left it on my desk at work”. The phone entered the mall with me. I bought a few things – some candles, coffee – then had something to eat. I was just going into a bookshop when I had that sudden urge to pat my pockets and check my phone. It wasn’t there. I dug deep into my bag. No, it wasn’t there. Then priding myself on my clear-thinking and resolve  (though with panic rising like bile) I strode into the nearest shop and calmly asked them to telephone my number, poised ready to hear my phone ringing from the depths of my bag and – oh how we would laugh, the unknown shop assistant and I – except that it didn’t ring in my bag. The girl looked at me, saying “it’s ringing but nobody’s answering.” I saw the expression on her face sort of sink when I said “it’s an iPhone. I have had it less than a month.” She made a rather stoical gesture which I took to mean prepare yourself for the worst. I then retraced my steps and went back into all the shops I’d visited asking the assistants to ring my number. After I while I stopped saying it was my iPhone because I couldn’t deal with the expressions of hopelessness on their faces. I went back to the restaurant where I’d had dinner, the café where I’d had a coffee, everybody was very obliging but it was bad news at very turn.

Eventually I went to the information desk to ask whether anyone had turned it in, highly unlikely given the circumstances, but I had to keep my spirits up. They gave me a contact number to call the next day and then after a critical twenty minutes had passed,  I concluded – depleted, hot and dishevelled – that it was time to go home, face the truth and deal with the cancellation of the phone line and get myself sorted out with a new card and new phone. I caught the subway home, thinking of all those lost contact numbers in my address book, the complications this would entail, the fact that I have had cheap mobile phones for years and never lost or misplaced one, yet within a month of getting an iPhone and loving it, I lose it. I’m so new to this I hadn’t even heard of the “find my phone” facility until the day after when everyone told me I needed to download it. I cannot begin to describe how angry I was with myself. Once home, I called the phone company and set about suspending the phone-line so nobody could make long distance calls in my name. I was just about to go to bed exhausted when I decided to play with my cards to try and switch off. I grabbed a deck I don’t even like (the Llewellyn Steampunk Tarot), shuffled frenetically, shuffling my anger out – it wouldn’t matter if cards bent –  and laid out three cards and got a very interesting combination. The spread was what I call a “snapshot” spread. Three cards to tell me about a situation. I read them in a line, all three telling a narrative. I like these kinds of spreads. I also call it my “speak to me ” spread. No positions, just a message. What can you tell me? I got the following three cards The Magician, the Queen of Swords and King of Cups.

As soon as I saw this I wondered whether the Magician should have been reversed. I sometimes use reversals but in this case didn’t. I still think it should have been reversed. Or at least instinct should tell me to read this card with a negative meaning. Remember “sleight of hand”, that older meaning for the Magician, which so few people use nowadays? Perhaps sleight of hand reversed, a slip of the hand, misplacement. I certainly saw that the cards were saying that the phone had been misplaced not stolen, since I had been wondering whether maybe someone had managed to put their hand into my bag and steal it. I read these cards as misplacement, misfocused thought, i.e not putting something back where it should be. A woman found it. The Queen of Swords (calculating? Self-seeking? I remembered a meaning I’d read in Anthony Louis’ book; Queen of Swords as “a right bitch”) then gave it to the sensitive, feeling man in her life. The gesture in the Queen of Swords card of giving, seemed exceptionally vivid to me. See how she seems – at first glance –  to be handing something beyond the confines of the card, in the direction of the man and how contented he seems, how smug. And how her gesture echoes the gesture of the Magician offering his cup. Something in that. This was how I read the cards before going to bed, even though if you look closely it seems somebody is simply taking her hand as if leading her to dance. But in a flash I read it differently. A woman found it and gave it to her boyfriend. Perhaps.

I didn’t sleep that night. Anger kept me awake. Anger at my own distractedness and sheer bad luck. I kept replaying the moment when it slipped beyond my fingers, wondering how I didn’t notice. Did it fall onto the hard floor? Why didn’t I hear anything? Cosy and forlorn in its little leather pouch, left behind, me whistling unawares. How brief its time with me was. My mind went round and round in hamster wheel torment, though I tried to force myself to let go. In the morning I dug out an old mobile phone from the back of the wardrobe and set about getting it up and running. How clunky and awkward it felt after the smoothness of my iPhone. Then my home phone rang during breakfast. I answered it and heard my father’s voice, “have you lost your phone?” He then went on to tell me that he had just received a phonecall from a policeman. The information desk at the shopping mall had handed in the previous day’s lost and found flotsam at the police station and my phone was among the assorted bits and bobs. I could go along and pick it up. I couldn’t believe it. I raced over there and spoke to the very policeman who had called my father. I asked him if he knew who had handed it in, but he didn’t know. He had been given a bag with various lost items from the day before and he was sifting through it when he came across my phone, went through the numbers and when he came across the contact for “Dad”, decided to call that number. I was ecstatic. Disproportionately ecstatic (just as I had been disproportionately despondent a few hours before) because I know we are not supposed to be so attached to items but I was reflecting on how this loss was going to complicate my life endlessly in terms of contacts, work and my own frustration at how I never seem to learn the lesson of being careful with things. The policeman was very kind to me, very chatty and warm-hearted. I’d taken along some Belgian chocolates to say thank you. Then on my way out of there, after shaking his hand firmly, I suddenly thought “yes, it’s him. He’s the King of Cups.”. I bet he was handed that phone by a woman. Not a right bitch as it happened. Far from it. And then the spread made sense in a different light. So often we need hindsight to see a reading correctly, to remind ourselves that – yes – the cards are right again.

The Romantic Russian Lenormands

I love these decks. I didn’t realise quite how much I loved them until I recently received the final installment, the twin-set Lilac & Cherry Twilight Lenormands and was able to think of them – with their predecessors – as a distinct entity in their own unique constellation. I do think of them in terms of installments, the full circle, the most romantic of all Lenormands. I didn’t set out to buy the full set. I didn’t even know it would be a full set. I started off with only Berenika’s original Lilac Twilight Lenormand a while ago, lured by images on a webpage whose language I couldn’t decipher. Then came the Mysteries of the Old Castle Lenormand, followed by news of another edition of the Lilac Twilight Lenormand which was coupled with another new deck the Cherry Twilight Lenormand in a double deck set with the same back design. And then there were four. To summarise; the original Lilac Twilight Lenormand (in all photos here, top left), the Mysteries of the Old Castle Lenormand (top right) and then the double deck set containing a reworked Lilac Twilight Lenormand plus a new deck the Cherry Twilight Lenormand (bottom left and right respectively). There you have it. A set. Four distinct but interlinked Lenormand decks which weren’t meant to be a sequence at all but have ended up feeling like one and, laying all four out before me, I see qualities common to all four, qualities which distinguish them from so many other Lenormands currently available, a sort of kitsch, maudlin dreaminess with a certain pompous, painterly stiffness.

These cards are very much my style. The Mysteries of the Old Castle is perhaps my least favourite but with hindsight it now slots in nicely to break up the Lilac tides. Yet the fact is that even when not trying hard to be dark, there is still something slightly gothic, poetically romantic –  actually that should be Romantic, not romantic –  about these decks. There is a darkness, a remoteness, an aloofness, something out of step with the current European and American Lenormand deck trends. A slight naivety perhaps, academic salon painting transposed, juxtaposed with frilly photoshop borders, and although different artists’ work is involved, stylistically the deck still feels largely unified, considering. It is set against a 19th Century wintry landscape, the frugality of peasant larders (see the Mice in the Lilac Twilight) and the opulence of rich, Francophile Russian tastes (the twittering birds in the new Lilac Twilight could be from a Dowager Romanov Duchess’ silk screen), the Habsburg crest on the coffin, drawn through the snow, candles spluttering perhaps because of some unseen spirit presence. These decks feel erudite and heavy (I like that), gloomy, desolate with the atmosphere of a cluttered parlour, but laid out on the table are a true feast for the eyes.

The newer Lilac Twilight deck has made the colours more subtle and added borders so that mauve wash which you got from the original glossy Lilac Twilight when everything was laid out for a Grand Tableau has now gone. I miss that mist. But you see, you need to have them all, because what one deck is missing, another makes up for it, and different moods require different nuances. They sort of feed off each other, compliment and echo each other, the 144 cards are ostensibly a loosely aligned set for me, a sprawling, four deck grouping, differing slightly at certain times, other times, differing considerably but with the same refined aspirations running through, the same lilac bloodline. I know I keep saying I like my Lenormands sparse, with only the symbol and not much else but I have to confess I love the richness of these decks. They are essentially only the traditional symbol but more painterly, so instead of a simple Tree in the Cherry Lenormand we get a solitary, exposed snow-laden tree and instead of a simple Snake we get a snake charmers python rising from a wicker basket. The images mostly don’t carry unnecessary decorative symbolism in addition to the symbol but the fact that they are paintings makes them feel denser.

I so nearly didn’t have all these decks. I bought by chance (I could just as easily have passed on it) two copies of the first edition Lilac Twilight – reviewed here – and thought I couldn’t possibly love any other “follow up” deck as much. With this in mind I didn’t order the Mysteries of the Old Castle but changed my mind at the last minute and bought two. Then I heard about changes being made to the Lilac Twilight and reflected that I didn’t need another edition as I liked the previous one so much. Again I changed my mind last minute and only discovered later that it came with another deck. This last pair took forever to get here (I bought two copies of these decks too). In my minds eye I was picturing them arriving by sleigh from the freezing hinterland of Russia. My decks took three months to get here, posted in December, arriving in March. All part of the romance. Funny how I just knew they would get here. I never gave up.

Now that they are here I think of them as a whole and love them. They are not only the most romantic and Romantic of Lenormand decks but also the most mysterious (paradoxically, the Mysteries of the Old Castle is so overtly dark that it feels the least mysterious because of it). I love how they are fine art decks yet with so few images which are recognisable to western eyes. I am a big fan of 19th Century genre painting but hardly recognise any images here through I wonder whether the Cross in the Cherry Lenormand is from a Caspar David Friedrich painting as it has that mood about it. I suspect that most are taken from works in Russian museums that I will probably never visit. I look at these images and feel that I travel somewhere moonlit, icey and rarified. I see these images only in the context of Lenormand imagery and that is how they are now fixed. I am glad of this. Such beautiful images now – to my mind –  eternally Lenormand.

The Wild Unknown

Many are the decks which as soon as I receive and open them I want to review, immediately analyse and describe. Sometimes I cannot contain myself. I want to put into words what I feel emanating from a deck, what mood it conveys to me, its quirks and vision. But this deck was different. I have spent weeks working with it and feeling no urge to write about it or shout from the rooftoops. Only now, after quite a while has lapsed since I actually received it, do I want to write about my experiences. I remember seeing scans a long time ago and thinking it looked interesting but it was one of those decks to be ordered from somewhere obscure and so often I lose interest when faced with this hurdle (very bad of me I know as I think more and more decks in the future are not going to be available from amazon or the big sellers and I know I should applaud the fact). Then there are all the unknown quantities, cardstock, image and print quality, quite apart from the fact that it might not actually arrive. You know how it is. But I sensed a groundswell of favourable responses to this deck and quite a long time after its release I found a stockist nearer home and took the plunge.

I am so glad I did as this is one of the most sensitive, poignant and unique decks I have seen in recent years. It really is understated beauty at its best. I know where the deck came from but I know very little about the creators and – to be honest – nothing whatsoever about the artist, Kim Krans, whose name doesn’t even appear on the box. I just know that this deck has a voice like no other and everything I ever disliked in supposed nature-based decks is absent in this deck. Disney has done untold damage to what we think of as our relationship with the animal kingdom and I see this quite naturally filtering through into tarot decks, supposedly pagan-based or supposedly wiccan-based but which to me seem comical and simplistic. This doesn’t proclaim to be either wiccan or pagan or shamanic, it is simply a deck which bears images of the quiet dignity of the animal kingdom. Nothing more, nothing less. And it doesn’t impose sentimentality on it for us, it doesn’t push for cuteness or try to push the agenda that somehow we have an inner stag or stork inside of us that apparently we can draw upon when 21st Century life gets us down. It feels like nature pared down without any agenda whatsoever. I love how this deck has been put out there -no rallying of votes or support -and been left to silently garner its own accolades simply by its own merit. The creators seem so silent. I love this. It is as if it is a deck without ego. Who are these people who (as far as I know) don’t have any experience of tarot deck designing and yet whose 78 images seem eerily spot on in so many ways? It is a wonderful decks to work with. As soon as I received it, I was struck by the minimalism of it. How the cross hatching, shading, angles, tiny simple details and the arrangments of suit symbols cause a tension and nuance which make so much sense in a reading.  Sulis has said that as a reading decks it has much in common with Marseilles decks and I think there is a great deal of truth in that comment. By the same token, I find that if I go through it card by card I can detect standard RWS meanings in the images, but when I have cards next to one another in a spread I always reach wildly differing conclusions. For example, a few weeks ago I had a meeting with my boss which I was worried about. I am occupying a new position and wondered how my performance was going down. After the meeting I felt vague as to how things stood. I went home, had lunch and did a three-card spread with the Wild Unknown Tarot and got the following cards.

The anchor card, the first card dealt, was The Sun. Either side, the flanking, secondary cards were the Son of Pentacles and the Three of Wands. The Sun card seemed like an explosion of relief. I’d never thought of The Sun as relief but it screamed relief for me, ecstatic alleviation. A single flash and the anxiety was gone. Then looking at the Son of Pentacles, I see the young stag bowing down out of the darkness, looking to the light. I remembered a saying, “heavy is the head of he who wears the crown”  and this picture seemed to sum things up well, with the pentacle hovering over the young stag’s head. Then the Three of Wands seems to say that with perameters firmly tied the inner content will take care of itself. It seems to say that if I do my best and keep things firm, define my limits, the ensuing success, the ensuing colour, will take care of itself within the limits established. One of the wonderful things about this deck is the sparing use of colour that gives flashes of meanings to certain (not all) cards. The contrast in itself enhances meaning. Like everything else in this deck, meanings are subtle, understated, gentle and meditative. I reflected on how pushy some decks can be and that I had never noticed this before. I reach for this deck more and more and although there is a guidebook which can be purchased seperately I don’t feel that I need one as the cards speak so vividly.

The deck comes in a two-part box with a black ribbon used to facilitate the lifting out of the cards and it comes with a fold out sheet of meanings which I read but  - really – the deck reads so effortlesly for me, I don’t consult it much now. This is a case of a deck truly standing on its own, needing nothing much beyond its imagery. And the cardstock is heavenly. It is thick but not too thick, feels like it has plastic in the cards for added resilience, but the cards do not feel plastic at all, just strong. No gloss, no lamination, just firm, durable and comfortingly chunky when shuffling. The back design is simple and geometric, a repetitive black and white rhombus pattern, one inside the other (see top photograph).  The imagery is haunting and is what makes this deck truly memorable. It soothes without deluding. I find that I identify with its animal melancholy and want to absorb the silence. It has already been compared to the Greenwood and the Ironwing and although I can see what may lead people to these conclusions because it is nature-based, it doesn’t mean that fans of these decks will find much in common with it. However, I think it has a rare and mystical quality – that much is evident – something potentially mythical in tarot publishing. It’s too early to say of course but I think any comparisons with these decks don’t help in allowing us to take this deck on its own terms. Yet its remote poetry and the fact that it feels like it holds so many secrets makes it one of the most memorable tarot publications of recent times for me. I hate this need to have polls, the need to list decks in order of “bestness”. There have been so many memorable decks published of late and we should be relishing the diversity not setting them against each other. It is enough for me to know that this one has a disarmingly distinct voice whose whispers I want to hear.

http://www.thewildunknown.com/collections/tarot/products/tarot-deck

A Different Dondorf

On the second Saturday of the month there is an antique market down the main avenue where my office is and from my window (if I’m lucky enough to be working on a Saturday) I can see the stallholders setting up and unpacking their wares from around 8.30 a.m onwards. Yesterday was a beautiful, crisp, chilled sunny morning, with the last of the winter sun streaming and not a cloud to be seen. I kept glancing out of the window as I worked, promising myself that when I had time for a coffee break I would have a peruse and see if there was anything of interest. I tend to avoid so-called antique markets as often it’s a matter of sellers simply cleaning up their objects, arranging them on a nice velvet cloth and charging more than double when I would rather rummage for myself in the grubby disorder of car-boot sales and flea markets and come up with my own treasures thank you very much. Obvious, expensive, self-proclaimed and polished antiques have never really appealed to me. Shortly before 10 o’clock I put my jacket on, had a coffee in the nearby café and walked up (then down) the avenue. A few stalls up I saw the closed burgundy leather box pictured above. Boxes alone are always enough to intrigue me. So I opened it. Inside was a complete double deck bridge set of Dondorf playing cards in impeccable condition.

Not Lenormand, but the name alone – Dondorf of Frankfurt (or “Francfort” if you’re lucky enough to find a truly old export pack) –  conjures up images of luxurious playing card decks from another century. And these cards are truly luxurious, they slide against each other like silk and no expense has been spared on the ornate brocades, cuffs and fluttering sashes of the court cards.  A quick search on the internet and I came across the following information;  it seems to be one of the Dondorf Club Karte series produced between 1860-68. Later editions saw the introduction of borders (which these do have) and corner indices (which these don’t have) so it’s likely that this is a mid-period edition. I also read that their cheaper cards used five colours and the more expensive sets used up to fifteen different shades and the thing that immediately struck me about these cards was how rich the colouring is. More information can be seen here. Each deck is nestled in its own compartment and resting on top was an unused bridge score pad and the original, slim, ivory-topped pencil which slots in with the pad. The whole, compact little box, which is also in excellent condition, closes up nicely and on the top of the box there is a tiny bronze fox head set onto a riding crop.  I seem to remember reading somewhere a while ago that the fox was the symbol of the Dondorf publishing house and that’s why Lenormand decks – which of course feature a fox card – were a special publication for them. To find not one but two of these decks in perfect condition  after all these years is quite something.

I bartered a little – not too much – and paid a very reasonable price for them then the stallholder wrapped the box up in newspaper and I took them back to my office under my arm to look at more closely later. Of course, once alone and looking closely at their delicate beauty the first feeling that comes to mind is, “I must learn to read playing cards.” I think this time and time again. Each time I come across an attractive set of playing cards in fact. But this time the vow was stronger than ever. I have here a double deck set -a deck and a spare, if you like – with different coloured backs, complete and in excellent condition. But then I have many beautiful playing card sets – complete and in excellent condition –  which I have picked up over the years as playing cards were my first love a long time before tarot and I started buying playing cards when I was a child and still have my first ever Waddington’s set. Plus I have always loved playing patience/solitaire (though I never have the time nowadays) and so have accumulated quite a few decks for that.

However, I have to say, I have none as old as I think this set might be. Each time I buy a pack that appeals to me I think – again – “yes, I really must learn to read playing cards.” There are so many systems to choose from that it’s difficult to know where to start; Hedgewytch, Ana Cortéz, Romany card-reading, that book from the 1980s by Nerys Dee which many people like, plus Jonathan Dee, the French method, Mystic Sophia and many others. Plus of course that incessant urge to devise your own system which with suit meanings and numerology sounds ideal though I can never really get much beyond the fives in any suit (all numbers up to five make sense – plus courts and tens –  but cards six to nine seem a little too vague for me.) When I was 15 or 16 I went to see a clairvoyant in secret after school a few times (my parents found out and were horrified) and she read with playing cards. I often wonder what system she used. She’d lay them out – the cheapest deck – and reach extraordinary conclusions from them. Reading playing cards is one of those resolutions that come to me periodically and I make a start but then I realise how much I have to memorise (though I suspect the extraordinary conclusions that my clairvoyant reached weren’t the fruits of memorisation.)

Even so, when I lay the cards out the reading always seems less susbstantial than tarot, that is if I don’t start imposing means from tarot like maybe the five of spades could be a bit like the 5 of swords? It may make things easier to remember but in the long run you end up doing that transposing which doesn’t make for a very spontaneous reading. I think this current love of Lenormand cards is perhaps a sublimated mass urge to read playing cards – which Lenormands sort of have if the card insets are prominent enough – but you don’t have all the anguish of memorisation. Yes, memorising, so out of fashion now.  You could say that Lenormand reading is a sort of scenic pip-inspired method of playing card reading. All the mystique of playing card reading with none of the frustrations of a bad memory. Because the fact is that now the market has been glutted with themic tarot card decks, it is hard not to secretly think of old-fashioned playing card reading as cartomancy in its purest state.

Looking at my Dondorf find since yesterday, with its enigmatic yet expressive faces, I have felt stronger than ever the urge to learn and I imagine how liberating it would be to need only a pack of playing cards to read with. Imagine how liberated from tarot-shopping one would feel. We would be free of that eternal chase for the illusory tarot deck whose illustrations supposedly stoke our intuition like no other. The cheapest, most basic  ”printed in China” playing card deck would suffice and you would never feel that panic of a deck going out of print and the need to track one down quickly. All notion of back-up decks would be redundant. You would need only go to the nearest toystore, bookstore, stationer’s or (here in Europe) tobacconists and get yourself a new one. Plus the flea markets are full of discarded playing card decks. Ok, I admit, I have drawers full of  hardly used playing card decks so I personally wouldn’t need to venture too far to grab another deck and I’d also invariably want to use decks as beautiful as this one. Plus there are some exquisite patience playing card decks around (I have refered to a favourite of mine, the 1850-60 Sonet-Morin deck, here on this blog) so you’d even have easily available mini decks for those large Romany spreads in limited confines. Do I need a new year to inspire another resolution or can I start now? I need to decide on a system and stick to it plus I suppose it’s good to kick-start my memorisation skills in order to keep the brain-cells active.  Perhaps most significant of all is how a part of me really would like to be free of tarot and its endless themes and tired promises.