Lenormand card meanings

Photo by Magenta

What are Lenormand cards?

Lenormand cards are a deck of 36 cards with simplistic pictures on them which represent a keyword, which will itself have very simple noun or adjective associations. When these nouns and adjectives are combined with each other, they are read a little bit like a sentence. Lenormand card meanings are interpreted literally using the key words unlike Tarot, which is oftentimes interpreted intuitively using the pictures.

Lenormand card readings can be a bit punchier than Tarot readings. If Tarot is the wise mother, Lenormand is the straight talking Aunt. Lenormand tells it like it is, which is great because Lenormand cards have distinct negative cards, positive cards and neutral cards which can be used to answer some more direct questions, for example where “yes” or “no” might be required. Similarly, most of the Lenormand cards each have a time indicator attached to the meaning. So if the question asked was about timing, Lenormand could be used to answer that. 

Graphite Moon Lenormand

Artwork by Jemma

 

Graphite Moon Lenormand Card meanings

Our Lenormand card meanings are based on our Graphite Moon deck, which includes one additional card at Card 37. This is the Soul card for any person using our deck who does not identify as either male or female. Our deck also comes with an additional Man, additional Woman and additional Soul card which can be used to signify partnerships/relationships in any combination.

Click the pictures below to see detailed Lenormand card meanings and their combinations with the rest of the deck. These detailed meanings can bring context to lenormand readings.

Combining lenormand card meanings

If you don’t have a Lenormand deck yet, you can still have fun with the keywords by simply cutting out 36 squares and writing the key words on one side (in pencil though of course so it can’t be read through the back). Shuffle the cards, ask a question and start by reading the cards in pairs or threes.

To start off, it’s probably easier to read two or three cards. There’s a couple of ways to do this. One is ‘comic book style’, reading the cards from left to right.  For two cards, this is when the first card is read as a noun and the second card is read as a verb or an adjective, describing the noun in the first card.  You can also read three cards as comic book style using the first card as a noun and the middle as a verb or adjective and the final card as a verb or adjective, which ever makes the sentence make sense! You can also read three cards by using the middle card in the comic strip as the focus of the reading, the “noun” card. The cards that flank the middle one bring meaning to it by being read as either verbs or adjectives.

You can either shuffle the deck and choose cards randomly or you can pull out a card that you know about in advance, one that signifies the issue and becomes the focus of the reading. This works really well when you have a specific question in mind and there’s a decent enough “noun” in the meanings behind Lenormand you can use to signify it in your reading.

To interpret the sentence you’re making correctly, use the keywords associated with the cards to make a sentence that answers the question you’ve asked. You might need to add in one or two extra words to the keyword nouns, verbs and adjectives so that your reading makes sense. Things like ‘and’ ‘is’ and ‘with’ etc are useful here.

Example lenormand card meanings

An example reading if we asked
“Should we take the job offer?”

Using the comic book style reading, going left to right, let’s imagine we pulled cards randomly and got Stork + Crossroad + Clover. Keywords to look for might be change (for Stork), choosing or deciding (for Crossroad) and opportunistic or lucky (for Clover). We can make a sentence here about “change has been offered, choosing change will be opportunistic”. If we read the cards flank style, where the middle card is the focus, the sentence might be “There is a choice to be made now. It’s opportunistic and transformative”.

Now alternatively, because we want to know the answer to something very specific (and we already know there’s a job that has been offered to us) there is a signifying card we can use instead of pulling all the cards randomly. We can find the Bear card in our deck, because Bear has a noun perfect for this reading. The noun is work and the question is about a job. Now we can choose to put Bear at the start or in the middle of the reading and then randomly select two cards to see what verbs or adjectives they present us with. Let’s imagine we pulled Fish + Anchor this time. Keywords to look for might be gaining or financial (for Fish) and stability or reliable (for Anchor). We can make a sentence here about the job we know about such as “the job will be financially stable”.

The choice between whether you’re looking at the noun meaning or the verb or adjective meaning will depend on your question, the position of the cards and ultimately the sentence you want to make. Naturally the keyword associations might differ marginally between a career reading and a relationships reading.  For example, with the Clover card, you might not use the keyword opportunistic, instead a better keyword here might be excited for a new romance.

It’s also worth noticing that whilst two out of the three cards in our first example are neutral, the one positive card along with the semantics of our sentence, suggests this change is a positive one.

So, should we take that job? Well, we think so.