We're all adults here.

A scene from "All About Eve" - a witty, highly entertaining movie for an adult audience

About ten years ago, six or less of us were hanging out at Kapherus's old forum talking about Lenormand. It was the only english speaking place to talk about the nuts-and-bolts matter of reading the cards. And that was OK.

Meanwhile, a woman named Melissa was creating a Lenormand and posting the images at AT. They were very lovely images, and she gained a following.

Then she was invited to do a presentation at one of those big Tarot conferences. And from there, everything went full potato.

I don't think Melissa intended this. And I've always liked her, and her deck. It just happened that way. Things went explody. 

From all this, we got a lot of aggravation, bad books, decks, and websites. But we also got a few real gems. Books from Andy Boroveshengra and Rana George. Bjorn Meuris's Volume 2 that deals with the Method of Distance, Caitlin Matthews' book, and a handful of truly wonderful decks as well.

 
After awhile, the dust settled. Things were far from perfect, but people did seem to grasp the facts that Lenormand is not read like modern Tarot, deck imagery is best when it's sparse, and just because you prefer cats to dogs doesn't mean a Cat card functions the same way a Dog card does. Ten years on and AT is no more. It's OK, I like this place better: * link redacted *  (NOTE: As of April 2022, the Tarot, Tea and Me forum is no longer recommended. Traditional/cartomantic readers are no longer welcome to post there.) There are, naturally, new Lenormand readers there and they're posting all the "resources" they found. I've been checking them out - aren't we due for another great one? An Andy? A Rana?

It doesn't look like it. As a matter of fact, I noticed a disturbing trend. These "experts" are rank beginners. Often, they're just parroting a dumbed-down version of one of the authors who was out there already - and getting it all wrong. One even TOUTS the fact that she's a beginner ("beginner's mind" - NOT EVERYTHING WORKS LIKE ZEN. Would you go to a surgeon with a "beginner's mind"?) and she uses SOCK PUPPETS in some of her videos. I shit you not:

That's just one person, but there is a strong kiddie vibe to a lot of channels and websites, and a severe lack of quality. And that, friends, is what I find VERY offensive. Are we not grown-ass people?

 
I'm not looking for instruction on Lenormand, but if I wanted to find out how to do something I didn't know well - say, a household repair - I wouldn't expect the related youtube videos to have neon colored toys in them, or talk to me like I had some kind of severe cognitive issue even though THEY'RE the ones who don't know their ass from the proverbial hole in the ground. And the household repair videos never do that. You can fix your faucet, or your laptop, or virtually anything without being talked to like a four year old. Youtube videos on things like this, on sewing, on makeup, and other subjects tend to be useful. You can watch hours of cooking videos with nary a puppet in sight. It's just the card reading videos that are an utter shitshow.

Cartomancy is not for the target audience of Barney or The Banana Splits. It's complex, and you have to study, practice, and think. You're learning a language, with history and culture and tradition. You might even need a book that cites sources. *gasp!*

Just because a person is interested in learning to read cards, and willing to make the leap of faith that it could actually work, does not mean that they are a mark, a sucker, a chump, or some kind of idiot to be taken advantage of. 

I don't know how predictive reading works, and I've been doing it for decades. What we're bumping into is a mystery, and I suspect it's something to do with the nature of time itself. There is science here, we just haven't figured it out yet. And if you assume I'm a halfwit because I believe in something that I've actually seen work again and again, well, I got something for dat ass.

Please, respect your audience. Don't treat them like they're in training pants.

About Me: a (re)introduction

You might be familiar with my old blog of the same title, Fate Keeps On Happening: https://fennario.wordpress.com/ It's a line from the hilarious and wonderful 1925 novel by Anita Loos, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes: The Intimate Diary of a Professional Lady, and I thought it lent itself well to a blog with a lot of posts about fortunetelling, which deals in fate, often concerns itself with issues of money and relationships, and at times can express itself with a wicked sense of humor. And if not, I'm happy to meet you. Since I've mentioned that this is a blog that is (mostly) about reading cards, I think I should tell you a little about myself:

Many years ago, I was often holed up in my bedroom trying to predict the future with Eden Grey's Mastering The Tarot and a University Books Smith-Waite deck with pink ankh backs, and it all just progressed from there. 

My approach to reading isn't the currently fashionable one. I don't subscribe to the "wellness model" and I really don't like to read cards for spiritual and/or psychological insights, I read them to see what will happen, where I left my keys, that kind of thing. I also do this professionally and have done so for a long time. I find that clients are much more concerned with love and money than they are with things like "what does the Universe want me to know right now?"

Since all of this stuff is considered "spiritual" these days, I should probably state my position on that. I don't feel particularly spiritual when I read. My thing isn't IF things exist, it's HOW they exist. Do I believe that consciousness is something bigger and weirder than we can get our minds around? Absolutely. Does concern itself with peoples' attempts at piousness? I doubt it. Just try not to be an a-hole - life is just easier when people do that.

 By the way, if you need a counselor or therapist, find a state certified one and go there. Who am I to assume to practice psychology? I'm a card reader. 

How does it work? I have no clue. It shouldn't, but it does. The usual reply to that question is "synchronicity" (often from people who haven't even read Jung) but nobody really tries to answer that. They just parrot the conventional "wisdom". My best guess is that it's something about the nature of time itself that we don't know yet. We know that time is bendy, maybe even spherical (asking "What was before the beginning of time?" is like asking "What's north of the North Pole?" - thanks, Mr. Hawking) so maybe we can jump ahead on that sphere, just a little? I don't know.

I don't just read Tarot. Far from it. My go-to is Lenormand, and I also read the Grand Jeu Lenormand, as well as Kipperkarten, Sibilla, and some others. I'm kind of nerdy about all of this, and I take a kind of predictive, folkloric approach, tending towards traditional reading rather than the wellness style of recent decades. I fear real card reading is being lost, and I'd like to see it preserved. So yeah. I've probably alienated some folks already. And that's OK. Stick around if you're still interested.

The decks in this post are the Tarot Fortune Cards above, available here: https://www.tarotcollectibles.com/store/p148/Thomson-Leng-Tarot.html

The Black Power Tarot, available here: https://www.hellomerch.com/collections/king-khan/products/black-power-tarot

and the 1903 Geuens-Willaert Lenormand, available at http://gameofhopelenormand.bigcartel.com/