What Makes A Reader?

 

There's a thought provoking post on Hugh's blog that prompted me to elaborate a bit. https://thefortunetellerssociety.com/2023/08/21/how-do-i-read-lenormand/

What I'm seeing online is people who want to learn the cards making the same mistakes over and over. The big problem is a lack of discernment. You need to learn from people who can actually read cards. Just a few reliable sources. Less is more! I'm not trying to discredit the "competition" here. I do not sell courses, workshops, or any of that. I don't make videos. I just read cards, and I'm telling you what the problem is: bad signal.

You won't learn Lenormand from sub-par books. The ones Hugh mentions are more than adequate, especially Andy's. Get that one and work through it. Then work through it again. Stay with it until you've absorbed it.

You won't learn from youtube. With the exception of Hexe Claire, everything there is crap. Hexe Claire's videos are good, but they're an introduction. They'll get you started, that's all. If you want to progress, again, get Andy's book.

You won't learn on forums. Those are full of bad readings, it's all guesswork. Bad information is seldom corrected, since forums are focused on getting and keeping lots of board traffic, not trying to make sure people learn properly. (BTW, being a forum mod does not confer knowledge of the cards!)

Facebook groups are, if anything, worse.

And you won't learn by focusing on spreads, or learning to design your own spreads, or any of that. Good old fashioned lines, boxes, and tableaus work the best, and will answer any question. You don't need dedicated spreads for various subjects like love, money, etc. Stop wasting your time on spreads and practice reading the cards.

Just because a person has a youtube channel, moderates a forum, or even writes a book does not mean they know what they're talking about. As I commented on Hugh's blog, "I’d advise anyone who wants to learn to toss any books they have other than the ones mentioned. The vast majority of what’s out there is garbage. Approach the cards with logic.
Then, study and practice. Don’t try to learn silly spreads. Don’t seek instruction or advice on forums, facebook groups, etc. That’s the blind leading the blind. Just do readings every day, record them, and review them later to see if they were accurate. Keep doing that for at least five years and you’ll get there."

And yes, it does take at least five years to get fluent. You're learning a language. Don't underestimate the complexity of the method simply because there are only 36 cards!

Tradition

 

We all know how a lot of people will dig their heels in and refuse to learn cartomantic traditions, instead choosing to rely on "intuition." That would be fine, but for the fact that they push their views on the public, thus polluting the waters. Or they might make a deck, but choose to "innovate" rather than design the cards according to the reading tradition. There's a metric fucktonne of unreadable schlock out there.

I've been hanging out at cast iron discussion groups and found quite the opposite, in many cases. Let me explain first that a long time ago, people washed dishes with lye soap. Lye is used to this day to strip the seasoning from cast iron cookware. (Sometimes seasoning gets really crusty and needs to be stripped and done over.) The lye turns it to sludge and it washes right off. So you didn't want to wash your pans with soap then. People wiped their skillets with a rag, or scrubbed them with salt. But our modern dish detergent like Dawn is safe for washing pans. Still, some people still try to say you "should never use soap." I call bullshit. Wash your damn pan.

A lady at one of my cast iron groups said she knows this, she just doesn't use soap because her grandmother didn't, or told her not to. It's a way of keeping her grandma with her, I get that. Others will strip their pans by throwing them into a fire, risking cracks, warping, red scale and general heat damage. There are safe, inexpensive methods available but they choose to risk ruining their pan. They do it because a family member used to.

So people will follow a tradition for sentimental reasons, even if it's fatally flawed. But if there is no sentimental attachment, they want to tear it apart in spite of the value it has.

It makes no sense.