Please note
that I'm an individualistic card reader! The following
tutorial demonstrates what has worked for me. If you want to make
sure that you learn to combine card meanings according to a
specific, traditional, school you need to look elsewhere!
Even if you normally use different keywords for Mountain and Child: Just for the
purpose of this exercise, memorise the ones given here. For we'll be using them
throughout this tutorial.
Mountain: nouns: difficulties, silence, challenge adjectives (attributes): big, challenging verbs (activities): to challenge, to silence
Child: nouns: beginning, a weak person, inexperience adjectives (attributes): small, weak verbs (activities): to initiate, to begin, to weaken
Put in the simplest terms possible, two cards' meanings are combined by taking two cards and
connecting one keyword of the first card with one keyword of the second card. This combination
of keywords will then have the form of a fragment of a sentence or even a complete sentence.
For example: We take the keyword "challenge" (Mountain) and combine it with the keyword
"small" (Child). This creates the combined meaning "a small challenge" - which is the fragment
of a sentence. If you want to form a complete sentence, you could frame the combination as "The
challenge is (but) small." A very similar, but semantically slightly different, proposition would be
"There is a small challenge.".
Firstly, if you want to read Lenormand the way it's intended to be read, there's no way out of
learning this technique. It's the basis for all readings. And there's a good reason for that. While
Tarot, with its 78 cards, covers a huge range of human experiences, human life, with Lenormand
there are only 36 cards. Combining their meanings creates infinitely many more layers of meaning
and possibilities of interpretation!
But apart from this practical consideration, combining two cards' meanings is pure and simple
fun! It didn't feel like that to me at first - when I was just starting out it all seemed complicated
and technical. But once I'd practised a bit, it turned out to be quite intriguing; a playful and intuitive
technique.
In most readings, it's reasonable to pick one card as the topic or starting point, and the other as
something which modifies the topic. The rule of thumb is that the card to the left is the topic/
starting point, and the card to the right modifies.
But no matter whether you want to adhere to it strictly or also tend to a more lenient approach it is important to be aware that the order in
which you combine your two cards will usually have a noticeable impact on the meaning you create. For example:
Mountain: nouns: difficulties, silence, challenge adjectives: big, challenging verbs: to challenge, to silence
Child: nouns: beginning, a weak person, inexperience adjectives: small, weak verbs: to initiate, to begin, to weaken
First, let's place the Mountain to the left, so it serves as the topic. This means that our reading
is about the issues the Mountain addresses, which are modified by the Child's. Examples for
combined meanings would be that:
• The difficulties [Mountain] are rather small [Child] or are caused by inexperience [Child]. • Someone or something silences [Mountain] a weak person [Child]. • Something which seems challenging [Mountain] might actually turn out to be weak (=
easy to master) [Child].
Now let's reverse the positions from Mountain+Child to Child+Mountain to see how the combined
meaning changes.
Child: nouns: beginning, a weak person, inexperience adjectives: small, weak verbs: to initiate, to begin, to weaken
Mountain: nouns: difficulties, silence, challenge adjectives: big, challenging verbs: to challenge, to silence
When we reverse the positions from Mountain-Child to Child-Mountain, our reading changes to
now be about the issues the Child addresses, which are modified by the Mountain's. Examples
for combined meanings would in this case be that: • A beginning [Child] is challenging [Mountain]. • Someone's inexperience [Child] causes difficulties [Mountain]. • Something still small [Child] might end up becoming huge challenge [Mountain].
Please note that I called the "left card is topic, right card modifies" rule a rule of thumb for three
reasons. One reason is that it is not always applicable. Sometimes you don't have a left or right
card, but a bottom and top or below and above card. Another reason is that, in some spreads, it
makes more sense visually not to combine from left to right, but from the centre outwards. And
that means, to one side of the centre, to use the right card as topic and the left as modifier. The
last reason is that sometimes it doesn't actually make much difference whether you use one or
the other card as the starting point. (Compare for example "This reading is about the difficulties
you're having. They are caused by inexperience." with "This reading is about your inexperience.
It is causing difficulties."
Yes, there is a slightly different nuance, a slightly different focus. But overall, looking at just these
interpretations, both are saying more or less the same.)
However, even if "the left card is topic, right card modifies" is only a rule of thumb, it is a useful
rule of thumb. And we'll be sticking with it for the duration of this tutorial.
Combining cards' meanings is a play with semantics by grammatical means. This is to say that
the meaning of a combination can change quite dramatically depending on which grammatical
form of the individual words you use (noun, adjective, adverb, verb etc.) and how you string them
together (e.g. by using conjunctions like "because" or "if").
Maybe the examples above already made all that abundantly clear to you. In this case, there's
no necessity at all to read any further - go and start experimenting! But in case they didn't, or if
you are more analytically-minded or like to go about things in very structured ways, the following
paragraphs explain the grammatical aspect of card combinations in more detail.
The Noun-Adjective method is probably the easiest way to combine two cards' meanings. For the
first card, you pick a keyword in the form of a noun, and for the second card, you pick an adjective.
Let's take the same two combinations from above, Mountain/Child and Child/Mountain, and
construct Noun-Adjective combinations:
Mountain: nouns: difficulties, silence, challenge
Child: adjectives: small, weak
With Mountain as noun and Child as adjective, an example of a complete sentence would be "The
difficulties [noun] are small [adjective]." The cropped version, only a fragment of a sentence, is
"small difficulties".
Child: nouns: beginning, a weak person, inexperience
Mountain: adjectives: big, challenging
With Child as noun and Mountain as adjective, an example of a complete sentence would be "A
beginning [noun] is challenging [adjective]." The cropped version, only a fragment of a sentence,
is "a challenging beginning".
With this method, a combination meaning is created by using one noun and one verb. Here, things
become a bit more complex. For the card to the left, the topic, can either be the noun or the verb.
And a verb can be active or passive. An active verb describes what someone does. A passive verb
describes what is done to them. Of course, depending on the keywords you are using, some combinations,
while grammatically correct, just wouldn't make sense. In the case of our practise example
with Mountain and Child, I purposefully picked keywords which would work for all options:
Mountain: nouns: difficulties, silence, challenge
Child: verbs: to initiate, to begin, to weaken
First, the Mountain is the left card. If we take the noun from the Mountain's keywords and the
Verb from the Child's we get "A challenge [noun] begins [verb]". The Child as passive verb
offers the combination "A challenge [noun] is initiated [passive verb]."
Mountain: verbs: to challenge, to silence
Child: nouns: beginning, inexperience, weak person
If the Mountain is the verb and the Child the noun we get "Someone silences [verb] a weak
person [noun]" or "Someone is silenced [passive verb] by a weak person [noun]".
Child: nouns: beginning, a weak person, inexperience
Mountain: verbs: to challenge, to silence
If we reverse the positions and take the noun from the Child's keywords and the
verb from the Mountain's we get "A weak person [noun] challenges [verb] someone." The
Mountain as passive verb offers us "A weak person [noun] is challenged [passive verb] by
someone."
Child: verbs: to initiate, to begin, to weaken
Mountain: nouns: difficulties, silence, challenge
If the Child is the verb, we get "Someone weakens i.e. reduces [verb] a challenge [noun]" or
"Someone is weakened [passive verb] by a challenge [noun]."
Here, you connect keywords of the left card with keywords of the right card by using a conjunction.
Conjunctions are connecting words between individual words or (parts of) sentences, e.g.:
"and", "or", "but", "because", "then". And, especially for connecting two cards' meanings, you
can also view phrases like "on the condition that", "as soon as", "leads to", or "conflicts with"
etc. as conjunctions. Basically, you can use any word or phrase that creates a comprehensible and
relevant sentence. But what is relevant depends a lot on the context. So in the examples below a
lot of context will already be mixed in with the original keywords.
Mountain: nouns: difficulties, silence, challenge adjectives: big, challenging verbs: to challenge, to silence
Child: nouns: beginning, a weak person, inexperience adjectives: small, weak verbs: to initiate, to begin, to weaken
With the Mountain as topic and the Child as modifier we get: • You only dare challenging person X [Mountain] because you know [conjunction] they
are weaker than you [Child]." • "What begins as silence - a lack of communication - [Mountain] will soon [conjunction]
weaken your relationship [Child]. • "Something which seems big, challenging at first [Mountain] might turn out to be [conjunction]
rather small and easy to overcome [Child]."
Child: nouns: beginning, a weak person, inexperience adjectives: small, weak verbs: to initiate, to begin, to weaken
Mountain: nouns: difficulties, silence, challenge adjectives: big, challenging verbs: to challenge, to silence
With the Child as topic and the Mountain as modifier we get: • "Beginning something new [Child] will lead to [conjunction] challenges [Mountain]." • "You will be weakened [Child] if [conjunction] you take on too big a challenge [Mountain].
• "Something which seems small and weak at first [Child] might turn out to be [conjunction]
rather big and difficult to overcome [Mountain]."
Note: The conjunction method facilitates the implication of causal connections, warnings, and
advice. So, in my view, it often yields the most interesting and helpful results.
"Amalgamation" (my expression) is an option when the two cards you want to combine have,
among their many meanings, some which are conspicuously similar, which seem to hint at a shared issue. You might then merge these into one very emphatic amalgam. Now, with the cards
we've used till now, Mountain and Child, this doesn't work. So I'll demonstrate on two different
examples.
Tower:
no; to refuse
Mountain:
stubbornness, to not move
The amalgamation of the Mountain's keywords "stubbornness", "to not move" and the
Tower's keywords "no", "to refuse" gives us "It's very, very definitely not going to happen!".
Tree:
roots; enrooted
Anchor:
hold; to stick with something
The amalgamation of the Tree's keywords "roots", "enrooted" and the Anchor's keywords
"hold", "to stick with something" gives
us "someone is holding on extremely tightly" or, more positively, "a very, very strong
foothold".
For the sake of completeness: Know that there are some card combinations for which Lenormand
tradition has very fixed, specific meanings. One example is the combination of Stork+Child which
would strongly suggest pregnancy to traditionally- minded Lenormand readers. I don't address
these traditional, "fixed", combination meanings in my writings because I don't use them to guide
me - although I might still come up with very similar interpretations on my own. But if you are
interested in learning them, you can easily find them online.
2.1 So how do you find the "correct" combination meaning?
The more present the individual cards' meanings are in your mind, and the more practice you
have, the faster your brain will be able to come up with possible combination meanings. You might
eventually be able to create a dozen or more on the spot! But even if you don't: As soon as you come up with
one combination meaning that gives you helpful input regarding the question you had you can stop
associating. When something makes sense and is helpful for your reading there's no real need to
go any further - except for fun or practise, or if it's exactly what you would have liked to hear. That
should always make you suspicious and look for alternatives. These might be less convenient but
more productive in the long run.
Sometimes though, even when already quite experienced, you won't be able to come up with
any combination meaning which is relevant to your concern. You'll look at two cards, and after
coughing up a few generic and useless meanings your brain will just blow you a raspberry. What
I do when this happens is to first read up on other possible meanings of each individual card.
Because often it is a keyword that I had hardly used up to this point which quickly turns out to be
helpful. If that doesn't work, I look up combination meanings other people use.
2.2 The pros and cons of looking up other people's combination meanings
No, you don't have to create your own combined meanings from scratch. There are plenty of
websites and books where you can look up other people's suggestions - including mine. Doing
that is a brilliant way of getting a feeling for how combining cards can work. And in many cases,
other people's suggestions will indeed be helpful for your reading. But there is one problem:
Combination meanings are quite associative and situational; their productiveness depends on the
querent, on the question the querent asked, and on the location in the spread the cards turns up
in. While a specific combination meaning might be very relevant to one person's question, another
person, with a different question, might find it completely useless as an answer to what they
wanted to know. In short: There is a clear limit to how helpful other people's combinations will be
to you. It definitely is most beneficial to eventually learn to create combination meanings yourself
and only resort to other people's suggestions for inspiration or when you get stuck.
