LENORMAND HOUSES SPREAD

Hi, everyone. Welcome back to the channel. Thank you for tuning back in. If you're new here, welcome. I'm Layla, the Lenormand Reader, and I am one of the few people who focuses almost exclusively on the Lenormand practice. So if you're new here, be sure to have a look at the resources that I have for Lenormand, the website, the free resources, and many others. So as you might know, if you're on my list and if you follow my other channel, the main forecast channel, I am running a workshop or a masterclass pretty soon about the houses spread with Lenormand.

And I want to tell you a little bit about the houses spread here so you can take away some ideas for it, whether you're going to be part of the masterclass or not. What is the houses spread? So the Lenormand houses spread is a big spread that uses all 36 cards of the deck. But it also uses two sets of cards. It uses the set of cards that are the houses and the set of cards that is the draw.

Now, the houses are the cards themselves, but the difference is that they are laid out, face up, and they are ordered from 1 to 36 using the card number. So, the Rider is card one, the is card two, and the Cross is card 36. So, we lay them out as the houses. And then what we do is we have the actual draw, the deck that we shuffle and draw randomly one card per house.

So I'm just going to lay out these cards randomly. And as you can see here, I don't have all 36 cards laid out. You need a pretty big table for it. And also, I want to give you a sample without doing a deep one card by card, house by house reading, like a full houses reading. Like I want to give you an idea of what it's about.

Another thing is some people use one deck for the houses and another deck for the random draw, but it's pretty common to find a cloth, a tablecloth that has the houses on it. So you can just lay out your tablecloth and you can lay out the cards without troubling yourself with laying out a whole deck and the 36 cards as houses.

Something else that we can do is to just refer to the houses. That's my personal approach. I have a little houses mat. It's also available in the workshop with the workshop assets and the guidebook. You just refer to a tableau of the houses, which is cards 1 through 36. And on this note, you might do a tableau of nines or you might do a Piquet tableau. I think the tableau of nines is the most common one. If you're going to do six cards per row, like in here, you would have four additional rows.

It would be like the tableau of hope, which I've covered in one of my posts. So with the houses laid out or in place, or you have a reference to them, you shuffle the deck and you draw the cards, and you draw all 36 cards, one card on top of each house. So what is the point of doing such a layout?

Well, each card as a house represents an area of life or something in life. And so when you draw a card per house, you are reading what is going on in that house. So the randomly drawn card tells you what is going on in the house.

What does that mean? It means that we need to know what each house is about, and then we need to be able to interpret the cards that are randomly drawn specifically for the houses that they land in. And this is basically and essentially the focus of the masterclass is to really articulate what these houses are about.

And then to get some helpful tips on how to interpret the cards for each of the houses. So if you are going to join the masterclass, you'll get all of that. But also, I encourage you to think for yourself. Of course, I'm going to share with you my full vocab list for how I interpret the houses and how I interpret the cards on the houses. But you are able to do this on your own very much by looking at the meaning of the cards, and then you can use the meaning of the cards to decide, well, what does it tell you about life? What area of life does this house cover? So let's take an example from the houses that we have or a few examples from the houses that we have here.

EXAMPLES

So let's start with the Rider. Now, we know that the Rider is a messenger card. It is often associated with news. It is also a card of goals and initiative. And that's personally what I like to focus on. I like to use the Rider as the card of goals and initiative, so that you know the things that you want to move towards, what you want to have initiative for, what you want to pick up and get going with. And the reason I personally don't use the Rider as a news or a messenger card [in the houses spread] is because we have other cards in the deck that can give us the news area, the Letter and the Bird. These are cards that help us with news. So I decided that for the Rider, I'm going to dedicate it to this idea of pursuing goals and initiatives.

So when we get a card like the Key on top of the Rider, well, what does that tell you? It tells you you're on track. It tells you to go ahead, gives you the green light, go for these objectives that you're after. So that is a pretty straightforward way to interpret the Key on the Rider. That's how I use the words. Key on Rider means the Key is the drawn card on Rider house.

Let's take another example from the houses we have here. Let's take the Scythe. Now, the Scythe is quite a heavy-handed card. As you know, it is often interpreted negatively as a challenging card. You might know if you've spent some time on my channel with me that I tend more to a neutral interpretation of the Scythe, and instead I see it as a severance. And that could be a good thing. That could be a difficult thing. It depends. So the Scythe is a very sharp card of parting, release, cutting off. And some people read it as harvesting. I tend to have a bit of a difficulty with that just because it's kind of sharp. But it could also suggest that if that's what you want to see it as, you can see it as, "What am I reaping?" So these are the areas that the Scythe can cover as a house.

Now, suppose we have something like the Bear on top of the house of Scythe. How would you read the Bear for this house? Well, you can read it in a few different ways. They're both kind of general cards. But I would take the Bear as suggesting to really go ahead and make that change, cut off, and release. And the Bear can ask for courage and strength in the face of this. And I really think it's an encouragement to go ahead and make this release, make this cutting off, and cut off whatever needs to be released from your life. So the Bear would support the Scythe. It would support this change.

It would be different if, for example, it was something like the Coffin, for example. The Coffin could be a card of putting things on hold or postponing. It would be different if we had something like the Sun. This can suggest some kind of breakthrough, some kind of happy release. It has a different energy than the Bear, which asks for strength and that element of confrontation. So the different cards, when they figure on the different houses, they're going to mean different things. And this is where this whole Lenormand vocab comes in, where the more practice you have, the better you're able to interpret the cards, the better you're able to expand on your interpretive imagination. That's how I like to call it.

Another thing is that this is pretty key with the houses. And I think this is one reason why the houses are not as popular as, say, the Grand Tableau, Where in the tableau, we have a lot of details. The thing about the Lenormand cards is that they work a lot better when you read them in combinations, in sentences.

One card in Lenormand tends to be very general and tends to be a little bit weak. So when you are doing a houses reading, you have to be able to interpret a card pretty specifically for the house it is on. And what helps you do that is not only the house itself that guides the context of how you're going to interpret the card, which is what I call correspondences, but also the context of your read or your context, if you're reading for yourself, really helps you refine and focus an interpretation of just one card per house.

So for example, maybe in your life, the Scythe is not just a general release or a general change. Maybe the Scythe for you represents something really specific. It could represent, for example, a resignation. It could represent breaking up from a specific relationship. So with this context, you can decide when you do a houses reading, you can decide that the Scythe represents that specific issue for you.

And then you see what card comes up, and then you're able to interpret the Bear or any other card with a lot more accuracy, precision, and specificity for your context. So something that is helpful to do with the houses, because it is prone to being loose and general, because we have only one cart per house, is to sit down and think a little bit when you're doing a houses reading, sit down and think a little bit what each of the houses mean for you at the time of the reading or mean to your client if you're reading for someone else.

So it's worth taking a bit of time and thinking, "Well, you know the Coffin this time is going to be about this or that ending or this or that situation that I'm putting on hold." So when you get a card on top of it, it gives you insight into specifically this area. For example, if you are writing a Book, we don't have the Book, I think, in these cards 1 to 12. But the Book house can represent a special project, maybe a Book that you're writing or some research that you're doing. You can assign that area of your life to the Book. And that way, you have a much more precise and accurate and narrow interpretation of the cards as they figure on the houses.

So I think this is a better approach with the houses that you know you're able to assign different areas of your life to different houses. That way, you have a more specific and more precise reading that is more relevant. Because otherwise, like we said, the cards can be pretty general because it's just one card.

BACKTRACKING

Now, other things that we do with the houses is there's a whole lot of techniques that we can use with the houses, and I'm going to present a whole lot of them in the masterclass, but a popular one is called the backtracking technique. Now, the backtracking technique is quite a fun thing to do, and you can't really do it without the houses.

Backtracking involves creating a line of cards or a sentence of cards using the card and the house. So what happens is you start with the significator card, which, let's say, in our case, is the Man. And you see on which house it figures in. It figures on house 12, the Bird. So what you then do is you look for the Bird as the card, and then you see on which house it figures. It figured in house seven, the Snake. So you look for the Snake and the draw, and so on. And what you end up with is a line of cards. So the line is Man, Bird, and then Snake, and then whatever house the Snake card figures in.

This way, you draw a sequence of cards through this backtracking technique, and you come out with an overall kind of summary line. It can also be a secret or some underlying elements at play for the reading. You can interpret the line in different ways, depending on what's telling you and depending on what you want it to do for you. I also have a reverse backtracking technique. As far as I can tell, I'm the only one who has run it.

Of course, we're not many. There aren't that many resources out there. So I'm not sure. And often, they're not really well publicized, unfortunately. But I also run a reverse backtracking technique, and I also share that with you in the masterclass. Other techniques that you can do in the houses, and honestly, this is where Lenormand is just amazing because you can really use your imagination.

So, apart from looking at the backtracking, you can also look at a relationship. So you have the Man and the Woman when you're doing all 36 card houses. You can see what houses they land on. You can see what other relationship cards are telling you. And this could be a reading focused on a relationship.

OTHER TECHNIQUES

Other things that I suggest is focusing on specific houses. Maybe some areas of your life are standing out more than others, and you want to focus on them.

I do also suggest the technique of using a third deck. I don't really encourage you to use the full third deck. Of course, you might want to do that. I sort of think it's going a little bit over the top. And at that point, you might be better off just doing a Tableau. And so there are a few techniques you can use with the houses that makes it a bit more juicy, a bit richer, so you can get some more interesting things out of it.

And I say that because the houses, even though it has this amazing backtracking technique, it's a little bit flat relative to other Tableau style layouts in Lenormand. And I have to say that the houses is not a Tableau style layout. Tableau style means we read rows, columns, diagonals, or all sorts of other structures. Whereas in houses, we are really reading what is going on in the individual houses.

So this is where a lot of students and people who pursue Lenormand, they wonder if you can use the houses when you're doing a regular Tableau. And the answer is yes, you can. I personally don't mix the two. Sometimes you know if I'm running a Tableau, I might sort of peek at what house a card happens to figure in. But I find that we don't really need it because if you need hints about a card and you need to know more about a card within a tableau, there are so many other things you can look at.

You can look at the knights, you can look at the corners, you can look at the mirrors, you can look at and that's apart from all of the lines, columns, diagonals that it's part of. So you find that there's a lot in a tableau that you can read. And so I'm not so sure that the houses add so much insight into a single card. In my personal practice, I tend to separate the houses from the tableau.

And another question that comes up is if the houses are connected with the Tableau, and the answer is not directly, but what you can do is that you can use your knowledge of the houses and apply those in a tableau. And I'll also talk about this in the masterclass.

LAYERED HOUSES

One thing you can do to start tackling the houses is something called the Layered Houses. I've come across the layered houses through Caitlin Matthews' work, but she credits this to Donna Lee Delarose. So I think Donna Lee is one of the more famous Lenormand authors or practitioners out there. I think, if I'm not mistaken, I think she has a YouTube channel and she's been around a while. I'll do some research and add some links if I find them.

So what are the layered houses? The layered houses spread is essentially a smaller version of the houses to gain some practice. You don't lay out the whole 36 houses as they might be a little bit overwhelming when getting started. Instead, what you do, you take a subset of houses, a smaller number of houses, and you draw cards for these houses, and you practice with these houses.

Now, with the layered houses, there's a few variations, versions of it that you can do.
I also present these in the masterclass. But the way I would get you started, what I would suggest right here is that you take, let's say, three, four, six cards as houses, and then draw some cards on top of them, and start with these. And like I said, you want to build your understanding of what the houses are. So if you know the cards, you can immediately get started with this.

If you're getting to know the cards, there are plenty of keywords lists, including my own, that you can start using as a basis for defining a house and defining the scope of life that it covers. And like I said, to add richness to the reading, the moment or the time you're doing a house is reading, you can go even further beyond the general scope of a house and assign personal things happening to you or your weed in their life, your life, and assign them to a house. And then you draw a card on it, and you have more indications about what's happening to that specific issue in your life.

So that's for the houses, folks. I hope you found this helpful. I hope you'll join me in the masterclass. And if you have any questions, whether it's about the masterclass or this video, just leave them in the comments. Feel free also to reach out to me by email or in any other way. And I'll be very happy to answer them. And tell me a little bit about your experience with the houses. Tell me how much you like this spread, or do you use it for certain purposes or specific times? I'd be interested to know sort of what you make of this spread in your practice. As always, thank you for tuning in, and until next time, take very good care of yourself.

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