LENORMAND'S MUTE CARDS: HOW TO MAKE SENSE OF THEM

Hi, everyone. Welcome back to the channel. Thank you as always for tuning back in. If you're new here, welcome! I'm Layla, the Lenormand Reader, and I focus almost exclusively on the Lenormand practice.

Do subscribe to this channel because I post tutorials about the Lenormand deck on this channel and I also have my forecast channel where I post horoscope and pick-a-card readings.

So today folks I want to focus a little bit on something we call mute cards.

Mute cards are cards in the Lenormand deck that we feel don't speak as loudly as other cards.

These are the cards that I feel are mute. And even though I have been practicing for many years, and I have pretty much made up my mind about what they mean, sometimes they're kind of fuzzy, and you sort of need to stretch them a little bit to make sense of them.

They also remain a little bit loose. They don't have a clearly defined meaning a lot of the time. So I wanted to share with you my thoughts about what I feel are mute cards. But you might have a different set of mute cards. You might think that other cards are mute. For this purpose, I have created a short survey where I would love for you to tell me which cards you feel are mute.

And the reason for this is because it was brought up in a recent workshop that the mute cards are an area that we would like to focus on. So I could do a workshop in the near term focusing on mute cards and how we can work through them. So for this, I would love for you to tell me what you think are mute cards. This way I know what to focus on for the workshop when time comes, though I don't think it's going to be the most immediate workshop as I have other ideas in mind.

So be sure you stay tuned to the newsletter so that you get updates about this and I'll also be posting these updates on the community of my channels and also on social media.

So let's get into the cards that I feel are mute. And I think a lot of people would agree with me that at least some of these cards are mute.

THE LILY

There is a common feeling about the Lily, about the Tower, and these other cards in that it's not really clear what they're about.

So I wanted to go through them one by one to give you ideas about my thought process with these cards, and perhaps this can inspire you to work with these cards and other mute cards. In your system and your approach with Lenormand.

So starting with the Lily.

I think most of us feel that the Lily is not really clear in what it says. The Lily has a lot of layers and you will find that there's quite a bit of variety in the kinds of things that it is about across different Lenormand authors.

The Lily is, interestingly enough, taken to be a card of sexuality for some reason. I personally don't associate with this at all because the Lily has another side that is also very commonly accepted, and that is the idea of aging and maturity. The idea of seniority and wisdom that comes with that. And it's probably because of the pip card that is associated with the Lily, it is a king.

I don't feel that the sexuality element works very well with other aspects of the Lily, I don’t feel they're not along the same wavelength, so I don't feel they sit well within the same symbol. This is why I personally don't really see the Lily as a card of sexuality.

But of course, I understand that other people want to see it this way and that is totally fine. What matters is that you resonate with a card. And this way, when you see it in readings, it speaks to you in a natural way.

I see the Lily as a mature card, the card of seniority, longevity, aging. It can refer to seniors, older people, people with more experience. People with more wisdom. And so this sense of time and the path that has been traveled is well captured with the living.

I also see it as the card of life path, life direction. And so when it shows up in a reading, I tend to take it as a sign to focus on the bigger picture and also to focus on the milestones of my life.

So in this sense, it's not a very tangible kind of meaning, right? It's more about the destiny aspect, not so much in the sense of fate as would be better associated with the Cross.

But the Lily is more about this path that you're traveling. And so along those lines, I also see the Lily as pointing to career. And the idea of your, your vocation, the work that gives you meaning.

It is beyond the job. It can sometimes bring up the job, but I tend to see it as the idea of your vocation. What is meaningful to you. Because this is in better alignment with this idea of the life path. What are you spending your years doing? What are you growing into? So in this sense, the Lily can be a pretty intangible card.

Another area that is associated with the Lily is health. The Lily points to well-being and aging, so it can be associated with health as well.

So to decide what are the aspects of the Lily that are coming out more strongly than others in a reading, I look at cards nearby.

So if I wanted to bring out the health aspect, I would look at maybe health challenges like with the Coffin or possibly the Mouse.

If I'm looking at work and career, maybe the Fish and the Fox can bring out this aspect of the Lily better.

When it comes to time and longevity, maybe slower cards can focus on that. These can include cards like the Tower and the Tree because these cards are also kind of slow and they're associated with the progression of time.

So this is my take on the Lily. And like I said, when we do a workshop on mute cards, we will look at ways to make deeper sense of the cards that are mute or that we feel are mute. So that they have a crisper meaning in a reading.

THE MOON

Let's move on to the Moon.

The Moon is another card that tends to be a bit fuzzy. It tends to be layered. There are also a range of different meanings that apply to the Moon. The Moon is sometimes associated with work. A lot of authors see it as work, and so it can't point to a job offer or the vocation that one is involved in. And that is totally fine if you resonate with the Moon in this way.

For my part, I do feel that the Moon is a bit mute. And I feel that it's a bit fuzzy. But in general, I feel it is positive. Whereas the Lily is more neutral, really just focusing on this bigger picture of life, possibly having, and possibly the idea of maturity. But it's neutral in that sense. Whereas the Moon, I feel it brings a positive energy to a spread.

It also has a softening energy. So it calms things down, it downplays aggressive cards like the Whip and Scythe. It softens the edges as it were. So in a reading, if it's not pointing to something specific, I feel it helps with the energy and the feel of the reading.

The main way that I read the Moon is some kind of offer or a proposal. And I think this really comes from the idea that the Moon has an attractive power. It has the archetypal passive feminine attraction energies.

So I feel it works well with this idea of an offer that could pull you in, this idea of having an interest in something. I feel the idea of an offer, an invitation, or a proposal tends to come through clearly for me in a reading when the Moon shows up.

And I think it's the primary way I interpret the Moon. I also feel that the Moon has to do with time through its association with the phases of the Moon. It is a slower card as you might expect, and it has that element of unfolding, a bit like the Tower, Tree, and also the Lily. So a bit of a slower card.

I think the Moon is also good with creativity, femininity, the female element in an archetypal sense in a reading is brought out well with the Moon. And when we see the Moon with the Sun, it tends to be an indication of a love relationship or some kind of alchemical interaction through the archetypal masculine and feminine, which are represented by the sun and moon in alchemical texts. So no matter what, it is hard to overlook these big archetypal imagery that we have about these symbols.

But in a practical sense, I really feel that the Moon does well with this idea of an invitation or a proposal, and then surrounding cards can tell us more about what this involves. If this is with people, if this is about a job offer, if this is an enhancement of the money element, maybe a bonus, things like that. The idea is that it has this attractive power that helps with enhancing and softening the energies.

So yes, it is more or less a fuzzy card, but I think with some thought and some practice, you can come to a clearer understanding of the Moon and what you want it to do for you in a reading. So that's for the Moon.

THE MOUNTAIN

The next card on my list of mute cards is the Mountain.

I have ended up demarcating the Mountain as suggesting two main things: It can either point to a place of broad or it can point to some kind of obstacle.

And I think both ideas work really well with the symbology of the Mountain. So it is that strong, hard thing in front of you, tall. And so it's very, it's very good with suggesting a boundary and obstacle and something that you have to climb over. I guess in a very literal way, really, it's not symbolic.

And because of the distance and the idea of borders and natural boundaries between landscapes, the Mountain is associated with locations abroad or at least farther from where you are, typically a different country, but obviously that's going to depend.

The Mountain has some pretty clear energies, so regardless of what exactly you're interpreting it for, it tends to be cold and distant. It's not warm like the Sun and the Heart and the Clover. It has colder energies. So these elements of a card or a symbol also help with how you make sense of it in a reading.

But for me, after practicing and reading and thinking about these things, I'm pretty good with thinking of the Mountain in terms of either a place abroad or some kind of obstacle. And in connection with this distance and places in a different location, I tend to use the Mountain as suggesting the online world.

Other authors adapt cards to modern circumstances in different ways. And this is actually very much a fun part of reading cards and dealing with symbols, regardless of whether it's Lenormand or something else. You might want to choose other cards to associate with things like the online world or social media or whatever else you care to look into, depending on what you care about and what is the focus in your life.

So that's for the Mountain. I feel it's less of a fuzzy card than the others that I have in here.

THE TOWER

The next one is the Tower, and the Tower is another one that can be mute for many of us, especially when we're first getting started.

The Tower is a building, a tall building. So from there, you can start to imagine the different things it can mean. And this is an exercise that we did in a recent workshop about card meanings and how to come up with meanings for them in creative ways.

So because the Tower is tall, it can be associated with the ivory tower. It very easily suggests authority, expertise, and being specialized, being up there. It is also associated with things like management and government. And so by extension, we think of it also as law and administration and these areas. So I think that's pretty straightforward.

Depending on other cards, you might see this coming through more strongly or less strongly.

Other things that I read into the Tower is the idea of time. This would be the main card of time and the past and the long term as far as I'm concerned. And I pick up this meeting really from Titania's Fortune Cards, which is this deck, and I mean her guidebook where she talks about the card meanings.

So when I first started Lenormand, I worked with Titania's deck and so her guidebook was the first piece of literature on Lenormand that I read. So I picked up the meaning of the Tower in terms of time from her and it pretty much stuck with me because it worked for me.

I felt I could make sense of the Tower in terms of time. And I found it useful in my readings to have an indication of time and longevity. It is very much a card of slowness along with other cards like I just mentioned. So it helps me focus on the long term, the past, the future, again, this vision that goes from past to future. And so I feel in this sense it can be a pretty straightforward card.

And of course, with different combinations, you can come up with different ideas about what the Tower means. It can also represent a building in a very straightforward way. In this sense, the Tower is sometimes associated with the job by association with the big business buildings and busy down towns where there are all of these tall buildings where a lot of people work.

But at the same time, the Tower being associated with this elevation is a card of isolation. And actually the Mountain and Tree are also cards that do well with solitude, and being away a little bit from people.

So these are my suggestions with the Tower.

I also feel one more thing that comes here with the Tower and that's a sense of guidance. I did bring this up in the recent workshop and I felt that because of the Tower element, you can think of this watchtower kind of metaphor for the Tower where there's like  you're being watched.

There is a guiding light. You have the Tower on the seashore.  that guide the ships in and things like that. So there are all of these different associations that you can make with the Tower. And with all the symbols and you sort of land on the ones that resonate mostly with you and that too is one of them for me.

THE TREE

The last card I have on the list of my mute cards is the Tree.

In general, I see the Tree as very bright and positive. It is a strong indication of vitality and health. It is obviously very well grounded. If anything, it is the card of being grounded and rooted because of the deep roots and the branches that grow.

It is a very powerful symbol, across any system of symbology and magic and spirituality. I mean, Trees are a very spiritual thing. And obviously, the Tree of life, the Garden of Eden, and all of these powerful archetypes that we associate with the Tree can come through.

Something that I found surprising was when I was learning Lenormand earlier on, was that many authors read the Tree as health and not necessarily good health, but it can be bad health.

And I felt that by default, the Tree is positive. I feel it is a very bright card. And so in terms of health, I feel it has to do with vitality and strength and well-being, whereas the Coffin tends to be on the more negative side of health and the Lily would be neutral.

And of course, the interplay of the cards and combinations with each other, what are the negative cards nearby, how strong these challenging cards are, all of this can be taken into account to, decide how to read the element of health.

And like I said, the Tree is also really good with solitude, so it tends to invite people to step back to get a different perspective. To slow down with this slow energy of the Tree. 

But it is also a card of growth and strength. So it brings success. It delivers well on wishes. If you're asking about achieving something, the Tree would answer, yes, it is a positive card in the sense.

It's just maybe a bit slower, it could demand a more consistent pace in order to get your goals, and a bit of time. But it is a very bright card. I certainly see it this way. I think it is good for taking things easy, but also pretty serious because  the Tree is deeply rooted and it has a lot of strength. It also has a lot of spirit. So it's quite a beautiful cart really.

I have a hard time seeing the Tree as negative. And I feel that it is strong to the extent that it can help overcome some of the challenging cards.

So for example, with the Whip, I feel the Tree does well with standing our ground. A bit like with the Anchor.

It is really the Scythe that suggests an uprooting of sorts. This can sort of chops off the Tree. But I don't read these things as challenging. I need context and I need more cards to come to these conclusions.

With the Scythe, I see the idea of uprooting and the need to make changes. They need to build on something new or different. And that is not necessarily challenging.

So these are my thoughts for the mute cards. I hope you like these ideas or they help inspire you to make sense of the cards that you feel are mute or you feel are fuzzy.

Again, please fill out the survey about what you think are the mute cards in the Lenormand that will help me create the content and possibly the workshop down the line to focus on these cards.

Let me know your thoughts, your comments on the video, and again, please like, share, and subscribe, and also tune into my forecast Lenormand channel.

Keep me posted about where you're at in your journey. Thank you so much for watching, and until next time, take very good care of yourself.

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