Collecting…

I’m a collector.  My parents were collectors too, so I blame them 🙂  Both my Mom and Dad collected various things; Stamps (both), Coins (Dad), Rocks (Dad), Bird Figurines (Mom), and a whole bunch of other stuff – on the edge of “hoarder” magnitude, but far enough from the edge to be considered sane – hehe.

Me? I’m also a mass collector – I have many diverse collections; Kachinas, Tarot Cards, Books, Space Ship Models, etc.  Again, just this side of sanity 🙂   Currently, my book collection is by far the largest. Next would be my Tarot and other “Oracle” cards collection.  Lately, I’ve been following a very cool blog by another card collector; “My Curious Cabinet”  It made me want to do a similar thing here on my blog, although I’d still do my gaming and other misc. topic articles.  I’ve never been one to stick to just one thing for too long.

I’m definitely a jack of all trades, master of none.  For awhile there, (back in the late 80s & 90s) we were called “Renaissance Men” until they found out that we weren’t “masters” of everything… Anyways, my collections also match this “a touch of everything” mindset.

My latest addition to the card collection is an enigmatic deck called “The Grand Lenormand” (aka the “Astro Mythological by Mlle. Lenormand”).  It has very large cards, not quite as big as Crowley’s Thoth deck, but close!  Here’s a few cards with a standard poker sized Joker:

Grand Lenormand sample

The LWB (Little White Book) is totally confusing on how one is supposed to “read” these cards, and how they’re to be laid, and the only “real book” that I could find on these is in French. Good thing my minor in college was French, the book arrives later this week. I have found some web pages that describe some of the techniques, but no one seems to know the significance, if any, of the constellations/stars that crown most (all?) of the cards.  All of the other little pics I’ve found at least some helpful info on – but the star fields are a jumbled mess of a mystery. The “lines” don’t even match the actual constellations, when I’ve been able to recognize them (I was an amateur astro-photographer “back in the day”) .

Oh well, it’s still an interesting deck, and all the unknowns about it make it that much more appealing to me.  I hope all is going well in your world – have a great first week of February – Enjoy!


Comments

Collecting… — 2 Comments

  1. Have you figured out how to do a spread with this deck? I have my grandmother’s lenormand deck which my father recently gave to me. She lived in Paris from her teenage years in the 1930s through the 1980s when she passed away. My father wasn’t able to explain anything about the deck except to say that she used it quite a bit. I too picked up a French guide, but it’s not that great. Any suggestions you might have would be awesome.

  2. Too odd! Just this morning I retrieved the French “Le Livre du grand jue de Mlle. Lenormand” by Jean Didier from my bookcase to try and to create a cogent translation. The “main” spread I’ve seen with this deck is a 3-cards in a row spread where the middle card dictates which of the small sub-pictures to read/interpret. The small pictures on the “side cards” are read against the small pics they’re “next to” on the middle card. The book has a couple of other spreads as well, I will try to post this info over the next several posts – the book is just over 200 pages long (mostly illustrations, thank goodness).

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