An Oracle for a Change: Mystical Lenormand

In the last few years, I've put on ten pounds of the 70-odd I lost in 2004. It's finally hit home to me hard this year, because I finally have moved up a size in clothing. This makes me unhappy! I've not been very successful so far this year in changing my habits, and I was having a look at the Mystical Lenormand (AG Muller, 2005) and decided to do a quick draw about it. 


I'm new to Lenormand cards, so had a look through the LWB and found 'The Runway Layout', in which you are to select your significator (The Lady if you're female, The Man if you're male) and a card that represents your goal and place it away from the significator, then shuffle and draw some cards to place between to show what will get you from A to B. The instructions suggest to start by drawing three cards, up to seven, but no more than seven. 


So my question was: 'What should I do in order to achieve my goals of losing this weight and achieving vibrant health?' I selected The Sun as my goal, as it represents success, energy, will-power and optimism. 

Lady, Ship, Tower, Tree and Sun from Mystical Lenormand,  Urban Trosch, AG 2005

This is my very first reading with with a Lenormand deck. It's completely different from tarot, or any other oracle deck I've worked with. It seems like an amazing system, and I really want to study it further. But for now, I'm very dependent on the LWB that came with the deck, lest I try to impose tarot sensibilities on the Lenormand, and from what I can tell, never the twain shall meet.


So, Mystical Lenormand gives me a clear message here. What should I do in order to achieve my goals of losing this weight and achieving vibrant health? The first thing that must happen is, I must accept that it is not going to be a quick process. The Ship.  It will be a long journey. The LWB even says, 'If this card lies close to the person card, a long journey will take place.' Yep. To be honest, it's taken me just under 3 years to gain 10 pounds. So that's a long journey in itself. I should not think that losing the weight will be a quick thing, particularly when I'm actually in a normal weight range for my height at the moment. I just prefer being at the lowest end of the normal weight range...and when it's that close, it's not quick to take off. 


Right in the middle of the spread sits The Tower. It does dominate the spread, to my eye. Once I accept the long haul aspects of this journey, next I need to accept two things:  1) I can't do this alone. 2) I have to do this alone. Contradictory, you say? Well, not when you think about it. The Tower can represent authority or someone with a lot of influence. When I first changed my eating and lost weight, it was a result of reading the works of John Robbins, environmentalist and advocate of a plant-based diet. For years, I spent a lot of time reading books that developed and reinforced my ideas about proper nutrition and health, and these helped to keep me on the straight and narrow. I also maintained a blog focused on weight loss and had group of followers who actually looked to me for guidance and inspiration, and who offered me lots of support. Over the years, both these support systems have fallen by the wayside, and other interests (such as tarot) have overshadowed my reading and talking about health issues. So, in that way, I can't do it alone. On the other hand, I have to do it alone, because ultimately, I'm the one who decides whether to sit on the sofa or get up and move my butt. I'm the one who takes each bite of food. 


The final card is The Tree. The LWB says it represents health, and also stands for 'all of life itself'. I see it as signifying integration of disparate interests and priorities so that I can achieve more of a balance in my life that allows me to achieve all my goals--to pursue my tarot studies, to enjoy my workouts, to eat well. I wonder if there is any way I could incorporate those interests in this blog. I don't know. 


I enjoyed my first time out of the gate with Mystical Lenormand, it gave me lots to ponder.