Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

THE CARTOMANCER

Home
Pagan
EUPHEMISMS IN LENORMAND

EUPHEMISMS IN LENORMAND

Last updated on: January 12, 2023 at 11:10 pm by Camelia Elias

EUPHEMISMS IN LENORMAND 2023-01-12T23:10:01+02:00 Camelia Elias

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Lenormand fou pas mal by John Guidry, 2018 (Photo: Camelia Elias)

I’m looking at the card of the Snake in the Lenormand pack. ‘It’s dangerous,’ most of the literature and oral transmissions on the Lenormand will instruct. Yet according to specific contexts, the Snake’s dangerous nature can extend to significations that pertain to the notions of ‘seduction’ or ‘cleverness.’ Essentially both of these can be very dangerous.

We teach generally that what makes the difference between one type of danger and another is context. The thing to remember, however, and something that I like to insist on, is that context is not a holier cow than literalism or symbolism. Why? Because context is never uninformed. There’s always something that informs context, a particular premise or a predicament. Just as there’s bias in the symbol, there is bias in context.

Often context is informed by euphemisms. Let me give an example: I read the cards quite frequently for people who date. As the cards are open windows towards vistas that you don’t always see or consider, daters find them useful especially when it comes to saving time. No one wants to waste their time with a potential partner who may turn out to be useless or downright dangerous.

The premise for dating is often described by words that lend themselves to excitement and anticipation, such as ‘encounter,’ ‘the meeting of two souls,’ and ‘discovery.’ Imagine discovering that the other you encounter is the one… No one wants to imagine the horror scenario, when these words describe nothing short of an invasion, contamination, or oppression. ‘Let’s go on a date… I mean, a conquest.’

Some argue that because what we’re dealing with is not science, but rather, the interpretative arts, it’s hard to be precise when describing a situation just by looking at the cards, and then give counsel in accordance.

But the truth of the matter is that if you possess linguistic competence, the type that’s self-aware and able to deconstruct the system it functions within, you can get far just by looking at how images fall in between the cracks of language.

I often think of the diviner as being competent in the same way a computational linguistics scientist is, one who is able to code, decode, and analyse data. I’m actually quite amused that in programming we use ‘snake’ words, such as Python and Anaconda.

Something is always trailing your translation of the cards into the language you use to describe what you see. Knowing precisely when the Snake is dangerous, seductive, or neither, the latter simply because it’s anchored in euphemism, can give you quite the image to think about, especially when you need to hit the nail on its head, or eat the lizard’s tail.

A snake reading

Lenormand fou pas mal by John Guidry, 2018 (Photo: Camelia Elias)

Once a dater who sought my counsel got these cards: the Clouds, the Ring, and the Snake. I said the following:

This bond will only work to your advantage if you’re willing to perform the job of ensnaring yourself so that a myriad of things can come down on you like fog, like an invisible virus that spreads. Think about what type of snake you are: are you a cobra, an anaconda, a python, or something else? What is your strategy of dealing with clouds? If you don’t have one, then drop the dream of the everlasting thing, least it should turn into a WTF situation, with you poisoning your own air.

I think you can all imagine the person at the other end of this delivery. When the tentative and hesitant question was also posed, ‘so, the Snake is no good, then, is it?’ I understood the power of the euphemism when it gets positive discrimination through hope. The Snake is never good in popular consciousness, yet when it is hoped for, we can find just the words to express it. Most want to be the seducers, not the seduced, the poisoners, not the poisoned.

When the Lenormand jargon is at its worst in its reductiveness, all the cards can be about sex, just as all the bad cards can be talked about in a good way. I wonder when the turn to diplomacy occurred among diviners. When I grew up in Romania, no fortuneteller I ever met used euphemisms. We would reserve this language for politicians or the ones invested in pleasing the crowds. But things are simple, really. A Snake is a snake no matter the context, yet depending on what the context is, the Snake can acquire either a downsized or an upgraded proportion. It’s up to give it a color of our preference. A pink Snake can never be too bad, a silver Ring never too pretentious, and a white marshmallow of a cloud never too menacing.

The point is that we always work with and against the monolith of language. If myths exist, they are called words, double-forked tongues, and religious fictions.

♠

Stay tuned for cartomantic courses.

About Camelia Elias

Camelia Elias, PhD & Dr.Phil., is a former university professor. After 20 years in the academia, she left her career to pursue her interests in teaching and writing on the philosophy and practice of reading cards. She works with contemplative arts, oracular language, and martial arts cartomancy and Zen at her own school, Aradia Academy. You can read more about the author here.

Previous Post

September 11, 2019

WHAT RULES YOU FROM THE INSIDE

Next Post

October 2, 2019 CARDS AS GHOSTS

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Columns The Cartomancer Uncategorized

Select a Month January 2024 October 2023 August 2023 July 2023 June 2023 November 2022 October 2022 August 2022 May 2022 April 2022 February 2022 January 2022 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 June 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

What event led to the great flood in Genesis?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Human wickedness Cain’s murder of Abel Tower of Babel Worshiping golden calves