Knighting is one of my favorite techniques for reading a Lenormand Grand Tableau.
It's certainly an advanced technique that leaves many people feeling lost and overwhelmed when they first come upon it.
Yet, I find it's invaluable for uncovering additional insights about people and situations, often revealing a person's hidden motives and desires. Knighting can be quite the jaw dropper as it exposes what people usually want to remain secret!
Given how much knighting brings to light, you might want to use caution when you apply knighting to a Grand Tableau you're reading for someone else…but when you do use it, be prepared for your client to be amazed.
When Can You Use Knighting in Lenormand?
Knighting cannot be used for 3 or 5 card spreads. It can't be used for any straight line spreads.
It can only be used in spreads with three or more rows.
That means it can be used in a Lenormand Grand Tableau or a Lenormand 3×3 spread. But just as a 3×3 spread is an abbreviated Grand Tableau, knighting a 3×3 spread is abbreviated – the most cards you can knight in a 3×3 is 2, far less than the 6+ cards in a Grand Tableau.
That's why it's best to use knighting in a Lenormand Grand Tableau. Either a 9×4 or an 8×4+4 works.
Knighting a Grand Tableau Explained: Step-by-Step
If you're familiar with chess, then you're already familiar with how knighting works as it is based on the same movements a knight makes in a chess game.
A knight can move:
- Two places up and one spot to the left or right
- Two places down and one spot to the left or right
- Two places to the left and one spot up or down
- Two places to the right and one spot up or down
Lenormand knighting works the same way. You pick a card you want to knight, and you move around picking the cards that knight it.
Using the same Grand Tableau we used in earlier discussions on how to read a Lenormand Grand Tableau, we see that the following cards (in pink) knight the Woman (in purple):
The Woman is knighted by the Heart, Letter, Cross, Whip, Lily and Stork.
Here's another example using the same Grand Tableau, but knighting the Clouds (in purple):
The Clouds are knighted by the Sun, Garden and Child.
How to Interpret Knighting in a Lenormand Grand Tableau
Different Lenormand readers interpret knighting differently.
Some readers read the knighted cards as describing the person or thing. For example, using the GT above, Woman + Letter could mean a communicative woman, Woman + Whip indicates she's angry, and so on.
Other readers apply knighting to give extra details and insights.
There are 2 ways you can do this.
- Read horizontal cards as pairs. For example, using the cards knighting the Woman, Heart + Letter could mean a love letter, Cross + Whip might be painful arguments, and Lily + Stork could be peaceful change. Of course, as you can see with the cards knighting the Clouds, you will not always have a horizontal pair. Thus, leading to the card (in our case, the Sun) to be read individually.
- Read all the cards together to tell a story. Again, using the cards knighting the Woman, we see she is nursing a broken heart (Lily, Cross and Heart). She has had problems communicating with her ex due to the changes between them (Letter, Whip, Stork).
All of these interpretations are perfectly valid. And you can use any method prefer.
If you aren't sure about how far to go with a client, you could safely limit knighting to describing a person or situation.
However, if you want to impress someone, feel free to use one of the other methods. Just realize you might make them uncomfortable with what you unearth.
As we can see in the GT referenced above, knighting provides additional details about the Woman's life. It adds to the information that other cards reveal about the dishonesty of the man she loved and how he was hiding another woman from her. Revealing this much information causes some people to feel overly exposed.
Trust your instincts about what to reveal. Take guidance from your querent's response to what you tell them as you go through the reading.
Just remember – there's a reason Lenormand is the ultimate gossip!
* Note: All Grand Tableau deck images are from the Blue Owl Lenormand deck, available at Amazon.
Thank you for sharing your knowledge. I’ve never really “dared” knighting, because I didn’t understand how it worked. I feel a bit more enlightened now. But, can you knight every card in the GT? And how do you decide which card to knight? I understand why you knight the woman (if the person you lay the cards for is female).
Do I understand it right, that for example when you knight the clouds, you get the uncovered insight in what’s behind the clouds, or the reason for the clouds?
So you knight the card you want to know the “background” for?
Kind regards
Lisbeth
You can knight every card in the GT. Just pick whichever card(s) you want more insight into.
Great, thank you :0)
If the man and woman aren’t joined horizontally, diagonally, or vertically but are connected via knighting, do you read the cards along the L-shape as their joiners, or is there just no relationship?
You can read the cards, but it doesn’t mean they are in a relationship. You have to read the cards between them to know if they are in one.