Reading physical death in a Lenormand Grand Tableau can be a tricky thing.
It isn't something that comes up with just one card. No single card ever represents death – not the Ship, the Coffin, the Scythe, the Tower, the Lily, the Cross… None of them!
If any reader tells you that a single Lenormand card means death, walk away. They're wrong!
Death always involves combinations of cards.
Reading Death in Lenormand
You won't see death appear in a Lenormand reading very often. After all, the people around you usually don't drop like flies on a daily basis. If you are in an unfortunate time in your life where you are experiencing multiple deaths, you have my sincerest sympathies and condolences.
But for the most part, unless there's a freak catastrophe, war, plague or other highly unusual experience, most people will only experience people they know dying occasionally throughout their lifetime.
Even though death is inevitable, whenever you think you see death in a Lenormand spread, pause and look again. There are certain combinations that traditionally mean death, but as events occur, sometimes these patterns don't play out as death. Thus, even when you think a spread means death, it's only a possibility, not a guarantee.
Reading Death in a Lenormand Grand Tableau
The easiest way to accurately read death is in a Lenormand Grand Tableau.
A Grand Tableau allows you to see multiple cards in multiple combinations…
…and an interpretation of death always involves multiple cards in multiple combinations.
I'm not going to list all of the combinations here because I don't want the liability of someone new to Lenormand to read this and start running around misinterpreting death in every spread they see, and then pointing fingers back at me when they terrify someone with their misinterpretations.
Let's just say that when you have enough experience with the cards to see death in a spread, you'll already understand the meanings of the cards well enough that you won't need a list of combinations to guide you.
That said, I will give you an example of the first Grand Tableau I did that showed a death.
This Grand Tableau played out very quickly. This isn't too much of a surprise since the querent's card, the Woman, is the very last card in the spread in the house of the Cross.
However, in this spread, a person didn't actually die.
Instead, I want you to look at the Birds card in the second column. The Birds card represents 2 ducks, and it is the ducks that died.
Above the Birds are the Scythe and the Mice, indicating a sudden loss. The House is directly below the Birds. It can represent how they suddenly lost their sense of security and/or how they died at their duck house.
Also touching the Birds and the House are the Mountain and the Dog. Normally, the querent's dogs would have protected the ducks, but the dogs were separated from them, spending some time in the querent's house (House card in the house of the Woman).
The Moon card shows that the death occurred at night. While the Coffin and Whip knighting the Birds, give some insight into how violent the death was. The cards do discuss more about how the ducks died, but I'll stop there because it's gruesome.
With the events occurring so far from the Woman card, it's possible they happened shortly before the Grand Tableau was laid (it was only about an hour after sunset when the spread was laid). However, the cards do indicate that the death had probably already occurred, and it's unlikely the querent could do anything about it by then.
Now, some of you may be wondering about the Letter and the Heart–Bear connection because on first glance, they make it appear that the cards might represent something besides death. However, they represent how the ducks actually belonged to the querent's mother (Bear) who was on a business trip. The querent was house-sitting for her mother. The Letter indicates the querent having to contact her mother about the ducks' death.
The morning after this Grand Tableau was read, the querent discovered that the ducks had been killed by raccoons who broke into their duck house.
I hope this helps you to understand how death in Lenormand isn't just a one card deal.
It isn't that easy.
You have to understand the meanings of every card and how each card interacts with every other card.
* Note: All Grand Tableau deck images are from the Blue Owl Lenormand deck, available at Amazon.
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