PAST PRESENT FUTURE WITH LENORMAND

[EDITED VIDEO TRANSCRIPTION]

Hi everyone! Welcome back to the channel and thank you for tuning back in. If you're new here, welcome, I'm Layla, the Lenormand Reader, and today folks I want to tell you a little bit about how to do a past, present, and future layout with Lenormand's cards.

Past, present, and future is a very popular layout across all the cards and runes and other similar methods of divination where we have individual cards or stones that tell us something. 

There are different ways to do past, present, and future with Lenormand either through a dedicated layout or within other layouts, and I want to tell you a little bit about them in this video. 

So let's head to Lenormand Reader’s table and explore the different ways we can do a past, present, and future.

TAROT-STYLE PPF WITH LENORMAND

Past, present, and future layouts are very popular across all card reading and even with methods like runes, really any method of divination where you have and the individual pieces that tell you something.

So I've got a Tarot deck here and I want to start off with the idea of past, present, and future with the Tarot I'm sure those of you who read Tarot and even if you read other forms of cards and not specifically Tarot, you've come across the very simple and straightforward past, present, and future layout that involves just laying out three cards.

One, two, and three, so the past, present, and future is represented by these three cards with the one on the left representing the past, the card on the right representing the future, and the card in the middle representing the present.

Now, the reason it works well with the Tarot is because individual cards of the Tarot tend to tell a story on their own.

With the Tarot deck, first there are plenty of cards, and second individual cards have a lot of meaning on their own. So one card is enough to give you enough indication and meaning for any of the phases of the past, present, and future.

We can do something similar with Lenormand, we can take one card for the past, one card for the present, and one card for the future. This could work depending on how much meaning you infuse into individual cards.

SIMPLE LINES FOR PPF WITH LENORMAND

But I feel that with Lenormand, it really isn't all that enough. I feel that because individual cards in Lenormand get a lot more meaning from being in combination with other cards, it makes more sense to have a few more cards for each of the phases of the past, present, and future.

So the way to do that with a simple Lenormand line like this one, is to add more cards. 

One approach is to have two cards for the past, one card for the present, and two cards for the future. And the reason this works well is because when we have an odd number of cards we have a central card and the central card can help us focus the reading.

And the present is forever moving, so it's like a transition point into the future. And so with this structure we have two cards for the past and two cards for the future. This has more meaning than individual cards.

And then of course we can extend that by adding one more card for the past and one more card for the future, and this way we have triplets for each of the past and future with a single card in the middle. It is like the transition from the past into the future.

Now if you have enough cards in a simple line like this one with the Lenormand, you can parse the cards differently.

You could do two cards for the past two cards for the future and then three cards for the present. This is not common because we know what's going on in the present and usually we need more insight into the past and more insight into the future.

But if your situation is about getting more insight about what's going on in the present, then you might like a structure like this one. So this can potentially work, but more typically we have three cards for the past, three cards for the future, and a transition card into the present.

So with a simple line like this, this is how we would read a past, present, and future with Lenormand's cards.

PPF WITH THE NINE-CARD PORTRAIT

Now, I want to put these away and look at another way we can use past, present, and future with the Lenormand, and that is with a nine-card portrait.

Now, the nine-card portrait is a very popular layout with Lenormand. It is made up of nine cards laid out in this configuration which is a three by three configuration.

And the portrait even though it is made up only of nine cards offers a lot of details that we can read out of it to answer a query or to gain insight into a situation.

We have diagonals, rows, and columns. And we can also read other details like the knights, the arrows, the corner cards, and the inner diamond.

There's so many different structures that we can weave out of a Tableau-style configuration like the portrait.

Now, when it comes to past, present, and future there is a classical way of interpreting the columns as past, present, and future depending on the query at hand.

You might like to do that with your portrait, or you might specifically make it a point to draw a portrait like this in order to read the past, present, and future.

In this case you might want to focus just on the columns or you might also want to add details through the columns and the other diagonals.

If you're going to do that then you want to be clear from the outset what these other lines mean, and the reason I say that is because the cards that are part of the past column are also going to be part of the rows and the diagonals.

similarly, the cards that are part of the present column which is the central column are also going to be part of these rows, so the the cards from the past are into the other lines, the cards from the present and the future as well, they're part of all the other lines because that's what a Tableau is - the cards are read over and over as part of different lines.

So if you're going to read past, present, and future through the columns, then make it clear what the other lines, the rows and the diagonals, mean to you in the context of this past, present, and future reading.

This is a really popular way of using the portrait in terms of past, present, and future.

PPF WITH THE GRAND TABLEAU

There are other ways we can read the past present future in Lenormand, and that is in a Grand Tableau.

Now, the Grand Tableau is a massive spread with Lenormand. it uses all 36 cards as you can see here, and the Tableau I've got here laid out for us is called the Grand Tableau of Nines.

The reason it is called that is because we have four rows of nine cards each, which is an odd number of cards per line. And so we have a central card and therefore a central column.

Now, when we look at a Grand Tableau in Lenormand, the first thing we do is locate the significators.

The significators of a Tableau are the Man and the Woman. So in our Tableau here, which is randomly drawn, we have the Man in the central column and we have the Woman in the sixth column.

Now, the significator represents our readee, the person we are reading for, or it could be ourselves if we are reading for ourselves.

So we choose our significator based on the gender or whatever card we want, and I've made a video about this, and we locate it in the Tableau.

Supposing our readee is a man, then the Man card represents our readee (or our client) in the Tableau.

Now, why is this important? It's important to read the cards around our significator because these are the cards that affect our readee the most.

Also the lines that the significator figures in are going to be the most important lines. These are the columns, the rows, and the diagonals that are that include the significator.

These lines and the cards around the significator are going to be the most important ones because they are the cards that most strongly affect our readee.

Another key thing that is used in a Grand Tableau with the significator is splitting the Tableau into past, present, and future. The column where the significator figures is the present, all the columns before that are the past, and all the columns after that are future columns.

So this is how we can split a Grand Tableau into past, present, and future.

Sometimes the significator figures in the very last column of the Tableau. If this happens usually the practice is to reshuffle the cards and redraw the Tableau because we have only indications about the past.

But maybe you're okay with this, maybe you want more insight into what has gone by, and that is what you're looking for in a Tableau. If that's the case then you can leave the Tableau as it is, with the significator in the last column.

But if you feel that it blocks you and you're looking into the future then you can redraw the Tableau, and lay the cards out again in order to get more indications about the future.

So that is another way that we read past, present, and future in Lenormand - in a Tableau.

And again these techniques are not mandatory, you don't have to use them. They are part of a larger menu of techniques that you can choose when you're reading your Tableau.

It just matters that you do your reading with intention and having decided beforehand how you're going to interpret the cards, whether it's a portrait or a Grand Tableau.

If our significator was the woman then this column would be the present column, and all the other columns before it to the left would be the past, and all the columns after it to the right would be the future. So in this case we have more columns for the past than we do for the future.

Again you might want to redraw the cards if you have the significator in the last column, but in a situation like this one you do not redraw the cards, you have enough here to read into the future.

It is not good practice to reshuffle the cards if you have two columns for the future. It's really only when it figures on the far right, on the last column, that we redraw the cards.

Now when we split the Tableau like this into past, present, and future, based on which column the significator figures in, you might wonder, well, what does that do for the rest of the lines?

And this is similar to what we asked when we looked at the portrait’s past, present, and future cards, and that is a totally valid question.

In my opinion and in my practice, I still read the lines as offering key insights into the reading, into the situation.

But when I read the lines individually, as rows like this, I don't necessarily look at this portion of the line as the past and this portion of the line as the future.

When you read Lenormand with flow and with fluency, you're not going to be caught up with this kind of detail. The reason is that you will be able to make sense of the cards in a general way, and in a way that flows.

You will not be looking at chopping the line into this as the past portion, and this as the future portion. You're not going to be caught up with this detail.

It's really more the columns that capture this past area where you read the individual lines here and the insights you get from them, and with the rows you'll be able to flow into a story. So don't be overly concerned about being anatomical like that.

Lenormand is not like that, although some people feel that it is when they're starting to learn. In the courses and programs that I teach, students starting out feel like they need to be really pedantic about how to read lines.

It's something you might go through when you're first getting acquainted with the Lenormand way and the Lenormand approach of doing readings. But you will soon get over it.

It's also very important to give yourself permission to get over that, where you're not limited by techniques, or what you should do, or how it should be done. 

Go with your intuition, with how the cards speak to you, with how the different lines speak to you, and you are able to tell a story.

So these roadblocks or these little challenges in Lenormand are part of learning anything new, and you will face them in your Lenormand journey as well.

But again, like I'm saying, you read the rows because they give you key indications of what's going on in this situation, and you won't be caught up with the left as the past portion and the right as the future portion.

So with a Grand Tableau, we have a way to read past, present, and future, as well if that is something that you want to do.

LENORMAND READER’S PPF METHOD

I want to share with you how I personally like to draw a past, present, and future layout, and that is really inspired by the portrait approach.

I lay out the past, the present, and the future, and then I lay out another card on the past, a second card for the present, and the second card for the future. And finally a third card for the past, a third card for the present, and a third card for the future.

The reason I do this is because I like to focus on just the past, present, and future, when I'm reading about the past, present, and future.

I don't like using the portrait for it, I like to use a portrait for all of the lines and rows and I don't like to limit myself to the columns in a portrait. So laying out the cards in this way helps me focus on just the past part, the present part, and the future part, and I do not connect the lines horizontally through what would be the rows.

This is how I like to parse the past, present, and future. I just focus on three cards for the past, three cards for the present, and three cards for the future.

And that is it that is my simple way of doing past, present, and future readings.

WHY READ THE PAST

Now, just a tip that I want to throw in here because it is useful. Some authors that I've come across have suggested the clever idea of why we use the past.

The reason we read the past is because it gives us the timeline of the future. So how far back into the past is how far forward into the future.

Suppose these cards they give us an indication of something that happened about a month ago, we recognized them as telling us something about the past that happened a month ago. Then the cards in the future here, would be approximately a month into the future.

And I've recently done a tutorial on time and timing and predicting time and timing which can be very tricky with any cards and any form of divination, even though we can sort of  get an approximate or an estimated timeline from the card meanings like I suggested in that video.

With the past, present, and future, we have an additional technique for predicting how far into the future something can happen, and that is by getting a hint or a clue from the past cards.

So these are my thoughts for reading the past, present, and future, with Lenormand. I hope you've enjoyed the different techniques.

By all means, tell me what you use in order to read the past, present, and future with Lenormand, or perhaps with any other card deck that you like to use.

Stay tuned because I'm going to create a free resource about the past, present, and future, techniques we explored in here, this way you have it on hand when you are practicing. So I will let you know about this as soon as the resource is ready.

Thank you so much for tuning into this video. Be sure to look at the links that I have for you in the description box. I offer one of the few comprehensive programs to master the practice and I also have the Master Guides and a whole lot of free resources for you to get started with.

And if you like the video then be sure to like and subscribe and also share with your Lenormand friends so that we keep growing the Lenormand community.

Thank you so much for tuning in and I'm looking forward to our next video together.

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