TITANIA’S FORTUNE CARDS

[EDITED VIDEO TRANSCRIPTION]

Hi everyone!  Welcome back to the channel.

Today I want to do this long due video about my Lenormand cards, and I want to say, before I start anything: Thank you so much Pauline, and thank you so much Jojuan for pointing me to these cards. Jojuan you sent me a link from where I could actually order that pink version of the cards, and Pauline you went ahead and you sent me the actual deck as a present. So thank you so much for this.

And thank you so much for everyone else who was encouraging me to stick with my current cards. If you recall, I had thrown it out there that my cards were becoming really old and worn out, and I received plenty of encouragement from you that I should stick with them because they looked just fine. So thank you for that. In the meantime though I was looking for a new deck and Pauline and Jojuan and others reached out to me with some suggestions and some links, and then Pauline actually sent me this one. So thank you so much again to all of you.

In this video, I want to talk a little bit about these cards. I want to tell you about how they're different from the standard Lenormand decks, and I also want to tell you a little bit about my own deck. So stick around for this and let's head to Lenormand Reader’s table.

NEW AND OLD EDITIONS OF TITANIA’S FORTUNE CARDS

I've got here several sets of decks: I've got the Blue and Red Owl decks. These are the two traditional Lenormand decks or what we understand are the traditional decks. And the reason I have them here is because I want to compare them to the Titania’s decks.

And I've got my two decks. These are the decks that I currently use. I've got one that I use for our monthly and weekly readings - this is the one that I told you about was getting really used. And this is the reason why I'm doing this video and why some of you got in touch with me. And I have another deck. It's identical except I keep it exclusively for private readings. So this is a deck that I use only when I'm doing readings for others so it's very clean and it's it looks really new.

And the reason I have a separate deck for private readings is because I feel they're different, energetically they're different, and I prefer not to mix the energies together. So that's why I have a deck that's dedicated to private readings.

And then I've got the two beautiful Titania’s Fortune Cards boxes that I got thanks to Pauline and Jojuan, and we're going to talk about these in just a second.

And this is my own deck. I've had this produced recently and I want to tell you about how I designed it - or how I had it designed - and how it's similar to or different from some of those decks.

So before we get into the technicalities of how a deck is designed, I want to first go over these two beautiful boxes here, so I'm going to put the others aside for a little bit.

Now when I first bought Titania’s Fortune Cards this is the box that I got. And it's the golden box. It's red on the inside and the cards are here. They have their own little box within the box. And so these are the cards. They look really similar to the ones I have. But you're going to see when I compare them to the ones in the pink box as that the colors are a bit more faded than the ones I had previously bought.

And then you have the book here. So you've got one full sized page with a card and then an explanation of the card. Titania has a few combinations here - very few of them. This is not by any stretch a Card Combinations Master but she has a few of them and she has an interesting perspective on the cards, like she has an interesting perspective on everything, really. And so a lot of her combinations have stuck with me.

I mean this is one of the first works that I picked up and it stuck with me for over two decades now. And at the beginning of the book you have the keywords list. There's often an overview of the card meanings. So it's really a very, very pretty deck, and the colors gold and red are very beautiful. From a Feng Shui perspective it’s actually a pretty powerful color combination. So this is the first edition that I got.

That's the one I got 20 years ago. It seemed to go out of print for a while until it appears that this is the new edition of Titania's Fortune Cards. So this seems to be the new edition. This is the one that seems to be available more than the gold one and it is very similar. It's very pretty as well. So the light pink with the gold is really pretty, on the inside and the outside as well. Really pretty.

And the thing about this deck is that it does not have its own box for the cards within within the box which I think is unfortunate. And that's actually one reason why I didn't really want to open it because I felt that the cards might just fall off the box, and you'd need to tie them with something. So that's why I kept it closed at least for the time being.

Now one thing that jumps out from the cards and the card pages is that the colors are completely faded and I don't know why that is but this is definitely not what I am used to. And I've bought this deck about six or seven times in the very least over my career so far. As you can see, the colors on the Gold edition are so brilliant.So if we took the Coffin, let's look for the Coffin here. She doesn't have them in alphabetical order and that's why I like it in alphabetical order it's just easier. And she doesn't have the pips as well and we'll talk about this in a bit. So you can see the colors are completely different.

I much prefer the other ones, not only because I'm used to them, but because I also feel that they’re brighter. And also just moments before starting the video, I came across the Key - the Key is at the end - and I really did not like the colors of the Key in here. I mean look at this this is pink and I don’t know what this is. This is yellowish and it's faded, whereas I'm used to the Key being a totally brilliant card. It's one of my favorite cards. Look at this beautiful green, it stands out and it's so brilliant.

I realize that this is the book but it does seem as well that the cards on the pink version of Titania's Fortune Cards are also faded. And so this is the Anchor card. And if I pulled out the Anchor card from this deck here you're going to see there's a huge difference in the brilliance of the colors and I don't know why they produced it this way.

There's quite a difference in the brilliance of the colors and the saturation of the colors. So I feel that the new edition is a little bit faded. I don't really like it as much as the old one and I don't think I'll be using it.

Moving forward I really want to keep these two beautiful boxes as let's say a keepsake of sorts, or maybe a reference, because they're getting harder and harder to find. And I just don't want to use them and then regret that I can’t find them again.

And actually this is not so much gold it's more of a copper. It's almost a copper maybe it's gold. I can't really tell right now. I think it's gold, just under the light it appeared as copper.

Okay. So these are the two beautiful boxes that I was able to get thanks to Pauline and Jojuan again, as well as others who pointed me to some online bookstores that carry them.

HOW TITANIA’S FORTUNE CARDS ARE DIFFERENT

So with this said, I want to talk a little bit about what it is about Titania’s cards that is different from traditional Lenormand decks. So I'm going to just put aside my private reading deck and I am going to just pull out the deck that all of you are used to seeing on this channel.

So, the reason I have these two decks is because I want to compare Titania’s deck to the more traditional Lenormand decks and the more traditional ones are what we know as the Blue and Red Owl decks.

Everything between the Blue and Red Owl deck is similar: The design is similar, the illustrations are exactly the same, and the numbers are always the same. And then there is the mysterious letter M that we don't really know what it is. I can't figure it out. Every so often I research about these things but there's no indication about what it is. It could be something to do with the printing press that took over these cards. That was maybe a long time ago and maybe not so long time ago.

In all cases, what's important to note is that every Lenormand card has the main illustration, and then two insets or what we call “insets”. There's the playing card insets and there's the card number inset.

The only difference between the Blue and Red Owl decks is that the Red Owl has a quote whereas the Blue Owl has a playing card pip.

This is the way Lenormand’s cards are designed. There is this three-part thing to them: The symbol, an inset, and the number, which is also an inset.

But Titania’s cards just have the symbol. So there is no pip, no quote, and no card number on any of the cards. She doesn't refer to them anywhere. The only indication is the playing card numbers based on the way they are ordered.

In the traditional ordering of the cards, the cards are ordered following their number. So you see the rider is card number one, Clover is card number two, Ship three, and so on and the last card, card 36, which is the Cross.

So Titania has them ordered in her book in their traditional order which is based on their playing card number, and which is what you see here on the Blue and Red Owl decks. But on the actual cards, she doesn't have them at all.

When I started practicing Lenormand, this approach really stuck with me. And when I started to research more into the deck earlier on, I started to really get a sense of why she did that. And that's because there can be some complexities when it comes to the pips and the symbol. And on top of that the number doesn't really have a meaning as far as interpretation is concerned. It's really just a way to order the cards.

One important application of ordering the cards is the houses spread which is a bit of a complex subject for now, but it's laying out the cards in their order as we saw here, and then what you do is you lay out the tableau on top of these houses. So that's a topic for another day.

So the thing about Titania’s cards is that it's really just focused on the symbol. And I really appreciated this approach because I had decided that, well, if there's going to be meanings in other areas of the card and it's really just the insets (the pip or quote - and not so much the numbers), then why isn't it part of the essential meaning of the card? Why do they have to be separate? And my conclusion is that they don't.

A BIT ABOUT MY DECK: THE SILHOUETTES DECK

But still, the reason I went ahead and created my own deck is because I wanted a combination of the focus on the symbol while also keeping a reference to the pips and the numbers.

So when I came up with my deck, I've had a design in such a way that the symbol is very much in focus. But I also have a reference to the card pip and to the card number.

And I really like the simplicity of the cards. I decided on the color purple which is the color of my website. It's mainly my brand color. And I like the focus on the symbol. I call it the Silhouettes Deck. I've also kept the box really simple.

I would have liked the cards to be a bit bigger, but as a first take on the cards I decided to go with a standard size which is what they call ‘casino’ size. Most playing cards have this size here and it's smaller than the Titania’s cards as you can see.

I have to say it's easier to handle, so if I were going to lay out a whole Tableau it takes up less space. Titania’s cards take up more space and you'd need a much bigger space to do the full 36-card Tableau.

So it is practical and they're also really easy to handle.

I tend to like big cards or bigger cards because I have big hands, and I have bigger hands than most people I know, including my own dad, and so that's why I am comfortable with Titania’s cards. 

But I have to say that, having spent a bit of time my smaller-sized deck, I'm not disappointed in the size. It's a good size. It's very easy to shuffle. You can shuffle it horizontally or vertically. And they're also very comfortable to lay out like I just said.

And so it might be a size that I settle with but I'm still exploring the possibilities of what it's like to have a different size deck, especially when you design it or when you have it designed, it's a whole different experience into the cards. So this is what I wanted to share with you about Titania’s Fortune Cards.

I love this deck very much. I love the colors, they are so beautiful. And I love the size.  And of course I love my history with this deck. This has been my main deck for just about my entire career as a Lenormand Reader - 20 plus years now.

And I wanted to share with you what is it about this deck that's different. So again this is not a standard Lenormand deck because it doesn't have the pips that are very much part of the card and that's why I've had my cards designed in this way.

So let me know if you have any questions about these cards, leave me some comments, and I look forward to our next video together. Thanks so much for watching.

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Note. This blog post and video are produced in good faith to promote the author’s work and bring closer together the Lenormand community. If the author or his/her representative(s) has any concern with the information presented, kindly write to Layla, the Lenormand Reader, at [email protected]. Layla, the Lenormand Reader, reserves all rights.