Le Jeu de la Main

[covenrochester]

"The Game of the Hand" is another old French fortune-telling deck. The original deck was created by Adele Moreau, a woman trained in card-reading and palmistry by Madame LeNormand. The modern reprint of the original deck differs in some interpretations, but they are both really good decks. What constitutes a good deck to me is that one can both (a) answer specific questions from them, and (b) accurately predict concrete events for people even in the absence of a question. As with the Grand Jeu of Madame Lenormand, Le Jeu de la Main shoots straight from the hip. Expect the truth, not soothing platitudes.

In the above small reading, the Q asked to check on a female friend. The cards say:

"Love has failed her. She is sick of being made invisible. She is taking the necessary steps to move toward indifference."

No comforting advice. No everything-will-be-fine-in-the-end. The woman's loved ones have belittled her, made her feel unworthy and invisible. Now, as a defense mechanism, she is moving toward indifference, purely as a matter of personal survival. Not a great message of hope here.

Because Mlle Moreau was palmist, she also encoded further information into the palm drawings and, if you know some palmistry, you will be able to read even more details here. There are stars on the Mount of Venus in two of the palms: great familial stress. The green palm contains a prominent Line of Health rising from the Mount of the Moon and a cross on the third phalange of the Mercury finger: long-term emotional instability has developed into a serious physical health challenge. She must move toward more emotional indifference in order to protect her own health -- you can see a doubled Life Line in the last palm.

Every Witch in the Coven must learn some form of divination. Lots of people pick Tarot. I would love to one day train someone who picks one of these old French decks. Or, I wish someone would translate them into English for publication. I think a good English name for this deck would be The Hands of Fate.