In Lenormand each card's meaning is relatively fixed, and the core of combination reading is to treat two adjacent cards as a modifier plus a noun. Reading card by card out of a dictionary throws away the combination itself, which is the most common mistake for beginners.
A Lenormand deck usually means the 36-card Petit Lenormand, named after the nineteenth-century French reader Marie Anne Lenormand, although the deck was published under her name only after her death. Tarot is a 78-card system with 22 Major Arcana, and the two differ plainly in deck size and in how they are read.
The finger-counting method of Xiao Liu Ren counts the month, the day and the two-hour period in turn around six palaces, and the palace you stop on last is the reading. It is simple and can be repeated, but it answers only one small, concrete question at a time.
Xiao Liu Ren lands on one of six named outcomes: Da An, Liu Lian, Su Xi, Chi Kou, Xiao Ji and Kong Wang, names that can be traced to the six-day cycle recorded in the old text Shilin Guangji. The method is simple, and that simplicity is exactly why a single outcome so often gets treated as a verdict.
In Da Liu Ren the Monthly General is set by the palace the Sun occupies, with the medial solar terms marking when it changes. It sits alongside the divination hour, the void branches and Tai Sui as one of a chart's time coordinates, and one slip here throws the whole chart off.
A Da Liu Ren chart is built from elements such as Tai Sui, the divination hour, the monthly general and the void branches, and its core is the Four Lessons and the Three Transmissions. The Four Lessons are derived layer by layer from the upper and lower spirits, while the Three Transmissions fall into nine types according to the controlling and punishing relations between those lessons, known as the Nine Gates; read the structure first and the judgment afterwards.
Aspects are the angular relationships between two planets: the conjunction at 0°, the sextile at 60°, the square at 90°, the trine at 120° and the opposition at 180°. The closer the angle, the more noticeable the influence is usually thought to be, and since orbs differ from one line of practice to another, comparing two readings starts with checking that.
A natal chart is a snapshot that fixes the planetary positions of the moment you were born, and natal astrology is the branch that studies it. The Sun, the Moon and the Ascendant each answer to a different level; reading the Sun sign alone is like reducing a whole chart to a single point.
In the date-selection tradition, different matters correspond to different suitable-and-avoid entries: capping, marriage, mourning and sacrifice form one group, building and moving another, daily life and ceremonial celebrations a third. In practice the steadier order is to fix the range of possible dates first, check the weather and the people involved second, and use the almanac to choose among those days last.
The suitable-and-avoid entries of a huangli form part of the date-selection tradition, and different editions of the almanac were never consistent with one another, so a single day reading both "suitable for marriage" and "avoid marriage" is nothing unusual. The steady way to use a huangli is as a reference calendar rather than as the basis for a decision.
Lot text is the wording used to resolve a question after a lot has been drawn, and because it is usually written in verse it is also called lot verse. It is not a one-word fortune grade but three layers of information — poem, allusion and commentary — and reading only the grade is like compressing a whole passage into a single word.
San Shan Guo Wang is a local cult of the Chaoshan region, and the oracle lots of its temples are still passed down in Chinese communities in Hong Kong, Macao and Southeast Asia. Drawing a lot does not end when a stick falls out: reporting the matter, shaking the container and confirming the result are the usual steps, and skipping the confirmation usually means you have simply picked up a stick that suits you.
