The Bear

Bear · No. 15 · Playing card ♣10 · Power, protection, a mother figure

The card

A bear stands filling the frame — the weightiest animal figure in the deck.

Traditional meaning

Traditionally the Bear is strength, power and protection, and often an older woman or a mother figure.

How to read it

The Bear is "big" and "immovable": an authority figure, a boss, a mother, capital, sheer size. It can be the thing that shelters you or the thing pressing on you. On money it means principal and savings, not loose change.

In context

Love

The stronger party in the relationship, or an elder getting involved. It also carries protectiveness.

Work

The boss, the investor, managerial control; or competition won by sheer weight.

Timing

Slow and heavy, counted in months.

Common combinations

Lenormand meanings were first written down in the instruction sheet issued around 1846 by Philippe Lenormand, heir of Marie-Anne Lenormand, and that sheet has long been in the public domain. The "Traditional meaning" section here describes the classical reading handed down from that line, in our own words — it is not a verbatim quotation of the sheet. Card images are public-domain scans of Das Spiel der Hoffnung (1799).