The Key

Key · No. 33 · Playing card ♦8 · Solutions, destiny, importance

The card

A key lies across the card. The object is plain and the meaning follows from it: it opens something.

Traditional meaning

Traditionally the Key is certainty, resolution and a turn of fate — an unambiguously positive card.

How to read it

The Key is "this is it": confirmation, the solution, the move that opens the situation. It stamps whatever sits beside it — what it touches holds. Asked "will it happen", the Key is a yes. It also marks matters that are important and meant to be.

In context

Love

A definite answer about the relationship, or the crux of it found.

Work

A proposal approved, a hard problem solved, clearance obtained.

Timing

It will happen, and usually before long.

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).