Marie Anne Lenormand was a French fortune-teller born in the late 1700s. Through the Napoleonic era she was heralded as one of the greatest cartomancers of all time.
Mlle. Lenormand was said to have read for the likes of Robespierre, Marat, the Empress Josephine, and Czar Alexander himself.
She made quite a stir during her lifetime, writing books and other texts, causing many a public controversy, and sometimes even ending up in jail.
And though she herself didn’t use the deck her name was later attached to, her cartomantic powers seem to have lived on through it.
The Lenormand deck in its various manifestations has become quite in fashion among the Tarot folk these days. Even I recently caught the bug.
At BATS I attended a seminar on the topic with Mary Greer and within hours I had myself two news decks of 36 cards each.
You read these cards a little differently than Tarot. The meanings of each are much more fixed. They’re more like words in a sentence than symbols in a dream, but I’m starting to catch on.
Beyond Worlds has a Lenormand tutorial series and Donnaleigh herself has been posting how-to videos. I’ve got a lot watching and listening to do.
And though I’m looking forward to having a new divinatory tool to play with, I’m afraid I’ll find all the new Lenormand decks hard to resist.
Take a look at Ciro Marchetti’s soon to be released Gilded Reverie to see what I mean. It’s beautiful.
As if I need another reason to buy cards.