19th century Lenormand based on a deck from 1854.
The 36-card Petit Lenormand cards have taken the divinatory world by storm.
Dog-Liliac Dream Russian Lenormand
Two years ago only two classically-based Lenormand decks were available in the U.S. Since then there’s been a deluge of over 50 new decks (most with creative designs and self-published). Interest is supported by dozens of Facebook and forum study groups and websites in English, plus many more in other languages. Until this year, only two English-language books were available (compared to sixty or more in German, Dutch, French, Russian and Portuguese). By early next year there’ll be at least five or six new English-language books.
Two things are essential to a Lenormand reading: 1) a set of cards containing the Lenormand numbers, names and/or pictures, and 2) learning the traditional Lenormand system. Certainly, a person can use Lenormand cards as oracles: making up their own meanings, projecting stories onto them, and reading the images as symbols, but that is not what is meant by a Lenormand reading. One can use any object or image for an oracle reading; Lenormand includes specific meanings and methods.
14 Reasons Why the Lenormand Deck and Traditional System Are So Special:
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House-Carta Mundi Lenormand
- The images or ’emblems’ on each card are simple, everyday, iconic items: Dog, Fish, House, Path, Clover.
- The deck was first published in 1846 for fortune-telling and came with card meanings and reading instructions that were directly based on 18th century ’emblem cards’ and coffee-ground meanings. For over 220 years decks have been published with nearly identical images, instructions and meanings.
- Since the late 20th century original meanings have been expanded and adapted to reflect modern life. Even though variations exist, they are minor, such that a traditional reader can understand the interpretation of someone else, even from another country.
- Lenormand readings are extremely precise, mundane, concrete, blunt and accurate.
- The pictures are not read symbolically! The narrow range of meanings, which are functional rather than symbolic, ensure there is little ambiguity about their significance.
- Intuition plays a major role in reading the cards, enhanced by knowledge and experience.
- While a few cards are similar to Tarot (Moon, Stars, Tower, etc.), they have very different meanings.
Fish-Kendra’s Vintage Petit Lenormand
- All the cards are used in a standard layout, the Grand Tableau (“Big Picture”). Modern layouts provide shorter snapshots or portraits of a particular issue.
- In a reading, significance arises from card combinations: House+Book can be a school or library (a house of knowledge or secrets). Cards are not read individually but in pairs or larger groups.
- Lenormand cards work well for answering yes-or-no questions, describing past and present life situations, making short-term predictions, finding lost objects, and describing people and their condition. They can also address timing.
- The cards are easily adapted to modern situations as long as the integrity of the whole is not broken. For instance, Stars (like the nodes in a web) is the internet and, along with Garden (the public), they represent social networking.
- One has to learn the basic meanings and to practice combining cards and other interpretive techniques in order to develop one’s skill with Lenormand.
- There are many layers involved in learning the cards, such that one can learn enough to get started after only a workshop or presentation, yet it will take several years to gain proficiency and handle all the layers of significance.
- You can combine Lenormand with Tarot and other modalities, calling on each for its area of strength. For instance, Lenormand is great for describing the plot of a story or movie, whereas Tarot is generally better at describing theme, character conflict and motivations. See examples HERE (Virginia Woolf) and HERE (Beasts of the Southern Wild).
Bonus: Lenormand is fun!
Clover-Ciro Marchetti’s Gilded Reverie Lenormand
Paths-Foster+Paris’ Lenormand Revolution
Mary K. Greer has made tarot her life work. Check here for reports of goings-on in the world of tarot and cartomancy, articles on the history and practice of tarot, and materials on other cartomancy decks. Sorry, I no longer write reviews. Contact me
Mary K. Greer's Tarot Blog 
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July 21, 2013 at 10:52 am
Lenormand — if not symbols, than what? | Postmodern Magic
[…] Mary K. Greer has a post up about Lenormand cards, in which she asserts […]
July 21, 2013 at 12:17 pm
carrieparis1
It’s so great to see you blogging again, Mary, especially on this topic. Point 14 is where I started with Lenormand. Over 25 years ago I was given a Lenormand deck while living in Japan. I mistook it for a strange tarot deck so did what most would probably do and combined it with my tarot readings. I’ve recently discovered from early (1900’s) photos of cartomancers that combining tarot and Lenormand was part of their reading style. Many of these photos feature several decks– tarot, Lenormand and otherwise, on the cartomancer’s table, making me feel in very good company!
July 21, 2013 at 1:27 pm
mkg
Carrie – where are these photos! I’ve been looking for early pictures of people reading Lenormand and haven’t been able to find them!
UPDATE: Carrie sent me a couple of photographs from the 1940s or 50s(?) that show the Grand Jeu de Mlle Lenormand – a different deck. I’m still looking for a Lenormand deck in a picture from the late 19th or early 20th century.
July 21, 2013 at 3:54 pm
mkg
Personally I hate the artificial division between intuitive & traditional readers. I find that so-called traditionalists are even more intuitive in their readings than those who “trust the first thing that pops into their heads” but know little about Lenormand meanings. Intuition draws from one’s experience and knowledge. Some readers are gifted with the ability to use any tool brilliantly. All these things have to be taken into account.
As to tradition – it’s not an absolute but rather a recognizable set of expectations for how the cards will work. The roots are found in the instruction sheet that came with the original 36-card deck named “Lenormand” and in the verses printed on many decks. The folk-traditions grew out of this. Modern expansions and enhancements are hung on this skeletal framework. The point is that there is a Lenormand core that, taking into account the variations or dialects, is equally well understood by people from different countries.
Opposing this are personal meanings (a dog bit me; they’re dangerous; the Dog card is a warning that someone is going to attack you) that may work for an individual but, if taught as the meaning of Dog, necessitates a restructuring of meanings for other cards (which card represents friend and loyalty? how is the danger of Dog different than Fox?).
July 21, 2013 at 3:58 pm
mkg
By contrast, Tarot began as a game around 1420 and was primarily used for games for over 350 years. Practically no one uses Court de Gébelin’s “original” 1781 meanings for the cards (first ever published). And Etteilla’s meanings are primarily used for the Minor Arcana, along with considerable changes, according to the different “schools” of Tarot.
By contrast, the “Petit Lenormand Fortune-Telling Deck” was originally published in 1846 with an instruction sheet. Until the late 20th century people learned from others, along with the translations – into many languages – of this instruction sheet (included with most decks until recently). People modified the information through experience, adding modern references and new techniques, but their approach was and is still understandable today to people from other places. New meanings are coherent with the old ones. This is what I mean by “tradition.”
July 21, 2013 at 4:27 pm
mkg
To P.Dunn who commented about this post on his Postmodern Magic blog saying that Lenormand cards *are* read symbolically.
Symbols aren’t limited in their references. Lenormand, generally is.
The better term for Lenormand is probably “emblematic,” meaning “a special design or visual object representing a quality, type, group, etc.”
For instance, I don’t know anyone who reads the Lenormand Child card by saying, “This picture shows a child with a butterfly net running to capture a butterfly. The net represents all the snares that life presents to the new soul represented by the butterfly. So, here we have one’s “inner child” who is struggling to ensnare the soul in the net of materiality. The number 13 on the card refers to the betrayal of Judas (flesh betraying the Spirit), but also to the thirteen Lunar months of the old Goddess calendar and thus that we are all Mother Nature’s children.” We do this regularly with Tarot, not Lenormand.
The Lenormand Child card is read according to the same limited range of emblematically or functionally related meanings, no matter what details appear on the particular deck you are using; an image isn’t even required. It can mean one or more children, something new or small, or a beginning, innocence and goodness, play and toys, affection and trust, naiveté and, with negative cards, immaturity and irresponsibility, along with other things that serve similar functions in our lives.
July 21, 2013 at 6:28 pm
'Roberto 'Arteaga-Arias
Love this post, I totally agree with your view on intuition and tarot deeper meanings.
July 22, 2013 at 5:53 am
The Lenormand Revolution Mini Featured by Mary Greer | The Lenormand RevolutionThe Lenormand Revolution
[…] miss this recent post on Mary K. Greer’s Tarot Blog The Petit Lenormand Tradition. It is a wonderful write up on the Lenormand Tradition, outlining its essentials and listing 14 […]
July 24, 2013 at 11:22 am
Rae della Luna
In recent conversation, my Hon laid out the idea of tradition really well when he shared: You can play Go Fish with Uno cards, but that doesn’t mean you’re playing Uno.
Note: Both can be played intuitively, choosing how you move forward 😉
July 24, 2013 at 3:27 pm
mkg
Rae – what a wonderful analogy. I’m going to use that, if your husband doesn’t mind!
July 24, 2013 at 4:10 pm
Rae della Luna
He says not at all 🙂
He’s wonderful! And you’d think after ten years I’d just go down that aisle…
July 27, 2013 at 4:25 am
Helen
Lovely post, thanks Mary 🙂
I think we all get caught up in semantics, especially when it comes to intuition and symbolism. A verb that may better represent not following tradition could be “riff” (meaning “improvise”). It shifts the emphasis to the manner of reading the cards and not the cards or pictures (which can be read in various ways).
July 28, 2013 at 12:19 am
Helen
Incidentally, even the word “tradition” can have different meanings. I understand Sylvie Steinbach does not consider her system of meanings “traditional” as she has modified the older meanings somewhat. (In my mind, it simply means there is a system of meanings i.e. a dictionary.)
August 3, 2013 at 10:34 am
Mary K. Greer
Helen –
I really like the idea of there being an improvisational or “riff” approach to the cards, versus slavishly following the tradition. Thanks. However, when I think of a jazz riff it’s clear that the improvisation is based on the rules and structure of jazz and on the main theme of the song. Some people see Lenormand as simply a set of pictures that they can read without knowing anything about the traditional meanings or methods – like reading a set of postcards. As I’ve said before, I believe this can be very meaningful but it is not a Lenormand reading. A riff would be making associations that aren’t necessarily in a Lenormand dictionary but could easily be added to it, because other Lenormand readers would immediately get the associations.
October 29, 2013 at 3:50 pm
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? in cards | Mary K. Greer's Tarot Blog
[…] also drew five cards from the Petit Lenormand Deck asking for a description of the plot, and I […]
November 12, 2013 at 12:23 pm
Chris Wolf
Dear Mary, I’m a brazilian fortune teller and I loved your posts e considerations about the Petit Lenormand. I’m a Lennie Lover! When I read your text about and I agreed with some very pertinent points. ;D
Unfortunately I’ve been in discussion rooms where noticed a certain superficiality to handle the cards… There is a reverse current of thinking that “as the Tarot is complex, the Lenormand should not be” – so what do fall down everything that can be added and understood about the symbolism and structure of Lenormand as a whole. We can not escape the symbolic matrix that created the Lenormand, nor confine ourselves to this base!
The theory is always necessary and can not be ruled out. As I wrote in my blog of “World Lenormand Day | 25th June”, I believe that what we need now is to know how to recognize how they have evolved and, hereafter, put together the relevant information about the origin of Lenormand Deck with advances existing – and with this we continues to the understanding of the parties and the evolution of this oracle we love so much.
Recognize the true past, live the present well to follow a future broad and aggrandizing. For me, that’s the spirit!
November 12, 2013 at 12:55 pm
Mary K. Greer
Chris –
Thank you for your response. I have to admit that I overly stress the core Lenormand system. In practice, Lenormand can go very deep or, perhaps, I should say that a reader gifted in those areas can go very deep. What I see all too often in Lenormand groups are people who project their own spiritual perspective onto the question and questionner, where the cards themselves have little to do with it. It’s immediately apparent when someone is doing this. The majority of the time they don’t actually answer the question, but go off on a tangent of “you shoulds” or “you need tos” or “Spirit is trying to tell you . . .” They offer advice, even when the question was not an advice question. Often it’s an attempt to “fix” the situation and make the person feel better via spiritual platitudes.
Occasionally someone accesses a spiritual level that rings so true that you can feel the resonance to either the cards and the situation or, better yet, both – but it’s pretty rare in the study groups, and therefore precious. And, follow-up feedback from the querent often supports the responses of those who read the cards very traditionally.
Therefore, I recommend, that if you want to learn the Lenormand language, you do that first. Traditionally speaking, it’s pretty darn practical, with a few relatively modern spiritual, karmic, destiny alternative meanings thrown in. After you speak the language fairly well, then open yourself up when Spirit calls in the moment and add those dimensions. The basics will always be there as a checkpoint and grounding cord to make sure you haven’t overlooked any helpful details.
April 22, 2014 at 12:19 pm
Elizabeth J Romain
Where can one purchase the Lenormand Deck? i did apply for the course of learning the said deck but like to be in sync with the cards before taking the course.
April 22, 2014 at 12:39 pm
mkg
Go to Amazon and put, Lenormand deck, in the search field. I recommend having at least one “classic” deck, which includes the Blue Owl, Piatnik and ‘French Cartomancy.’ Another place to buy European editions of the classic decks at very reasonable prices is http://www.bookdepot.com . There’s an excellent study group on Facebook – the Lenormand Cards Study Group – that has files with deck recommendations and images from the various decks to look at. You can also find quite a few modern decks, whether reproductions or newly designed decks on ebay and etsy.