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What are Lenormand cards?
Lenormand is a 36-card divination system named after Marie Anne Adelaide Lenormand, a Paris card reader of the Napoleonic era. Its cards descend from a German parlour game of 1798/9, Das Spiel der Hofnung, and the deck was widely adopted in continental Europe.
Facts checked on against 16 sources, 4 of them museum, university, archive, library, government or primary texts.
Key facts
Every line comes from a source listed at the bottom of the page. The small numbers point to it.
| 1765-1800 | Johann Kaspar Hechtel's Das Spiel der Hofnung (The Game of Hope) is advertised in 1799 and surviving copies date to about 1800; it is the forerunner of the 36-card system.123 |
|---|---|
| 1786 | Marie Anne Lenormand leaves a convent school at age 14 and goes to Paris, where she learns cartomancy.4 |
| 1794 | Lenormand is imprisoned as a counter-revolutionary after predictions considered to disturb public order.5 |
| 1843 | Marie Anne Lenormand dies in Paris in June and is buried after a funeral at Saint-Jacques-du-Haut-Pas.51 |
| 1845-1846 | The Grand Jeu de Mlle Lenormand appears in 1845, and the 1846 Philippe Lenormand instruction sheet from Reiff of Coblenz is the earliest surviving sheet for the 36-card deck.61 |
| 1846 | Wahrsagerin, die, M.lle Lenormand is published, using French suits and giving the impression of French origin.6 |
| 1895 | Lady Charlotte Schreiber's collection passes to the British Museum at her death.63 |
What the deck is
Lenormand is a 36-card divination system. Its cards are numbered 1 through 36 and have no division into Major and Minor Arcana or traditional suits.21
Lenormand cards depict everyday motifs such as House, Letter and Ring directly, unlike the more abstract and symbolic imagery of Tarot. Mary K. Greer states that the images are emblematic rather than symbolic, so each card carries a limited range of functionally related meanings.78
Lenormand cards are read in combinations of adjacent cards rather than as single cards, and the system has no reversals. Most practitioners do not observe reversals, and Odete Lopes Mazza reports that the Philippe Lenormand instruction sheet has no reference to reversed reading.196
From parlour game to fortune-telling deck
The game was played on a board. Hechtel's game uses the deck in a 6×6 layout as a dice race in which card 35, the Anchor, is the winning card, and in an 8×4+4 layout for fortune-telling entertainment.1011
Hechtel's instruction text describes laying the 36 cards in five rows of 8, 8, 8, 8 and 4, now called the Grand Tableau Lenormand or 8x4+4. Tina Gong states that a full 36-card spread called the Grand Tableau uses the entire deck.129131
Mary K. Greer states that the deck was first published in 1846 for fortune-telling, with card meanings and reading instructions based directly on 18th century emblem cards and coffee-ground meanings.8
The woman behind the name
Lenormand practised cartomancy and fortune-telling in Paris for about forty years. Clients recorded in The Surprising Historical Significance of Fortune-Telling (JSTOR Daily) include Joséphine de Beauharnais, Robespierre and Marat, and the Project Gutenberg eBook of L'Illustration, No. 0019 (8 July 1843, edited by Various) also names Fouché, Barras, Madame de Staël and Talleyrand.4125
Lenormand's consultations began with eight questions, after which she asked the client whether they wanted the grand jeu or the petit jeu. Frances, Lady Shelley recorded in her diary a reading that asked for her birth date, the initials of her name and birthplace, and her favourite animal, colour and number.54
Naming and attribution
The 36-card Petit Lenormand was a German creation published in 1845 that appropriated Mlle. Lenormand's name, and it was based on the earlier race game Spiel der Hoffnung (1798) and the Viennese Coffee Cards (1794/6).14
The name Lenormand cards is largely a marketing label rather than a reflection of the deck's origin, and Mary K. Greer notes that Lenormand's own memoirs were written as self-promotion and reveal little about her techniques.914
Many people attribute the creation of the Petit Lenormand to Marie-Anne Adelaide Le Normand or to the Romani people, a belief recorded by later writers. Odete Lopes Mazza reports that researchers have produced documents showing the deck's origins differ from that traditional story.6
What the tradition holds
How practitioners describe it, in their terms. Described, not endorsed.
Tina Gong's keyword table gives each card a set of meanings, such as Rider for Energy, Passion, Speed, Activity, News and Messages.13
In Europe, Lenormand has long been regarded as a practical handbook of fortune telling offering concrete answers about work, love, family and money. Mary K. Greer notes that in the late 20th century the original meanings were expanded to reflect modern life.78
Traditions are often described by region, including the French, German, Dutch and Russian traditions. In practice the signifier is traditionally 28, Gentleman for a male and 29, Lady for a female, and knighting is a technique used by intermediate to advanced practitioners to find significant influences.9
In the Petit Lenormand the Cross is card 36, shown with the 6 of Clubs as its playing-card inset. In the 1846 instruction sheet the Cross is always a bad sign, and if it lies near the significator the querent may hope the misfortune will not last long.11
What the evidence shows
What historians, scientists and controlled tests have found.
Odete Lopes Mazza states that the Petit Lenormand deck has 36 cards, and that the German suits Corações, Folhas, Sinos and Nozes correspond to the French suits Copas, Espadas, Ouros and Paus.6
Mary K. Greer, in 2013, rediscovered a deck with a 31-page booklet, Les Amusements des Allemands, published in 1794 in Vienna, containing 32 cards that she compared with the Petit Lenormand.6
Ronald Decker, Thierry Depaulis and Michael Dummett, in their 1996 book A Wicked Pack of Cards, described the Hechtel deck's cards as hand-coloured and with symbols and numbers identical to what later became the Petit Lenormand.6
The 36 cards are linked to the Piquet deck, a French card game using an abridged deck of 32 or 36 playing cards. The Petit Etteilla, inspired by a 32-card Piquet deck, uses 32 cards plus a blank card.1516
Worked out from the evidence
Not stated outright by any one source. It is worked out from the sources cited.
- The 36-card Lenormand system grew out of a German parlour game and its German-suited deck, and the name of the French card reader was attached to it in the 1840s. The link to her practice is therefore a later naming decision rather than a record of her own deck.931014
- Accounts of the deck's origin disagree. Odete Lopes Mazza and the researchers she cites place the origin in German publishing, while the account of the nineteenth-century attribution rests on the later naming of the deck after Lenormand.614
Not yet confirmed
- Did Marie Anne Lenormand ever use a deck of the Lenormand type, or did she read with ordinary playing cards?
- How closely did the 1846 German decks follow the earlier Game of Hope board and card meanings?
Sources
Museums, universities, archives and primary texts first. Every fact is paraphrased and nothing is copied; Wikipedia is never cited.
- globalspiritualstudies.com: Lenormand Cards: All 36 Meanings & How to Read Them. Read on · Reference
- globalspiritualstudies.com: Learn Lenormand online · from your first card pair to the _Grand Tableau_. Read on · Reference
- lenormand.org: Lenormand Cards | Magic Lenormand Cards. Read on · Reference
- daily.jstor.org: The Surprising Historical Significance of Fortune-Telling - JSTOR Daily. Read on · University
- gutenberg.org: The Project Gutenberg eBook of L'Illustration, No. 0019, 8 Juillet 1843. by Various. Read on · Primary text
- Internet Archive: O Livro Completo Do Baralho Petit Lenormand Odete Lopes Mazza. Read on · Primary text
- lunafactory.com: The Complete Guide to Reading Lenormand Cards. Read on · Reference
- marykgreer.com: The Petit Lenormand Tradition | Mary K. Greer's Tarot Blog. Read on · Reference
- benebellwen.com: The Lenormand: Nutshell Summary of the Petite Lenormand, from History to Practice – benebell wen. Read on · Reference
- lenormand.org: Le Petit Lenormand Eclectic | Magic Lenormand Cards. Read on · Reference
- globalspiritualstudies.com: The Cross. Read on · Reference
- historyinthemargins.com: From the Archives: Madame Lenormand’s Fortune Telling Cards – History in the Margins. Read on · Library
- labyrinthos.co: An Introduction to Lenormand Cards: Plus Lenormand Card Meaning List – Labyrinthos. Read on · Reference
- marykgreer.com: Mlle. Lenormand, the most famous card reader of all time | Mary K. Greer's Tarot Blog. Read on · Reference
- learnlenormand.com: Origins of the Petit Lenormand | Learn Lenormand. Read on · Reference
- globalspiritualstudies.com: The Anchor. Read on · Reference