The Complete Lenormand Oracle Handbook

A full-colour guide to fortune-telling with the Lenormand oracle.

The Complete Lenormand Oracle Handbook explores the meanings of the 36 Lenormand cards and their playing card insets to help build a resourceful, interpretative vocabulary. This guide provides instructions for many spreads, starting with 3 or 5 cards and building to the Grand Tableau spread, which uses all 36 cards. Featuring 416 pages and full-colour throughout, it reveals the origins of the Lenormand oracle from both coffee-ground symbols and playing card cartomancy.

More than 200 years old, the 36 Lenormand cards are an oracle combining standard playing cards with images from the everyday world, such as key, book, animals, and flowers. Their simple, predictive, and non-esoteric nature opens the realm of fortune-telling to all, offering a traditional cartomantic divination where card combinations fuse together to give clear answers.

In this complete guide to Lenormand card reading, Caitlín Matthews explains the multiple meanings for each card, providing keywords so the reader can quickly build an interpretive vocabulary for Lenormand fortune-telling. She details how to lay spreads, starting with 3 or 5 cards and building to the Grand Tableau spread, which uses all 36 cards. She explores the significance of the playing card pips and suits on each card and how cards combine to create a variety of meanings. Matthews enables readers to learn the Lenormand card keywords so they can both read for themselves and express their interpretations to clients. Providing real case histories for readers to interpret, she also includes self-tests and practice exercises with answers to check at the end of the book.

In addition to her comprehensive practical introduction to the Lenormand oracle, Matthews delves deeply into the history of cartomancy to reveal the mythic blueprint that underlies this simple deck, the key to which lies not in their imagery but in their connection to playing cards.