Occult lore
Lenormand
Direct answer
Lenormand is a fortune telling deck of thirty-six cards, each showing one plain emblem such as a ship, a key or a fox, read in pairs and rows and not one card at a time.
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At a glance
- Found in
- Spells & Occult Terms
- Related
- Cartomancy, Oracle Cards, Tarot, Querent
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What are Lenormand cards?
A Lenormand deck has thirty-six numbered cards, from the Rider at one to the Cross at thirty-six. Each carries a single everyday image: Clover, House, Tree, Snake, Letter, Ring, Anchor. Most also show a small playing card in one corner. The pictures are meant to be taken at face value. A dog is a friend, a letter is a message.
Meaning comes from combination. Two cards side by side are read as a phrase, with one card describing the other, and the largest layout, the Grand Tableau, sets out all thirty-six at once and reads them by their distance from the card that stands for the person asking. The style is concrete and practical, which sets it apart from the more symbolic reading of the tarot.
On the tree of the hidden arts: Tarot, runes, I Ching.
What sets Lenormand apart
Lenormand reading works like a sentence, with cards as nouns and adjectives. The usual rule is that the first card of a pair is the subject and the second describes it, so the same two cards in the opposite order say something different. There are no reversed meanings. A man card and a woman card stand for the person asking and a partner, and in the full layout what lies near them is read as close in time or importance and what lies far as remote. The playing-card insets survive from the original game.
- Cards: thirty-six, numbered from the Rider to the Cross
- Source: Das Spiel der Hoffnung, by J. K. Hechtel, Nuremberg, about 1799
- Named after: Marie Anne Lenormand of Paris, 1772 to 1843
- Largest layout: the Grand Tableau, using every card in the deck
- Insets: each card matches one card of a thirty-six card playing pack
Often mistaken for something else: The Grand Jeu Lenormand is a different deck of fifty-four cards with crowded scenes, first published in Paris in 1845; the Petit Lenormand is the thirty-six card pack meant by the name today.
The story behind Lenormand
The deck is named for Marie Anne Lenormand (1772 to 1843), the best known card reader of Napoleonic Paris, but she did not design it. Its pictures come from Das Spiel der Hoffnung, the Game of Hope, a race game played on a board of thirty-six cards, devised by Johann Kaspar Hechtel of Nuremberg and published about 1799. After her death publishers put her famous name on fortune telling packs, and the small deck, the Petit Lenormand, spread through Germany and France from the 1840s.
Why Lenormand matters
The term names a whole method of reading by combination, and knowing its real origin corrects the common tale that Lenormand herself drew it.
How to read Lenormand
Readers lay three, five or nine cards for a plain question and keep the Grand Tableau for a general look at a period of someone's life.
Lenormand in practice: an example
Ring beside Ship might be read as a commitment that involves travel or distance, where either card alone would say much less.
Where readings of Lenormand go wrong
Card combinations describe a situation as the reader sees it. They do not establish what another person is doing or thinking.
Sources and editorial method
This entry summarizes the tradition in the Almanac's own words; where no source is listed, it is an editorial summary rather than a primary text, and symbolic readings are named as the tradition's, not as fact.
Recorded here as history and lore. No rite is taught on this page.
- Source
- The Great Almanac Dictionary
- Category
- Spells & Occult Terms
- Aliases
- lenormand cards, lenormand deck, petit lenormand, lenormand card meanings, grand tableau lenormand
- Last updated
- 2026-09-26
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Common questions
What are Lenormand cards?
They are a deck of thirty-six picture cards used for fortune telling since the middle of the nineteenth century. Each card has one simple emblem, and the cards are read together in pairs and lines.
Did Madame Lenormand create the Lenormand deck?
No. The images come from a German parlour game of about 1799, the Game of Hope. Her name was attached to the cards by publishers after she died in 1843.
How is Lenormand different from tarot?
Lenormand has thirty-six cards and no suits of its own or major trumps. Its images are read literally and in combination, while tarot has seventy-eight cards that are usually read one position at a time.
