Marie Anne Lenormand

The teaching

Taught from her own books of 1814 to 1820, with the pack of cards later sold under her name.

The sibyl's three arts

Mademoiselle Lenormand practised the fortune-telling arts of her Paris, and those who came to her asked above all for three: the cards, the grounds of coffee and the lines of the hand. Her books present each reading as a glimpse of fate granted to one who knew how to look, and herself as the sibyl who read it.

The cards

The cards of her day were read in the manner Etteilla had printed: a pack shuffled and cut by the one who asks and laid out in rows, each card with one meaning upright and another reversed, and each read together with its neighbours. Each suit has its province, love and happiness, money and business, news, and trouble and grief; the court cards are the people in the questioner's life, and the questioner's own card is the centre round which the reading turns.

Coffee grounds

Coffee grounds are read by the shapes they leave. The cup is drunk, the grounds are swirled with what remains and turned out onto a white plate, and the reader looks at the figures they leave behind as one looks at clouds: a line for a road or a journey, a ring for a marriage, a cross for a trial, a bird for news, small scattered dots for money. The reading goes from figure to figure, as a story is told from picture to picture.

The palm

In the hand the three great lines are read first: the line of life, curving round the root of the thumb; the line of the head, running across the palm; and the line of the heart, above it, beneath the fingers. The raised places of the palm, the mounts, are named for the planets: Venus at the root of the thumb, Jupiter under the forefinger, Saturn under the middle finger, the Sun under the ring finger, Mercury under the little finger, and the Moon at the edge of the palm opposite the thumb, with Mars in the middle of the palm. A full mount gives its planet's nature, so that a strong mount of Jupiter shows ambition and pride, and a strong mount of Venus warmth and love.

The pack under her name

The pack sold as the Petit Lenormand has thirty-six cards, each a small picture: the Rider, the Clover, the Ship, the House, the Tree, the Clouds, the Snake, the Coffin, the Bouquet, the Scythe, the Whip, the Birds, the Child, the Fox, the Bear, the Stars, the Stork, the Dog, the Tower, the Garden, the Mountain, the Crossroads, the Mice, the Heart, the Ring, the Book, the Letter, the Gentleman, the Lady, the Lily, the Sun, the Moon, the Key, the Fish, the Anchor and the Cross.

Its readers give each card a plain meaning: the Rider news on its way, the Ship a journey, the Clouds confusion, the Snake a rival or a deceit, the Coffin an ending, the Scythe a sudden cut, the Fox cunning, the Dog a faithful friend, the Mountain an obstacle, the Mice a loss, the Ring a promise, the Key a solution, the Anchor what holds firm, and the Cross a burden borne. The cards are read in pairs and in lines, as words make sentences, and in the great tableau all thirty-six are laid out at once, the Gentleman or the Lady standing for the one who asks and the cards nearest them for what is closest. The pack is not hers: it copies a German game printed about 1799, and her name was put on it after her death.