“Mlle Lenormand, the most celebrated of our modern fortune-tellers, was unacquainted with the science of Tarot, or knew it only by derivation from Etteilla, whose explanations are shadows cast upon a background of light.
How did Marie Lenormand learn to read cards?
Marie Anne Adelaide Lenormand claimed to have obtained her first deck of cards when she was 14 from gypsies who taught her how to read them. It wasn’t until two years after her death that a deck of cards called “Le Grand Jeu de Mlle. Lenormand” was first published by Grimaud.
What is a Petit Lenormand?
The 36-card “Petit Lenormand” was a German creation that, in 1845, appropriated the now-dead Mlle. Lenormand’s famous name. This deck was based on an earlier race game and multi-purpose set of cards called the “Spiel der Hoffnung” (“Game of Hope”; 1798) and the even earlier Viennese Coffee Cards (1794/6), published in both German and English.
