My Journey with Lenormand

Around 11 years ago, before my 50th birthday, my husband and I found a TV show with a cartomancer in it and she was reading cards that I'd never seen before, but I was very drawn to them. Then a while later as my 50th birthday was approaching, the Lenormand deck called "The Original Lenormand" by The Tarosophy Tarot Association, a replica of the oldest known Lenormand deck (The Game of Hope) which is in the British Museum, appeared in my FaceBook feed and I shared it.  

The Lenormand looked a lot like that deck I'd seen and by now the show was off the air. It wasn't exact, but it made me interested in learning more about this system. A good friend of mine purchased that deck for me as a birthday gift and I began to learn Lenormand as I waited for it to arrive. I found a download for a deck that you could print of your own and printed that on rather thin cardstock that I had on hand, and that became my first learning deck. I watched hours on end of videos by Donnaleigh de la Rose on YouTube, which is also what started my journey with YouTube since I'd never watched it before then!

Since it was coming by Royal Mail from England, that deck took two weeks to arrive as it was in a box and thereby sent over via ship. By the time that first Lenormand deck arrived I was already really proficient in the system and active in a forum where I was learning and helping others learn simultaneously. After years of struggle with the esoteric RWS/Thoth/Golden Dawn tarot system, I'd finally found a language with cards that made sense to me! I was reading on the hotlines then and immediately started reading professionally with the Lenormand cards rather than tarot, eventually actually selling or giving away all of my tarot decks because I never thought that I'd return to tarot reading.

I did eventually start reading tarot again because of a study group that I hosted at my house, and still with the familiar RWS tarot, but my journey with the Lenormand changed me and my card reading in ways that have kept progressing until today when I find myself finally at home in all of my forms of cartomancy. I haven't felt drawn yet into Kipper and Sibilla, they don't hold the same appeal for me as the Tarot de Marseille, Lenormand and Playing Cards, but who knows where this journey will lead me? 

I've also found that I'm not drawn to the deck that actually originally sparked my interest in Lenormand, the one used on that show was the Gypsy Witch deck and while it's also attributed to Mmme. Lenormand, it's just not quite my aesthetic either though I do like the vintage deck more than the modern version of it. 

Love and Light,

~Diane Jarecki