The Essential Lenormand: Your Guide to Precise & Practical Fortunetelling
by Rana George
Reviewed by Tabitha Chamberlain
Publisher: Llewellyn Publication
ISBN-10: 0738736627
ISBN-13: 978-0738736624
Retail Price: $21.99
For some reasons unknown to myself, I randomly wanted to learn Lenormand. Seriously it was completely out of no where that this wild hair came from. Me being me I decided that I want to at least read up on the idea of this type of divination before actually deciding to buy a deck.
I'm literally a beginner to this form of divination, pretty sure "newbie" doesn't even start to cover my shininess on this one. I had to ask the difference between Lenormand and regular oracle. The book that I choose with the advice of a friend is, The Essential Lenormand.
The book is broken down into three parts, but starts with an intro to give you some background into the history and a brief overview of how this particular divination system works. The first part details things like: finding a good starter deck, questions how and what to ask, things as such that any good starter book gives. She does also stress the importance of journaling your readings. Which is good practice when starting any new divination system or if you want to go back and check how things developed for you.
The second part of the book details each individual card. Giving you a description of the image on the card, the symbolism, and traditional meaning. However she goes a step further and gives you detailed meanings in context. Which for shiny newbies this is awesome! What do I mean by this? Say what if the Book card falls into a love reading? Or if the reading is for a person? Or a financial question. She gives you all of this and several other aspects in a chart like form at the end of each card. The one interesting thing is she has seemed to have broken the cards down into sorta groups of positive, negative, or neutral also listing these as well.
The third part gets into the nitiy gritty of how to actually uses this deck, there are several spreads that she explains in this section. One is just an exercise to help you learn the cards. Another two or three gives you quick easy readings without fuss. The rest though be prepared to work your brain with them. She also goes into the Grand Tableau which is pretty much the go to spread when using this deck apparently. Seriously keep the book handy when starting this one cuz WOW is all I can say after reading the how to read of this spread.
When you come to the end you're going to find seven appendixes, yes I said seven: Who was Mademoiselle Lenormand (who is where the deck takes it's name from according to this book), Focus Cards, Quick Interpretation Guide, Positive/Negative&Neutral Cards, The Houses and Their Attributes, Court Cards, and finally Lenormand and Tarot. I must admit that I haven't read this in depth as of yet, but I'll get there.
Overall, excellent well written explanations of the cards and how to use them. The spreads are incredibly detailed that even as a newbie I'm looking for my new decks (like we all didn't see that coming, yes I ordered two Lenormand decks) to start to work with them without hesitation.
Due to my own personal tastes, I'm simply not fond of her constant interjection of how she did this or that is what happened when she. The only time that it seems truly to related to the book is when at the end of each of the 36 cards; she gives a small story of her experience with readings to help you relate better to the cards.
Yes, it's well worth buying if you're interested in learning this particular type of divination. If looking to simply explore the eBook version works fine. If looking to use this to do hands on learning with I do seriously suggestion buying physical copy. As I got the eBook, mostly because I was too impatient and now realizing that I would be honestly better off with the actual book especially when trying to do the Grand Tableau spread. Flipping through eBook isn't as easy as a book nor is there room in the margins for penciled in notes.