Learning Lenormand: Traditional Fortune Telling for Modern Life

by Marcus Katz

Discover Your Future in 36 Cards

Read the Lenormand cards to answer practical questions about romance, career, money, travel, and important life choices. With simple instructions for beginning readers, Learning Lenormand teaches easily accessible methods for using this simple thirty-six card deck. Providing fascinating historical research and proven techniques, renowned instructors Marcus Katz and Tali Goodwin reveal everything you need to

Card meanings The Grand Tableau Accessing your inner Sibyl Sample readings Working with houses Basic layouts Deck recommendations The significance of facing cards Lenormand and tarot Diagonals, reflections, zones, and shadows With fewer complex symbols than traditional tarot cards, the Lenormand deck is a key that unlocks the secrets of the future and uncovers deep personal insights.

Genres: Divination, Tarot, Nonfiction, Reference, Occult

314 pages, Kindle Edition

First published May 1, 2013

About the author

Marcus Katz is a professional tarot teacher at the Far Away Centre, the first independent contemporary esoteric training centre in the United Kingdom. As the Director of Tarot Professionals, www.tarotprofessionals.com the world's largest professional tarot organisation, he has studied and taught tarot for 30 years and has delivered more than 10,000 face-to-face readings.

Marcus is also the co-creator of Tarot Town, www.tarot-town.com the social network for tarot readers, with thousands of people worldwide sharing innovative tarot development. He graduated from the University of Exeter as the first student in the world to obtain a Master of Arts degree in Western Esotericism - as such he is one of the few recognised academics in this field.

A licensed neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) trainer and neo-Ericksonian hypnotherapist with 20 years of experience training, presenting and teaching, he has completed training with Paul McKenna, Richard Bandler, John Grinder, and many other NLP luminaries.

His esoteric, kabbalah and tarot courses and workshops are attended by students from across the world, and he delivers three online courses in spellcrafting, kabbalah and alchemy to students through the Magicka School. He has also travelled and taught private groups across Europe, Asia-Pacific and the United States.

Marcus has learnt from, met and corresponded with many of the leading names in occultism during the past 30 years, and has enjoyed unparalleled access to private and academic libraries and rare manuscripts. His own library of esoteric books, magazines and materials is one of the largest and most comprehensive in private collection.

Reviews

[Amie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Save your money unless:
- you are buying this book for the history section (which is great)
- to add to a collection of English books on Lenormand
- you do not want to learn how to read actual traditional Lenormand fortune-telling but a made-up version by these authors

I do not want to come off as being too rude or as though I am dissing the authors - I am not. They are really great authors on tarot. Tarot is not Lenormand. There is a section in this book distinguishing between reading tarot and reading Lenormand cards but at some point along the way the details get a bit muddled and may leave the experienced tarot reader and/or the newbie (or even experienced) Lenormand reader confused with some convoluted tripe detailed in this section.

If you are new to these fortune telling cards and you want to learn how to read them, you have many choices available to you. You can patiently wait until some other author's books are published (later this year I believe and I am truly hoping they will be as good as other's predict); you can join a good card study group in a social network place (like Facebook); you can subscribe to and read several different blogs by people who are actual readers of these little cards and who know their stuff; or you can find a few reputable YouTube videos as well.

In my opinion, this book just barely rises above Sylvie Steinbach's "Secrets of the Lenormand Oracle".

[Georgina · Rating 1 out of 5]

Enjoy the history section in the front, but throw it away afterward and buy The Essential Lenormand by Rana George. I am shocked/angry/furious at Katz & Goodwin for their hopelessly convoluted techniques and downright incorrect interpretation of the Lenormand cards. They do not understand a predictive oracles and have muddied the beauty of the Lenormand's simplicity. I am keeping this book only to show my Tarot students who wish to learn Lenormand how horribly, horribly wrong it is to apply navel-gazing Tarot techniques to Lenormand.

[Blake Wood · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked the history section, but unfortunately this book didn’t help me read Lenormand cards better. I think that there are many different ways to divine, and each will be unique to the reader…so I can’t say they are “wrong” but after trying techniques throughout the whole book I’ve gone back to my old methods which seem to give me more accurate or clear predictions.

I also don’t think the comparison to Tarot is necessary, I’ve always felt that the petite Lenormand should not be compared or used like Tarot.

Lastly…although I enjoyed the history section I also feel like it is incomplete. The oracle they are writing about is the Petite Lenormand…which implies there’s a Grand Lenormand…why is there no information on the Grand Lenormand?

[Robert Alvarez · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Learning Lenormand: Traditional Fortune Telling for Modern Life," by Marcus Katz and Tali Goodwin is now the third book about Lenormand I have ever read.

My copy has a grand total of 298 pages, including the "end" papers which are advertisement pages for other books published by Llewellyn Publications, including two other books co-written by Mr. Katz and Ms. Goodwin.

I cannot begin to tell you how much I learned from this book. I especially enjoyed the recommendation from the authors that if one were to offer a professional Lenormand Reading, utilizing the Grand Tableau, which literally translates as "Great Table," or loosely translates as "Big Picture," one would need at least two hours.

Currently, I AM not only learning Lenormand, but also offering professional Lenormand Readings, although I use a 3 x 3 spread, which is three rows of three cards each. It works for my clients and it works for me, too.

I also learned about other books about Lenormand from this book, one of which I look forward to starting to read over the next few days.

I truly could go on and on about how excellently written this book is, as well as the various ways I learned how to interpret the various Lenormand Cards, but THE LeVar Burton would say when he hosted "Reading Rainbow," "Don't take my word for it."

I have no doubt I shall use this book as a reference, over and over again.

[Olivia Popovich]

This was the only book on lenormand available in the entire Georgia public library system, so I gave it a try despite hearing a lot of negative reviews. All in all I thought it was a pretty good intro, although I did sometimes find its methods a bit confusing. It sometimes seemed like maybe the two authors weren’t on the same page about things or just weren’t being consistent with their advice— like for example, they emphasize over and over that lenormand is different than tarot in that it doesn’t use spreads with fixed meanings for card positions…but then towards the end of the book they give you a bunch of spreads to use. I started doing tarot way back in middle school but am just now dipping my toes into lenormand, and I’m having a lot of fun with it (although I admittedly do find it really difficult right now haha)! I’ll definitely be looking into reading some other books on the topic.

[Stella · Rating 1 out of 5]

A truly useless book that I reviewed back when it was released: https://fennario.wordpress.com/2013/05/12/books-learning-lenormand/
If you really want to learn to read these cards, get Andy Boroveshengra's Lenormand Thirty Six Cards: An Introduction to the Petit Lenormand and give the Katz-Goodwin book a wide berth.

[Roberto · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good book, it gives a good review of historical facts and all the learning material is worthy to pay attention.

[Kimberly Lou · Rating 3 out of 5]

Much more in depth, a great reference!

[Stefanie · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great introduction to lenormand (but unfortunately full of typos).

[Madhavi Ghare · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was my first Lenormand book - having become drawn to these cards after seeing the artwork of the beautiful Dreaming Way Lenormand deck. Perhaps because I am a Tarot Card Reader, I was expecting to be 'taught' these cards in a more typical way - starting with the meanings of the cards, and then going to the reading methods and concepts etc. However, the authors have a more hands-on approach towards teaching the readers how to use the Lenormand cards for doing readings. They start out with simple examples and build the learning from these simple spreads itself. I suppose, that too is a valid and interesting approach towards teaching the cards. It was unsettling for me, but your mileage may vary. :) What I liked most though, was how the authors took efforts to differentiate between the Lenormand way and the Tarot way of reading cards. For me, that was quite useful - because I am a visually intuitive person, and therefore needed to know where and how to restrain myself while playing with these cards.

[Pam · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved this book! This book shares a lot more history on Mlle Lenormand as well as the "Game of Hope" from which the Lenormand Oracle originates. But what I really enjoyed was that most card descriptions shared also included those from other Lenormand book authors. I also learned more about the Grand Tableau, the houses, and reading the diagonals. I have this book on pre-order...I have to have a hard copy.

[Lylah Caldwell · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great introduction to lenormand.

[Fortluna]

useful, esp game of hope explanation, but confirms my resolve to keep on making absolutely everything up