It’s a system of card divination like Tarot, but instead of 78 cards falling into specific categories, it’s a set of 36 cards that don’t divide up as neatly into categories. Lenormand cards are each associated with a number and a specific card in a deck of playing cards; for example, card 16 is Stars and is associated with the 6 of Hearts. You can even read Lenormand with a pack of playing cards if you memorize the associations.

The meaning of a Lenormand card can be summarized in a few keywords; the Stars card is about hope and guidance. There are traditional associations with a person’s career; objects; what a card means for health, spirituality, money, timing, and actions you should take; and whether a card is positive, negative, or neutral. 

The Essential Lenormand by Rana George is a great guide to traditional Lenormand.

The first questions I asked were, why aren’t all of the cards in a deck of playing cards included? And why do the two person cards have to be gendered? (They’re “Man” and “Woman” traditionally.) I stayed away from Lenormand for a long time because all of the decks I found were gendered and the associated tradition implied the querent is exclusively heterosexual.

Then I looked on Etsy and found folks selling either decks with additional cards or add-on cards, like a “Nonbinary” card for people who aren’t necessarily/exclusively Man or Woman. Most of these didn’t follow any sort of structure, but PixelOccult has designed a couple of “expanded Lenormand” decks, one of which was out at the time: Red Hand Lenormand.

I looked at what they did, and went through a few iterations to get a deck that filled out the cards to a total of 54 while being personally relevant and (I hope) remaining true to most of the conventions of traditional Lenormand. PixelOccult basically kept Man (Animus) and Woman (Anima) in that deck but added trans and nonbinary options, plus a Skeleton; I changed Man and Woman to Self and Other, and added some cards that are implied to be people such as Stranger. (There are also cards, both in traditional Lenormand and in these decks, that can refer to a person with certain traits; Bear, #15, 10 of Clubs, is one example that can be read as a protective person or a benevolent authority.)

It felt to me that the cards in this deck relate to the themes of the Earth (physical body, possessions, money) and Water (emotions, feeling, intuition) elements, and I wanted to experiment with a deck that related to the themes of Air (intellect, thinking) and Fire (will and willpower, motivation, passion). I feel like Tarot is a good choice for those themes already, but as usual, I wanted to see if my idea would work. I used what I learned on the Earth and Water deck to decide on cards for the Air and Fire deck, then did practice readings and eventually readings for others. Maybe it’s an idea that didn’t need to be, but it seems to work for the right kind of inquiries.

For now, I’m using blank cards that I wrote the information on, and there is no deck to get for yourself. But I hope at some point to paint cards for both decks and offer print-on-demand copies.

The Earth and Water deck is good for practical questions. The Air and Fire deck is good for questions about intellectual pursuits and following your passions. Both decks will give brief answers that are to the point. “Girl, give up - he’s married,” could be an answer you’d get from a Lenormand deck. Or with my Earth and Water deck, “You’ll find your new partner around the time that the roses bloom in the spring.”

I don’t read these cards reversed, and I tend to use a limited number of spread-like patterns. There are plenty of spreads you can also use with Lenormand; they're just not my go-to method.

There's also a massive, traditional spread just for Lenormand, called the Grand Tableau, using every card. I haven't become confident with it yet. But I intend to work on that!

You can use the same sort of rituals before and after the reading itself, as for any other kind of divination. 

I will shuffle or otherwise randomize the cards - these decks like to be handled in a certain way - then look for the card that represents either the querent (Self) or what the querent wants. Then I pull out the cards before and after it. (So, for a 5 card reading, I have one card already and would take 2 on either side.) These tell a story. The cards before the central card tell me about the past and I’ve used them to validate that I’m getting the right information. (“You’re feeling pretty nervous about this test, right?” was one result I’ve had with Air and Fire.) The cards after the central card tell me about the future. (For the nerve-wracking test, it was about how to prepare and the outcome wasn’t clear.) When the final card is positive or negative, the outcome is also positive or negative. (For the test, I pulled more and verified that the additional past card was accurate, but the future remained stubbornly neutral, which I took to mean that it was up in the air and depended on whether he prepared well - which was believable given that it was the most difficult professional certification on his plate. I later found out that he passed.)

If you have any further questions about my practice with the Tessera Oracle or anything else I do, please use my comment form to ask!