Madame Lenormand - The Great Seer
Mlle Lenormand (1768 - 1843, France) is one of the most well respected psychic card readers of the 18th and 19th century. Her free spirited and downright revolutionary method of employing a variety of oracles with ease and staggering accuracy created her fame and commended the admiration of leading personalities from all fields of society. Her way of treating everyone equal not only reflected the ideals of the French revolution but granted her the admiration of her fellow Parisians.
By her success with the art of psychic card reading she was able to open her Salon in the mundane Rue de Tournon. There the charismatic diviner received her clientele purportedly including politicians like Mirabeau, Marat and Robespierre, though her most famous consulter was Josephine de Beauharnais, the later wife of Napoleon Bonaparte.
Mlle Lenormand never married, never had children. After decades of continued success which accompanied her through the revolution, the restoration and the empire she was legendary already. After she perished Paris newspapers reported that her coffin was escorted by a huge crowd who paid deference to her.
The artist who created the Lenormand card deck a century later had a grasp for the moods and vibes of the time of great Mlle Lenormand and managed to pass this feeling and the energy down to us. This understanding eases our way to our goal, to combine mysticism and modern spirit.
Lenormand fortune telling cards
The Lenormand fortune telling cards which were named after the famous French sooth sayer Mlle Lenormand are extremely popular for a reason. Their imagery is frugal and explicit and therefore easy to comprehend. On the other hand they are versatile and adaptive to all kinds of situations and areas of everydays life. These cards are fun to deal with!
The Lenormand card decks which have been designed in the 19th Century (Biedermeier) are the classic among the fortune telling cards. They made the transition to the 3rd millennium easily and have shaken off the dust of centuries past. Nevertheless the mysticism of these cards has been preserved by their traditional and inspiring motifs. And precisely this mysticism is required to let us be inspired by a whiff of romanticism and transcendence and to awaken the mediality in us when reading these cards.