Which book? pro and contra

daphne

I am not decided which book to buy for Lenormand study, Rana George's or Caitlin Matthews?
What are your experiences with these?
If you have to choose, which would be the first pick?
 

Barleywine

I bought Rana's first and Caitlin's second, since that was the order of their release. If I were doing it over again, I'd do the same thing. I found Rana's more conversational and anecdotal in tone, Caitlin's I like for the extensive section on playing-card inset meanings. Both added to my knowledge.
 

Aster Breo

I think it depends on what you're looking for.

I have both and use them together. I think Caitlin's is better organized as a learning program with better exercises, while Rana's section on the card meanings is more extensive and her meanings tend to resonate more with me.
 

daphne

I am looking for consistency and structure. Something to learn and stick with it. There are so many systems and ways of reading Lenormand, that after a while I always end up giving up, too much, too diverse.
 

1Eleven

Are you limited to either of those books?

If I had to choose out of those 2 I would start with Rana's.
 

Barleywine

Are you limited to either of those books?

Good point. I also have Andy Boroveshengra's Lenormand: 36 Cards, which is less expensive than the other two and which I highly recommend, and also Sylvie Steinbach's Secrets of the Lenormand Oracle, which IMO is useful as a reference but not to read outright (I find her somewhat dismissive of the tradition, and prone to insert random notions of her own that I don't see as useful or necessary). I don't have Katz and Goodwin's Learning Lenormand yet; reviews were mixed but I'll probably get it for completeness. If I could read German I would get Erna Droesbeke based on Andy's recommedation. Also, there are LOADS of Lenormand blogs of varying degrees of quality and usefulness out there.
 

Joon

Caveat: I am not answering your A or B, but endorsing choice C.

Background: I selected and committed to Andy as my primary influence back when it was just blog posts that I had available.

So, yes, I recommend Andy's Thirty Six Cards. If it again becomes available, his online Cartomante's Cabinet Course gave me a huge boost forward. In the meantime you could use the exercises in his book and repeat them with other readings as you work through the book. Best case scenario, you do your own readings for queries here that have solid, after the fact feedback to check your reading against.

When available, a great advantage to the online course is that you can see how other students are reading. I learned from both "Oh I wouldn't have thought of that" moments, and from disagreeing with a reading and analyzing why -- privately. :)

For even further study, Andy also offers one-to-one tutoring.

This is not a paid endorsement. LOL
 

daphne

Are you limited to either of those books?

If I had to choose out of those 2 I would start with Rana's.

No, not at all, I am not limited to these two, I just read yesterday a lot on the lenormand forum here, and these two were the two new good books in English I found mentioned here. If you have other suggestions, please!

I want to decide which book to get and just stick with it, I tried several times to learn from online sources, but it was too... everywhere, not systematic and, most importantly, not consistent, so much difference in card meanings. And I am not very fond of the idea to get my own meanings.
 

Barleywine

I want to decide which book to get and just stick with it, I tried several times to learn from online sources, but it was too... everywhere, not systematic and, most importantly, not consistent, so much difference in card meanings. And I am not very fond of the idea to get my own meanings.

Yes, it can be scattered and frustrating to be sure. I went to the trouble of printing out what I liked (and what complemented my previous studies) and assembling it into a binder that I tabbed. But it took a while to sift through the source material, and I'm sure I didn't get anywhere near everything I might have. Still, it's a useful reference tool.