Astro Mythological by Mlle. Lenormand

As yet, I have found them to be too obscure to understand. We no longer have the grounding in mythological imagery that was second nature in previous centuries.

I have ordered the book by Corinne Morel recommended by TheOld in this thread, so hope to pull the curtain back when I receive it.

My approach is to do a single card draw and work my way through the deck, learning what the historical and mythological images and the flowers mean. Exactly as the reviewer said, the nuances of each card need to be understood.

Does that make it merely a deck for collectors, as if that is not a useful purpose? Many collectors do actually use their decks, highlighting another silly assumption by the reviewer.

You get what you put into a system like this. If no effort is applied then you will get nothing back for your lack of effort.

Poor things, they have no defence against our lack of intellectual curiosity.

I'm starting to think the constellations in this deck don't mean anything. There are a few cards where you can kinda see constellations, but for the most part it just looks like nonsense. One curious feature is 7 primary stars on each card which I assume are the planets. They are marked with lower-case Greek letters, but each card is different; there doesn't seem to be any system to it at all. Some of them are not even marked on some cards. I wonder if these constellations were put there more for effect than anything. They do look like old star maps. Their purpose may be simply as a reminder of the astral influences.

If anyone has another opinion on this I would welcome it as information in English on this deck is pretty scarce. I realize this is a pretty old thread but I was looking around and found it so I thought I would just add to this one rather than start a new one.

Finally got into one card- Nine of Hearts

I was able to consult the little white book by Grimaud/Cartes Frances that suggests Hercules confronting the Nemean Lion and the Corinne Morel book called

Comptrendre et interpreter
Le Grand Jeu de Mll Lenormand

from Editions EB Bussiere


In terms of the star for the Nine of Hearts, it resembled or underlined the main picture--it is Regulas, the primary star in the Constellation of Leo. Hercules overcoming the Nemean Lion is essentially an allegory of good force over the opposing beast. All the small pictures underneath are secondary or tertiary meanings that speak of reward for hard effort, the good news that a querent would pay to hear with gratitude. Scroll down to the last star chart (I did a google image search)...

http://www.ncrising.com/radiant_heart_of_lion.html

One way of reading the deck that comes from the little white book on page 13 shows that if someone were reading with all the cards, you can overlap the designs so a few layers only show the bottom motifs of the cards and the top card shows the full picture. I'm not involved in large readings with these cards--I just saw this and realized that this would be a good way to gain extra dimensions using such cards.

However 'extra dimension' might be a bit too grand--the cards seem primarily figuring on mundane concerns of cartomancy--love, finance, timing of good or bad luck--it would be more recognizable to those who probably like and do not mind the allegorical 19th century taking liberties with their perception of Greco-Roman myths.

For instance, I had not perceived Trojan Horse merrily trotting in the six of spades for example--I had been under the impression it was wielded in and it was of wood. The card meanings incidently seem to speak of deception in a dire way or warn of possible or pending disaster and it's under the constellation "the serpent". The identification is from Croinne Morel. French wikipedia had the star chart:

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serpent_(constellation)

If I find any links that explain more, I'll post.

Hope that is helpful. I recommend the Corinne Morel book, even if it is in French, as it has pictures and charts and with the Grimaud booklet, this is very helpful to make use of this pretty deck.

Regards,

Cerulean

P.S. The link below is to someone who took time to write a bit more of Lenormand decks...they the Nine of Hearts and Six of Spades in the middle of the information. If the link has to be removed, please pm me and I can do a snapshot of the two cards later...

http://www.freewebs.com/simpleremedies/madamelenormand.htm

On dating the deck...

I recently remembered older 19th to early 20th century tarot decks derived from Etteilla designs that had what looked like different tiers of small pictures on the number cards (search on threads regarding the Lismon Etteilla decks).

Given that upright and reversed two-tiered decks of tarot were popular in the 1850s throughout 1890s for various games and the Etteilla and Lenormand decks began featuring small pictorial motifs on their number cards, I think late 19th century is a good guess. I have not come across a hard date in any source so far.

I believe Corinne Morel suggests 19th century as a dating...I'm still looking around for resources..

Best regards,

Cerulean