Mlle. LeNormand 54 or 36 Cards...

[jrr01]

Which ones did she use... the Gypsy Witch 54 cards or did she narrow it down to 36 the most recent fortune telling cards...? if she did use the Gypsy Witch, did they really have those images a broken mirror, a pig and so on...?

 

[Gavriela]

Playing cards, Etteilla's decks, very likely Grandville's Parlour Sibyl, astrology, and numerology - that I know of.

None of the decks bearing her name existed during her lifetime - they were a marketing ploy that came after. But they work quite well nontheless.

 

[Queen of Disks]

The Gypsy Witch cards came out in 1903 or so (somebody correct me if I'm wrong-still too late for Mlle. Lenormand.)

 

[Kircher Tree]

The Decker-Dummett book "A Wicked Pack of Cards" says something about LeNormand's technique:

p.124 She clearly always uses a piquet pack, i.e. a 32 card pack. She cuts three times and deals the cards in eight piles. She then draws them and proceeds to read.

Later, this is added:

p.138 Karl August von Malchus was stunned by the range of cards Mlle Le Normand was using, and offers a detailed description of them...
The sibyl insisted on cutting with the left hand and, surprisingly, mixed the cards from different packs! For example, 25 cards from a Tarot pack, 6 from another set, 10 from a third.