The definitive guide to the French cartomancy tradition. The images of Madame Lenormand lead you into a universe of symbols and depictions capable of evoking the everyday and connecting it to the magic that surrounds us. The cards permit the future to be revealed.

1912 5th edition. Including the oracle of human destiny, Cagliostro's mystic alphabet of the Magi, the golden wheel of fortune, the art of invoking spirits in the crystal, the various methods of divination.

Combining the simplicity of the traditional but little-known Lenormand deck with the familiarity of the tarot, Dunn creates a unique learning format blending these two powerful systems. Sharing his vast knowledge of symbols and symbolism, he introduces the Lenormand cards and even shows you how to make your own deck. Then he compares this with the tarot and teaches numerous spreads—to be used with either or both decks—in addition to methods of intuitive and collaborative readings. This introduction to the Lenormand will help any reader discover and use this deck, while adding insights into tarot interpretation and even magic.

That the Tarot originated in ancient Egypt as a divinatory tool is a romantic misconception. Ron Decker’s meticulous scholarship will surprise practitioners and academics alike, revealing the Tarot’s true evolution and meanings as its inventor(s) understood it. The Tarot consists of the Minor Arcana, four suits of cards similar to our modern deck, and the Major Arcana, twenty-two allegorical or “trump” cards. Decker says the four-suit deck was invented in Asia Minor before AD 1000; Italian courtiers added the trumps in the 1400s. But Tarot was first used as a game. Tarot divination was only created in the 1700s by a Parisian fortuneteller who based the trump images on Hermeticism, which merges Greco-Egyptian alchemy, astrology, numerology, magic, and mysticism. Today, the suit-cards are often traced to the ancient Jewish Cabala. But, says Decker, they, too, acquired their meanings only in the 1700s, and he cites a lost numerical system based on Cabala at that time Decker’s interpretation integrates three whole systems-astrological, arithmological, mystagogical (concerning initiation rites into the Mysteries). His depth of knowledge makes the book a must-have for serious students of Tarot and esotericism