Arcana
THE CHAP TAROT Pandora Harrison presents the fourth instalment of her series of Chap Tarot cards and how they can illuminate the curious
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alutations, good patrons of this divine tome, and blessed be. In this instalment I’d like to introduce you to the infamous Marie Lenormand, cartomancer to 19th century France bon ton, and outline four additional Major Arcana cards from a chap-tastic angle. Now, are you sitting comfortably with a suitable libation in hand? Good. Then I shall begin. Marie Anne Adelaide Lenormand (1772– 1843), known as the sybil of the Rue de Tournon, was a prophetess, palm reader and seeress. But most of all, she was a fortune-teller whose palm was often crossed with silver during the Napoleonic era, and the greatest cartomancer of all time. A bright, confident Marie Anne arrived in Paris in 1786 at the age of 14. She claimed to have obtained her first deck of cards from gypsies who taught her how to read them. By 17 she had made her first impactful prediction, the fall of King Louis XVI. A star was born. A flare for self-promotion quickly set Marie Anne up as a ‘bookseller’, in
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