The Book is card number 26 of the Petit Lenormand, the thirty-six card deck read in the nineteenth-century French cartomantic tradition that took its name, after her death in 1843, from the Parisian fortune-teller Marie Anne Lenormand.
Image, meaning and playing card
The card shows a book, often closed. In the tradition its core sense is secrets, hidden knowledge, study and learning; a closed book marks what is not yet known or is deliberately concealed.
Like every card in the deck it also carries an inset playing card, here the 10 of Diamonds, a survival of the ordinary piquet pack over which the pictorial Lenormand was laid. Lenormand cards are read less as standing symbols than in combination, each modifying the cards to either side, so that the book takes much of its final meaning from its neighbours in the line or the Grand Tableau.
In the original German tradition the card is Das Buch. As House 26 in the Grand Tableau, any card landing in that numbered position is read as touching on hidden knowledge, secrets and formal learning or study. In combination, Book followed by Woman or Man reads as a person keeping a secret, while Book preceding Garden reads as a secret about to become public, the reverse pairing of the Garden's own entry, which treats the same combination from the opposite card's perspective. The Book is one of a small number of Lenormand cards, alongside Letter, specifically tied to written or documented material rather than spoken or witnessed events.