Also called Petit Lenormand, Game of Hope, Spiel der Hoffnung
A 36-card picture deck read in combinations, where each card such as the Rider, the Ship or the Key has a short, concrete meaning. It began as a German board game of 1799 and was named after the French fortune teller Marie Anne Lenormand after her death.
Tonight's moon is read when the page loads.
Take care: Read the Coffin, Scythe and Cross cards as endings, cuts and burdens in everyday life, never as literal predictions of death or illness, especially when reading for others.
Johann Kaspar Hechtel's Game of Hope was a race game played on a six-by-six grid of its 36 cards with two dice. Each card carried a playing-card inset so it could double as a standard deck. The same 36 images became the fortune-telling deck.
Two years after Lenormand died, the Paris firm Grimaud published a 54-card deck under her name, full of mythological and astrological scenes. It is an entirely different and far more complex deck than the 36-card Petit Lenormand.
An offshoot of the Lenormand family, Kipper decks show everyday people and scenes such as a main person, a journey or an official. They are still popular for practical readings in German-speaking countries.
The deck began as Das Spiel der Hoffnung, the Game of Hope, designed by Johann Kaspar Hechtel of Nuremberg around 1799. It had 36 picture cards with playing-card insets and came with rules for a dice game and suggestions for fortune telling. Marie Anne Lenormand, born in Alençon in 1772, was the most famous fortune teller of Napoleonic Paris, but she did not use this deck, and her name was attached to it only after her death in 1843.
German publishers issued the 36-card Petit Lenormand around 1846, and it became the standard fortune-telling deck in much of Europe. The historian Detlef Hoffmann identified the Game of Hope as its source in 1972. Lenormand reading spread in English mainly in the 2000s and 2010s, helped by books such as Caitlín Matthews' Complete Lenormand Oracle Handbook. Like other cartomancy it has no demonstrated predictive power, but its plain, concrete images make it easy to learn.
Telling fortunes with an ordinary deck of playing cards, where each suit governs an area of life and each card has a set meaning. It was the most popular form of card reading from the 1700s to the 1900s.
Illustrated card decks with no fixed structure, each built around its own theme and guidebook, drawn for guidance or reflection. Unlike tarot's set 78 cards, an oracle deck can have any number of cards and any imagery.
Drinking loose-leaf tea, swirling the dregs and reading the shapes the leaves leave on the cup. A kitchen-table way to ask about the weeks ahead.
Tell us what you need and we will craft a custom spell, charm or reading for it. Or call to book a reading or a road blessing in person.
