Origin 1799: published as the parlour game Das Spiel der Hoffnung.
The Lenormand deck is a thirty-six card oracle whose cards carry plain images (rider, clover, ship, house), read in combination rather than singly. It descends from the Game of Hope, a German parlour game published by Johann Kaspar Hechtel around 1799, and was later named after the French cartomancer Marie Anne Lenormand, who died in 1843 and had no hand in it. Readings are typically laid in lines or in the Grand Tableau of all thirty-six cards.
Facts
Origins
Origin Period1799: published as the parlour game Das Spiel der Hoffnung. 1 Place of Origin Creator / OriginatorJohann Kaspar Hechtel (1771-1799), who devised the pack as a race game, not as an oracle 1 Origin of the NameNamed after the Parisian cartomancer Marie Anne Lenormand (1772-1843) after her death; she is not known to have used this pack. 2 Comparison
Cultural Origin Era of Origin Overview
Size of the Traditional Set Structure
StructureThirty-six numbered cards, each bearing a plain object image with a playing-card inset 1 Learn More
A Thirty-Six Card Oracle
The Lenormand is a thirty-six-card oracle deck whose cards carry plain, concrete images (the rider, the clover, the ship, the house, the tree, the coffin), rather than the allegorical scenes of the tarot. It is read by combining cards, so that meaning arises from pairs and lines and from a large tableau of all thirty-six, rather than from a single card's symbolism.
The deck descends from the Game of Hope, a German parlour game published by Johann Kaspar Hechtel around 1799, and took the name of the celebrated French fortune-teller Marie Anne Lenormand after her death, though she did not use it.
How it differs from the tarot
Where a tarot reading dwells on the rich imagery of each card, Lenormand reading is more like reading a sentence: the cards are relatively fixed in meaning and combine grammatically, one modifying the next. This makes it more literal and situational and less meditative than the tarot.
The atlas records each card's image, its core meaning, and the conventions of combination that give the system its character. The related ordinary playing-card cartomancy and the tarot are treated in their own categories.
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Lenormand Cards
Sources
1. Das Spiel der Hoffnung (The Game of Hope)
Johann Kaspar Hechtel, Bieling, 1799the pack itself
2. A Wicked Pack of Cards: The Origins of the Occult Tarot
Ronald Decker, Thierry Depaulis and Michael Dummett, St Martin's Press, 1996on Mlle Lenormand and the packs sold under her nameView the Source 3. Wikipedia: Lenormand cards
WikipediaLenormand cards, Nuremberg origin sentenceQuote, Lenormand cards, Nuremberg origin sentence
The 36-card Petite Lenormand tarot deck is modelled on a deck of cards published circa 1799 called Das Spiel der Hoffnung (The Game of Hope), a game of chance designed by Johann Kaspar Hechtel of Nuremberg.
Divinity Atlas Directory Prose, First Edition Category Descriptions
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