I was accompanying hubby to the optometrist in another city, when we came across one of those easily overlooked book shops selling second-hand books. And right on display was this deck (I’ll do a flip-through video soon):

Also, get a load of this: the backs are completely plain, like in days of yore!

The deck came with a book. The author gives off German Mary Greer vibes, in the sense that he published on a variety of topics while trying to appeal both to the casual as well as to the psychotically fixated at the same time.

However, being an old book (I believe it came out in 1992 or so) I was hoping for less psychology. He has the (suspicious to me) tendency to read way too much into the symbols, bringing in Freud, among others. He also tries to combine the meaning of the skat cards with that of the symbols, with mixed results. Sometimes it makes sense, sometimes it doesn’t.

But this is only from leafing through the book cursorily. Maybe I’m judging him too harshly. An interesting thing is that he uses the Grand Tableau / Große Tafel in the less known 6×6 variant.

However good or bad the book may be, I only bought it because it was attached to the deck, which is lovely, and the set cost only a little over 5€. The deck has an old-timey feel to it. Some of the symbols are a bit hard to see. For instance, the Clouds look more like a sea, and the Mice are actually a single mouse which almost disappears in comparison to the pudding and wine he is stealing: while looking at the card I was thinking “Wait, did the Lenormand deck have a Bistro card?” Oh well, at least the mouse doesn’t have to share the wine with the others.

Still a really cute deck and a good buy. I am not planning on studying the Lenormand deck soon (I have way too many irons in the fire) but I just couldn’t resist it.

MQS