All 36 Petit Lenormand cards, from the Rider to the Cross, explained with examples about relationships, work and money.
Five cards from across the deck, to give you a feel for its small, everyday pictures and the playing card printed on each one. Tap a card to see it larger.
Lenormand cards carry the name of Marie-Anne Lenormand, a famous French fortune teller of the Napoleonic era. She died in 1843, and publishers soon borrowed her name to sell decks. There's no evidence she ever used this particular deck herself.
The 36-card design actually comes from Germany. In 1799, Johann Kaspar Hechtel of Nuremberg published Das Spiel der Hoffnung, the Game of Hope, a family board game with 36 picture cards laid out in a grid. Those pictures, the Rider, the Clover, the Ship and the rest, became the Petit Lenormand. The scans on these pages come from that 1799 Game of Hope.
Each card is a simple everyday picture with a small playing-card mark in the corner, such as the Ace of Hearts on the Man. Lenormand is read in a direct, practical way: the cards act like words, and combinations of cards make sentences.
The small playing card on each picture belongs to one of four symbol groups: Hearts, Diamonds, Clubs or Spades. Choose a group to see its nine cards, or choose All cards to browse the full deck in numbered order.
Showing every card in deck order.
Thirty-six everyday pictures, numbered in the standard order from 1, the Rider, to 36, the Cross.
Edition: Das Spiel der Hofnung (The Game of Hope), Johann Kaspar Hechtel, Nuremberg, 1799
Author or publisher: Johann Kaspar Hechtel
Held by: British Museum, via Wikimedia Commons
Licence: Public domain
Changes: Cropped from the 36-card sheet to a single card, resized and converted to WebP. No other changes.
Shown from Hechtel's 1799 Game of Hope, the German game whose 36 numbered pictures were later sold as the Petit Lenormand. The numbers and images match the standard deck, but this is the earlier edition, so some details differ from modern Lenormand decks.