Revealing the Black Hand Lenormand

Black Hand Lenormand, Nichelle Barnes 2015

Look what arrived in the post yesterday! The Black hand Lenormand by Nichelle Barnes (2015).  I was a little puzzled when the parcel arrived. It seemed to contain a...memory stick? I had forgotten ordering it, so when I opened it and this tiny deck slid out, boy was I shocked! I thought it was going to be poker sized, but turns out it's a mini deck -- and it is so CUTE! In the photo above, I've put a 50p coin for scale. Here are some other cards to help:

50p, Black Hand, ASS Lenormand, Postmark, and French Cartomancy

The set comes with a Black Hand card which has brief card meanings on the back, a tuck box, the Lenormand cards, and also includes the 2s-5s for each suit, and two Joker cards, to complete the set to a full playing card deck.

 You can see that when laid out, the card images are quite easy to distinguish:

The only cards that might be troublesome because they look somewhat alike are:

Mountain, Paths, Garden and Clouds. They look similar at first glance, but until you get used to them, the playing card is quite dominant in this set and you'll know at once that Queen of Diamonds is Paths, not Mountains. 8 of Clubs looks like clouds because it has clouds, but it's got a Mountain in the middle and 8 of Clubs is Mountain. The Paths may look at first like rivers, but there are no rivers in Lenormand. 8 of Spades is not Clouds, those are trees with a fountain in the middle. Won't take long to get used to those.

You may also notice that the Lenormand enumeration is quite small and incorporated near the emblem. It is less important than playing card. This is useful, because the Lenormand number is never used in the card interpretation, but the playing card association is, by some readers.

The court cards are distinguished by having the face imposed over the emblem for the Kings and Queens, and under the emblem for the Jacks. The Man and Woman are close-up faces framed in ovals:

This is a really cute set and I love that I can lay out an entire grand tableau and have it fit on my little folding table with room to spare. Nice deck!