The Gwai Lenormand (2022)
The Gwai Lenormand is a magical, colourful, and ghostly divination deck of 36 digitally-illustrated cards and was fully funded on Kickstarter in April 2022.
The deck includes a full-colour box, with 36 cards, a fully illustrated and written guidebook, as well as exclusive postcards, stickers, and thank you cards that accompany each Kickstarter package.
You can purchase the deck in my shop:
❂ The Cards ❂
My journey with the Lenormand deck began around the same time as my journey with the tarot did. I found dusty versions of the divination cards on my aunt’s shelf when I was fifteen and the rest is history. However, I did briefly lose my connection with the Lenormand as life began to get in the way, and I lost my copy of the Lenormand. It wasn’t until mid-2019, shortly after I began designing the Major Arcana of L’Œil de L’Âme Tarot, that I reconnected with the Lenormand. I was seeking quicker answers from the Lenormand and soon began to use both decks together during readings.
Though the conception of the Gwai Lenormand began towards the end of 2020, it only began to take visual shape over three months from December 2021 to February 2022. It had been a post-burnout project for me, where I would create a card every evening after I was done with work. Over time, it also became a project for me to explore a different stylistic expression through digital illustration. As the deck is a study of the possibilities that a Lenormand deck has to offer, The Gwai Lenormand still structurally follows the traditional conventions.
The naming of the Gwai Lenormand is a little nod to my mother tongue, Cantonese. The word ‘Gwai’ is the romanization, or Chinglish, or the Cantonese pronunciation of the Chinese word 鬼 (ghost) which is similar to that of 怪 (monster) as well as 乖 (well-behaved). The first two words invoke the whimsically mystical world the deck inhabits, while the last is the hope that this deck will be less grumpy than my tarot deck.
While I do love how straightforward most of the artwork of traditional Lenormand decks is, I am first and foremost an art-maker. So, I wanted to give my twist on the deck by illustrating them using my visual language, to bring the Lenormand system into my world and see it from my perspective.
❂ The Kickstarter Rewards ❂
❂❂❂