The Gilded Reverie Lenormand by Ciro
Marchetti is a stunningly beautiful, very solid, digitally-painted
deck. The cards are 2.75 by 4 inches, bigger than poker size playing
cards (2.5 by 3.5 inches), but not by much—and they are incredibly
thick. The 36 cards together stack up to almost an inch. I think this
is really nice. The cards have enough give that I believe they could
be shuffled the way one shuffles playing cards, but I can't honestly
say I've tried it—I prefer not to bend the cards I read with,
personally. The gilded edges on the cards are absolutely stunning.
I've heard some people refer to gold borders on these cards--this is
incorrect. The borders are just as shown in the pictures here on
Aeclectic: they fade to black. It is the edges of the card, the
actual sides of the stock, that are gilded, not the border. That is
to say, the gilding is on the third dimension. The gilding is more
beautiful in person than I imagined, and is very reflective. The only
downside to the gilding is that straight out of the box it is helping
my cards stick together a little more than I would like them to for
ideal shuffling. I assume this will fade with time (it's gotten
better just over the past day or two), so I'm not worried, but I
thought I should mention it.
There is also gold in the color
printing on the cards' fronts (the numbered circle, playing card suit
and number, and filigree corners) and backs (the circle and filigree
ornamentation), but the gold on the faces of the cards is well-done
photoshop artistry rather than gold ink or gold leafing. The whole of
each card (front and back) is very glossy, but the gold-colored parts
are no more shiny/glossy/reflective/etc than the other parts. In one
final attempt at clarity, the gold on the faces of the cards, just
like all the other imagery on the faces of the cards, is made up
merely of cyan, magenta, yellow, and black (CMYK).This is impressive
rather than disappointing.
The card backs are perfectly
reversible except for the (C)2013 US GAMES copyright text that
appears only in the lower right corner. The backs have a beautiful,
deep red, diagonally-checkered design that pairs beautifully with the
same design in goldenrod tones on the inside of the box. The box, by
the way, is one of the better examples of packaging for a deck
(Lenormand, Tarot, or otherwise) that I have ever seen. It's a very
sturdy cardboard box with magnetic closure that opens like a book.
The paper used to print the box artwork has a smooth, leathery feel
that I'm just about in love with. The cover of the box has a version
of Marchetti's artwork for the Birds card, and the box (unlike the
faces of the cards) DOES have gold foil accents on the birdhouse,
lace border, the “G” and “R” in “Gilded Reverie,” et
cetera. The box is exactly the right size to hold the cards, the
48-page LWB (Little White Book), and nothing else, which I think is
perfect. There's no cardboard support inside for the sole purpose of
taking up space, which is good because it means there's no cardboard
support to get smushed and let your cards move around all over the
place. This is also good because it means the box is small enough to
fit comfortably in even a rather small purse or a large clutch.
The included LWB is good enough for
most purposes—I'm certainly totally happy to accept it instead of a
full-size book, the tradeoff being the beautiful, condensed
packaging. It starts with an introduction by Tali Goodwin, followed
by a note from Ciro Marchetti. Each card description has a short
vignette (some of them with some rather poorly-written rhymes, but
I'm willing to ignore that) written in the first person from the
card's point of view (by Rana George), followed by a further
description written by Tali Goodwin. The vignettes and descriptions
have been edited and approved by Ciro Marchetti to reflect his
personal feelings on the deck. Here, as an example, is the text for
card 1, The Rider:
“I am always bringing news, look
around me to see what it includes. I might be coming to visit or
bringing you some changes. I am fast and always on the move. If you
see a negative card close by, you will probably not enjoy the reply.
“The Rider of the Lenormand brings
news. It is the first card and announces new things. In the Gilded
Reverie deck, we behold a dreamy female Rider who sits astride a
carousel horse; the horse who in fairy-tale stories is the conveyer
of messages. She may even be Iris, the Greek messenger of the Gods.
“The fastened messenger bag across
her shoulder may be suggestive of additional messages for different
destinations along her night's voyage. In her hands she grasps a
white envelope, a letter that is out of the bag and ready to be
delivered for the current reading. The carousel is the ideal
metaphor, as this card is a new cycle being initiated and an ending
of the old state. The ups and downs of the carousel also symbolize
the magical flight that powers this messenger to its destination.
Freed from the ever revolving 'merry-go-round of life,' whose
circular motion is also defined by the laws of physics as
acceleration, our rider symbolically reflects the pace and speed of
information by which our lives are increasingly affected.”
The LWB finishes with three spreads,
each with an accompanying sample reading: the “Simple Nine-Card
Spread” by Tali Goodwin, “The Fortune-Telling Day Spread” by
Tali Goodwin, and “The Chocolate Bar Spread” by Rana George. The
Nine-Card Spread is particularly useful for readers just getting used
to Lenormand, and The Fortune-Telling Day Spread is meant to help you
track and improve your reading accuracy with daily readings each
morning. The Chocolate Bar Spread is one of those spreads that seems
totally valid and sensical except that I can find not a single
explanation for what it has to do with chocolate, so the whole thing
ends up feeling kind of odd to me. You may find this useful or
endearing—to each his/her own. Should you be unsatisfied with the
included LWB, a 140-page .pdf companion book in full-color is
available for purchase and download on Marchetti's own website
($1.50, www.ciromarchetti.com).
I have not purchased it, but am likely to do so soon.
One final note on the LWB—this would
normally be a note about the cards, but the cards themselves are only
numbered, not named, so the names of the cards only appear in the
LWB. For the cards that sometimes vary in exact name, I give their
names here: card 9 is “Flowers,” 11 is “Birch/Broom,” 20 is
“Park,” 22 is “Choice,” 28 is “Man,” 29 is “Lady,”
and 30 is “Lilies” (plural). Now for the actual cards!
The art on the cards is absolutely
gorgeous. I am not partial to digital artwork, and while much of Ciro
Marchetti's other work is objectively beautiful and well-done, I
don't feel drawn to it or necessarily like it. This deck is
different. There is something more traditional, I think, about the
basic imagery in this deck, that makes for something very beautiful
when that traditional imagery is treated the way Marchetti has done.
The images seem simultaneously to pop off the surface of the cards
and to lie behind the surface of the cards, as if in a diorama or
behind a window. Someone else said these cards almost appeared to
glow as if they were lit from behind. It is true.
A note to those who rely on the
playing card correspondences on Lenormand cards: card 18, the Dog, is
incorrectly attributed in this deck to the 10 of Spades, rather than
the 10 of Hearts. The 10 of Spades is also (correctly) attributed to
card 3, the Ship. I am given to understand that future printings of
this deck will have this corrected, but if this bothers you greatly,
you may want to hold off for now and wait for a later printing. I
personally am not bothered by this small error, and I find it rather
endearing that the error occurred on the Dog, so loyal and
eager-to-please. I have actually let the knowledge of this error
color my impression of the dog card and the way I interpret it in
readings, and I like that. It could also make for a very interesting
interpretation if and when both 10s of Spades show up in combination.
The illustrations on each card are
very detailed, in addition to being very beautiful. The Clouds card,
6, is a particularly great example of this, with the bright half of
the clouds being dotted with soaring birds, and the dark half broken
with lightning striking the tree of the previous card. What this has
meant in my readings so far is that while the key to reading these
cards is usually in being very literal and reading right off the
surface, the layers of imagery underneath can also contribute meaning
when the top layer isn't quite enough. For example, behind the Key
(33) sits a birdcage which houses a rose; and the Child (13)
contemplates a storybook from which blooms a castle, a rainbow, a
doll, a ball, a spinning top, and several blocks, which display the
letters CM and GRL—standing for Ciro Marchetti and Gilded Reverie
Lenormand. You might guess from this that Marchetti has hidden his
initials (CM) in every card, and you would be correct.
On top of being very detailed and very
beautiful, this deck is very enjoyable and easy to read. I have
performed several successful readings for myself and others since
receiving this deck, and I look forward to a long journey together.
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I wrote this review for its original appearance on Aeclectic.net
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