Malpertuis Designs Ltd

14/08/2018

It is with much sadness that I must notify all Malpertuis followers of the sudden and untimely passing of Neil. This had been a dream of his for over 20 years, and just as his vision has begun to be realised, he has been taken from us, all too soon.
He will missed those who had the pleasure to know him, and by those who admired his work.
For anyone with an outstanding order, please email [email protected], and I will do my best to answer your queries.

09/06/2018

The Light Lenormand decks have now arrived from the printers and are available for purchase. I have contacted all those people who have already reserved copies of the deck.

The deck has been printed in a limited edition of 1000 copies. The first 100 decks sold include six free A6 colour postcards illustrating selected images from the deck. All decks include a printed certificate including the deck number and the owner's name.

The deck comprises 36 main cards, two alternative Man and Woman cards (included for readers who wish to carry out readings into same-sex relationships), a Joker, and a title card.

Card dimensions are 57.5mm x 89mm (standard bridge size), and are printed on 300gsm board and finished with UV varnish. Cards come supplied in a full colour tuckbox.

A full colour 40 page instruction booklet for the deck is available as a PDF download. Instructions for downloading will be included with invoices.

See more details about the deck on its own page at http://www.malpertuis.co.uk/site/light-lenormand.html

06/06/2018

18/05/2018

Latest update from the print factory

09/05/2018

This week's draw is the Six of Coins from the Tyldwick Tarot (2013).

You can read previous weekly draws at:

http://malpertuis.co.uk/site/cards-of-the-week.html

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SIX OF COINS

My heart always sinks whenever I'm in church and see 'All Things Bright and Beautiful' on the hymnsheet: I've never been able to understand how a song which is so impossible to sing for most people (at least those with a limited range like mine) ever established itself as a favourite. The low notes are too low, the high notes are too high: you can hear the congregation straining.

I only noticed quite recently that in recent years a verse which was still included during my childhood has generally disappeared - The rich man in his castle / The poor man at his gate / He made them high, or lowly / And ordered their estate. It's obvious why it's quietly slipped out of use - even when I was younger it struck me as somewhat odd to find a hymn endorsing the class system and laying the credit (rather than the blame) for it at God's own door. He ordered their estate - really? Drawing the Six of Coins this week, and thinking about those missing lines, made me remember the intentions I had - several years ago now - when I designed the card for the Tyldwick Tarot.

The card is usually read as advising balanced attitudes to money, and as a warning against money becoming too important within one's life. I can certainly relate to that. Throughout my life I've known people (and have to an extent myself lived) across an entire spectrum of incomes, and I'm quite convinced that extreme wealth often provides no surer a guarantee of happiness than extreme poverty. Having too much can become as much of a trap as having too little. Sometimes it's the case that the more you have, the more you need (with the damage to the soul that eventually causes). Sometimes it's that the more you have, the more you feel you have to lose (with all the stress and worry attached to that). Far wiser, perhaps, to avoid going too high or too low - because too far up or down the scale and you'll end up hurting your throat.

02/05/2018

Again, apologies for a late post. I have been away a lot over the past three weeks.

This week's draw is the Scythe from the Classic Crime Lenormand (2018).

You can read previous weekly draws at:
http://malpertuis.co.uk/site/cards-of-the-week.html

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SCYTHE

Earlier in life I entangled myself in two thoroughly toxic relationships that each lasted several years, the memory of which still makes me sweat. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the second occurred almost immediately after the first - but was in so many respects identical to it that sometimes I actually wonder, several years later, just quite how I managed to repeat the earlier disaster so quickly and with such meticulous precision. In both cases I was manipulated and bullied by the other person; in both cases my own passive aggression drove the other person insane with frustration. Both situations were untenable, and eventually culminated in my deciding to walk. Both times I was devastated, but I recognise in retrospect that it was the right, and absolutely necessary, action to take - for me and the other parties. Since leaving, I have never seen either person ever again.

Making a break - for good - is always difficult, especially when locked inside a deep cycle of emotional co-dependency (which strongly characterised both of these relationships). It's easy to convince oneself that any relationship, even a damaging one, is better than none at all. Saying a final goodbye requires the conquering of many personal fears: of being alone, of being judged, of worrying that you're making a mistake you'll later regret.

But as the famous saying goes, sometimes a desperate disease requires a dangerous remedy. That sentiment often feels particularly relevant to those intolerable situations which the Scythe usually illustrates. It's one of the most direct Lenormand cards in the message it carries: enough is enough; this just cannot carry on and needs to end; you need to get out of here, fast. As terrifying as that can be, I find another message hidden within the card: that if you're brave enough to leave, if you can cut yourself free from the toxin, you will survive. It may hurt at first - but you will get better.

06/04/2018

Apologies that I haven't been able to do a draw for a couple of weeks - I've been having some technical problems with the Malpertuis website which I think I've now resolved.

This week's overdue draw, then, is the Hermit from the Tyldwick Tarot (2013).

You can read previous weekly draws at:

http://malpertuis.co.uk/site/cards-of-the-week.html

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HERMIT

As an introvert who can happily forgo face-to-face conversation for weeks, I do sometimes wonder why a preference for isolation is so difficult for many people to understand - or even to tolerate. My own monastic tendency is quite regularly criticised as 'unhealthy' or 'unnatural' - even though to me it feels entirely comfortable. So drawing the Hermit this week prompts me to consider: why is withdrawal - the simple fact of just preferring to be on one's own - still so often considered such an eccentric lifestyle choice? And why do so many people sometimes regard it as a moral failure?

It probably comes from Aristotle's definition of man as a social animal: for the best part of two thousand years, the passage in the Politics about society preceding the individual has been integral to the Western concept of civic duty. As often happens, Aristotle says more than is usually quoted:

"Anyone who either cannot lead the common life or is so self-sufficient as not to need to, and therefore does not partake of society, is either a beast or a god."

I recognise that I don't lead the common life in that I don't have a regular nine to five job and that, to a very significant degree, I've opted out of the momentum of mainstream consumer culture. But the trials of my life remain fundamentally the same as anyone else's, and I have empathy for others' experiences. I'm certainly self-sufficient, but that doesn't preclude me partaking in society: I still vote; I still engage with world events; I still donate. I do actually see people - admittedly perhaps not as often as others do. I do recognise that I enjoy some privilege in that I'm able to choose and control whom I see: by and large, I simply don't have to see or talk to anyone I don't want to. But that's just a rarity, isn't it - not a moral failing? It's certainly not enough for me to feel like I'm beast or god.

17/03/2018

This week's draw is the Ace of Staves from the Tyldwick Tarot (2013).

You can read previous weekly draws at:

http://www.malpertuis.co.uk/site/cards-of-the-week.html

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ACE OF STAVES

Your mojo, your muse, your main line: all nicknames for the mysterious phenomenon more usually called inspiration that we can't generally explain. Drawing the Ace of Staves for this week's draw prompted me to consider more intensely the question which everyone who works in any artistic field struggles with continually, a question asked as often by oneself as by others of you: what is inspiration? Where does it come from? The marvellous and terrifying truth is, of course, that I don't actually know.

That ignorance is in itself marvellous because it makes the experience of creation magical: magic exists in those moments of peak intensity and virtual hypnosis where the world retreats into the background, the stream of consciousness races through, and the idea and the image just come. I hate the phrase, but anyone who creates knows how it feels to be 'in the zone' - where identity disappears and surrenders to whatever other energy is now directing us. Empneusmenos, afflatus - the ancients understood the sensation of possession by a spirit which feels as though it must be divine.

But what makes it marvellous also makes it terrifying: acknowledging that inspiration is something we don't understand, something that we can't control or command, also raises the constant fear of it fading or disappearing. I have painful first-hand experience of that loss: I left behind my previous twenty-year career because I recognised that my original gift for it, the inspiration that had made me so successful at it, had died and gone. Of course I could still do the job competently enough, but - entirely within myself, within my own spirit - imagination had been replaced by function, invention had been replaced by process. I'd done too much of it for too long. Seeing the Ace of Staves this week reminds me not to repeat the mistake.

08/03/2018

*** NEW DECK ***

After a difficult 2017, and after spending a long time working on a very serious deck (the Legend of the Wizard Laird Lenormand), I was in the mood for working on something much more simple and fun. Most of my decks to date have been heavily affected by card tradition and history, and I liked the challenge of creating a deck which ignored all that baggage and instead presented its images in as simple and direct a way as possible. I also wanted to create a deck which was much more colourful and spontaneous, and less laboriously thought out, than my more recent works. This new Lenormand deck is the result.

In some ways this deck represented for me a continuation of the experience of creating the Classic Crime Lenormand - that deck was a delight to make, and there are some obvious similarities between the Classic Crime deck and this one in terms of selection of font and regularity of layout. Also consistent with that deck is the slightly retro texture: whereas the Classic Crime deck was based on book covers, this one took inspiration from posters and labels (and perhaps even public signage) of the same period - the '60s and '70s.

As the deck progressed it began - by itself - to acquire something of a Japanese feel. Although this certainly hadn't been my original intention, this seemed to fit the overall atmosphere of the deck quite nicely - so in the spontaneous spirit which was the genesis for the deck I went along with the idea, wherever it seemed suitable. The simplicity of the images had themselves generated a direction I hadn't anticipated.

The deck is by far the simplest and most colourful I've designed. I also hope that it will be easy for readers to use, particularly for larger layouts. One occasional criticism of the more elaborate decks in my catalogue is that it sometimes takes users a while to familiarise themselves with the images - which admittedly can verge on the complex. With this deck, every card has been created with ease of reading in mind.

I am already in the process of getting this deck printed and have set up a new page for it on the Malpertuis site.

http://www.malpertuis.co.uk/site/light-lenormand.html

08/03/2018

This week's draw is the Eight of Swords from the Tyldwick Tarot (2013).

You can read previous weekly draws at:

http://www.malpertuis.co.uk/site/cards-of-the-week.html

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EIGHT OF SWORDS

I've not been able to trace the origin of the expression ‘we create our own prisons’, but it sprang immediately to mind when drawing the Eight of Swords this week.

Is there actually any worse feeling than that of being trapped? Not in the literal, physical sense, but in all those areas of life where we've come to feel that we're powerless to improve or change our lot. Trapped in a job that's making us miserable because we need the money or can't imagine giving up the taken for granted luxuries that it provides. Hating the area we live in, but remaining there because it's convenient for some things and moving would involve upheaval. Stuck in a relationship that's clearly toxic but better than nothing. Locked into a cycle of family grievances that repeat and refresh themselves with depressing predictability.

I think I've mentioned in more than one previous post that at the highest level I regard Tarot as an instruction manual about the importance of (a) making choices and (b) recognising their consequences, and the tail end of the Swords suit - Seven, Eight, Nine, Ten - always seems to me to be an illustration of the critical crescendo of depression which inevitably arises when we stubbornly refuse to do either. The Eight of Swords doesn't need to tell us that we feel trapped: we're quite capable of recognising that by ourselves. Rather it points out, in its sometimes brutal way, that if that's how we feel then it's only because we've *allowed* ourselves to be. How? By abdicating responsibility for making choices, concocting qualifiers to justify and legitimise our own indecision. But... sometimes he's really nice. But... it's very well connected. But... I should be getting a good bonus in a few months. In all these cases, hanging on is extending the problem, not providing a solution. This card says: stop making excuses, make your move.