The Fish is card number 34 of the Petit Lenormand, the thirty-six card deck read in the nineteenth-century French cartomantic tradition that took its name, after her death in 1843, from the Parisian fortune-teller Marie Anne Lenormand.
Image, meaning and playing card
The card shows fish. In the tradition its core sense is money, abundance, business and independence; matters of finance, trade and material flow.
Like every card in the deck it also carries an inset playing card, here the King of Diamonds, a survival of the ordinary piquet pack over which the pictorial Lenormand was laid. Lenormand cards are read less as standing symbols than in combination, each modifying the cards to either side, so that the fish takes much of its final meaning from its neighbours in the line or the Grand Tableau.
In the original German tradition the card is Die Fische. As House 34 in the Grand Tableau, any card landing in that numbered position is read as touching on money, business and material abundance specifically. In combination, Fish followed by Bear reads as substantial financial strength, an example the overview of the Bear card already cites, while Fish preceding Fox reads as money obtained through cunning or dishonest means, an example the overview of Lenormand's combination method already cites. The card is, alongside the Bear and the Anchor, one of the three cards most consistently used across the tradition for questions specifically about finances and material security.