For centuries the tarot was above all a card game. Born in the courts of northern Italy in the fifteenth century as "triumphs", it spread through France, Switzerland and Germany as a pastime, with no documented esoteric associations of note. Everything changed within a few years at the end of the eighteenth century, thanks to two very different men: a Protestant scholar seeking the original language of humanity and a Parisian tradesman who made cartomancy a profession.
Antoine Court de Gébelin, scholar of the primitive world
Antoine Court, who added "de Gébelin" to his name, was born around 1725 into a Protestant family from the south of France. His father, Antoine Court, had been the chief architect of the reorganisation of the clandestine French Reformed churches after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. The son was educated in Lausanne, served as a pastor and then settled in Paris, where he devoted himself to study and to defending the rights of Protestants.
He was a Freemason and a member of the famous Parisian lodge of the Nine Sisters, frequented by Benjamin Franklin and many intellectuals of the day. He was also an enthusiastic supporter of Mesmer's magnetism. He died in Paris in 1784.
Le Monde primitif
His major work is Le Monde primitif analysé et comparé avec le monde moderne, published in nine volumes between 1773 and 1782. The idea guiding it was ambitious: to show that all the languages, myths and symbols of humanity derived from a single original civilisation, whose traces could still be found through etymology and the analysis of allegories.
The discovery of the tarot
In the eighth volume, published in 1781, Court de Gébelin relates that he first saw a tarot deck at a lady friend's house and immediately recognised in its figures an ancient Egyptian book that had escaped destruction. According to him:
- the tarot was the Book of Thoth, that is of Hermes, saved from the ruins of the Egyptian temples;
- the name "tarot" would derive from Egyptian words meaning "royal road";
- the twenty-two trumps would represent sacred allegories, such as Isis in the Papess or Osiris in the Emperor;
- the four suits would correspond to the four classes of Egyptian society.
The same volume contains an essay by a contributor, signed "M. le C. de M.", whom historians identify as the Comte de Mellet. In it, for the first time, the twenty-two trumps are linked to the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet and a method of using the cards for divination is described.
None of these claims has any historical foundation. When Champollion deciphered the hieroglyphs in 1822, it became clear that the Egyptian etymologies were invented. But the idea had by then taken on a life of its own.
Etteilla, the first professional cartomancer
Jean-Baptiste Alliette, born in Paris in 1738, was a tradesman who also worked as a print seller. He chose as his pseudonym his own surname read backwards: Etteilla.
In 1770 he published a book on divination with an ordinary thirty-two-card playing deck, one of the first printed manuals of cartomancy. After Court de Gébelin's volume appeared he turned to the tarot and, from 1783, published a series of booklets on the "Book of Thoth", presenting himself as the restorer of ancient Egyptian wisdom.
His innovations were important:
| Innovation | Significance |
|---|---|
| A purpose-made deck | Around 1789 he designed a tarot deck expressly intended for divination, regarded as the first in history |
| Corrected figures | He altered the order and images of the trumps, which he believed had become corrupted over time |
| Upright and reversed meanings | He gave each card a different sense according to its orientation |
| A study society | In 1788 he founded a society of "interpreters of the Book of Thoth" |
Etteilla died in 1791. Decks inspired by his, known as the "Grand Etteilla", were printed throughout the nineteenth century.
The legacy
Thanks to these two authors the tarot entered the world of esotericism. Éliphas Lévi took up and corrected the link with the Hebrew letters, criticising Etteilla; Papus and the Golden Dawn built complex systems of correspondences on these foundations. Many books still repeat the Egyptian origin of the tarot, which historical research has shown to be unfounded.
Understanding Court de Gébelin and Etteilla allows us to read the tarot with greater awareness: not as a book that arrived intact from ancient Egypt, but as a symbolic language that has grown richer over time.
In short
- In 1781, in Le Monde primitif, Antoine Court de Gébelin presented the tarot as the Egyptian Book of Thoth.
- In the same volume the Comte de Mellet was the first to link the trumps to the Hebrew letters.
- Around 1789 Etteilla created the first tarot deck designed for divination.
- The Egyptian origin of the tarot has no historical basis, but it shaped all later esotericism.
