The Beginning of the Egyptian Tarot Myth. Part 2

 Etteilla

The third most important figure in the Egyptian (and occult in general) Tarot tradition is undoubtedly Jean-Baptiste Alliette (1738–1791), better known under his “kabbalistic” pseudonym Etteilla.

By his own account, Jean-Baptiste Alliette began studying the Tarot in 1757 (i.e., long before the Court de Gébelin). Whether this is true or not, here is a historical fact: the first known French-language reference to the Tarot as a divination tool is in his book Etteilla, or a Way to Entertain Yourself with a Deck of Cards, published in 1770. Etteilla says that there are other methods of divination besides playing cards and names some of them: fortune-telling with coffee grounds, pouring molten tin, lead or egg white, and the Tarot (in the archaic spelling les Taraux). Etteilla mentions Court de Gebelin many times in his books—respectfully by form, but often with hidden mockery—and repeatedly makes it clear that he does not consider de Gebelin his predecessor in the world of the divination Tarot.

Etteilla published his most famous work, A Way to Entertain Yourself with a Deck of Cards Called Tarots, in several separate cahiers (quires) between 1783 and 1785. He agreed with de Gebelin about the Egyptian origin of the Tarot, and enthusiastically accepted the ​​​​Count de Mellet’s idea of the Tarot as the Book of Thoth (Livre de Thot).

Etteilla begins the first Quire of his book in the spirit of the first paragraph of Court de Gebelin’s article “On the Tarot Deck”:

It is only natural to wonder that time, which destroys everything, and ignorance, which changes everything, should hand down to posterity a Book composed in the year 1828 from the creation of the world, 171 years after the Flood, and finally written down 3953 years ago.

This Book was composed by seventeen Magi, among whom was the second of the descendants of Mercury-Athotis; this grandson of Ham and great-grandson of Noah, initiated into the Book of Thoth [a man named] Tri-Mercury, or the third bearer of this name, in accordance with the science and wisdom of his Ancestors.

The book was written in the Temple of Heat, or Fire, built in a lonely place in the Levant, about three leagues from Memphis.

At the beginning of the Second Quire, Etteilla relates that “among the ancient Egyptians the Book of Thoth was spread throughout the country; it was the chief treasure of the fathers of families (as are, for example, the Bible among the Jews, the New Testament among the Christians, the Koran among the Turks, Confucius among the Chinese, etc.), who read it literally every day to their children and servants.”  The Fathers themselves retired with the Book to try to penetrate the mysteries of religion, prophecy and universal medicine “and, finally, to know the true hope of all sciences and arts that glorify independent and happy peoples.”

Later, seeing the corruption of men, the magicians “considered it their duty to make of the precious Book of Thoth a vulgar entertainment, having in view two objects: (1) to bring back the fathers of families and the eldest sons to virtue, and (2) to ensure the dissemination of this precious Book among all nations for many centuries.” This idea had already been hinted at by Court de Gebelin and the Count de Mellet, but Etteilla formulates it clearer. He continues:

This Book, like everything that the Egyptians had, spread among the Greeks, and from them among the Arabs, who brought it to all peoples: to some as a philosophical book, and to others as a simple game; thus both philosophers and ignoramuses found in it what they were looking for: some wisdom, and others madness, following the intention of the magicians.

As the hieroglyphs of the Book of Thoth spread throughout the world, they inevitably became distorted. In Etteilla’s view, five of them were especially distorted—those that became the Pope, the Popess (in the Besançon Tarot deck, to which Etteilla usually refers, Jupiter and Juno), the Emperor, the Empress, and the Hanged Man. Etteilla acknowledges the merit of Court de Gebelin in restoring the correct hieroglyph of Prudence (in a distorted version—the Hanged Man), but reproaches the “master antiquarian” for leaving the other four untouched.

Prudence in the Tarot of Etteilla

Moreover, we read that “his [Court de Gebelin's] method of fortune-telling with cards is absolutely wrong and impractical, and certainly not the method of the ancient Egyptians.” This remark is completely unfair, since the Egyptian method of fortune-telling with the Tarot is described in the article by Count de Mellet, and not by Court de Gebelin.

The Second Quire then goes on to the actual discussion of the hieroglyphs of the Book of Thoth. Etteilla correlates all the major cards of the distorted “Tarot of card printers” with the major hieroglyphs of the Book of Thoth:

Correlation of the major cards of the “restored” and “distorted” Tarot according to Etteilla

The Book of Thot (restored Tarot)			The Tarot of the card printers (distorted Tarot)
No	Upright	Reversed	No	Title
1	Etteilla	Male Querent	V	Pope
2	Clarification	Fire	XIX	Sun
3	Words (Intention)	Water	XVIII	Moon
4	Deprivation	Air	XVII	Star
5	Voyage	Earth	XXI	World
6	Night	Day	III	Empress
7	Support	Protection	IV	Emperor
8	Etteilla	Female Querent	II	Popess
9	Justice	Legal Expert	VIII	Justice
10	Temperance	Priest	XIV	Temperance
11	Force	Sovereign	XI	Force
12	Prudence	People	XII	Hanged Man
13	Marriage	Union	VI	Beloved
14	Force Majeure	Force Majeure	XV	Devil
15	Malady	Malady	I	Trickster
16	Judgment	Judgment	XX	Judgment
17	Mortality	Nothingness	XIII	Death
18	Traitor	Traitor	IX	Hermit
19	Misery	Prison	XVI	House of God
20	Fortune	Augmentation	X	Wheel of Fortune
21	Dissension	Dissension	VII	Chariot

Then he proposes:

To convince ourselves that the card printers have completely perverted the order of the Book of Thoth, we must examine the first twenty-two hieroglyphs. Seeing that it is, beyond all doubt, a gallery in which every object occupies its proper place, we at once acknowledge the ignorance of those who have transposed the numbers. If we arrange the numbers in their true order, we are forced to admit that this order was not created by chance, but has a definite purpose.

Etteilla then examines two “galleries,” that is, two sequences of major hieroglyphs read as stories: first the “perverted” (the sequence of the card printers), and then the “true” (the sequence of the Book of Thoth):

(Card 1) Truth appeared; for whatever purpose it was in the Universe, and whether it understood the Universe or not, the Universe was not itself, but an emanation of Truth—just as the heat emanating from a man is not himself, but could not exist without him. Thus, Truth has always been there, and its emanation has always been there, as well as its essence, which is by itself, in itself and for itself.

(Card 2) And the Light was from the spirit of the divine fire and by divine will.

(Card 3) Moisture was extracted from the waters that covered the waters, and from the water and from the fire (Card 4) the air was extracted, which was fixed in the fire, and fire in the water.

From these three elements, excited by the supreme will, there appeared dross, designated (Card 5) as the matter terrestrial, lunar, solar, martian, mercurial, and finally the matter of all the Globes, which at that moment were placed in their places. [That dross was] the fourth Element, called the Earth on the Globe on which we live.

Water, the first element, was given to matter for its support, and Air, the third element, to Fire for its preservation.

(Card 6) And everything that was on the surface and inside all the Worlds was alive in its own way and in its own form; for then there was no place for Death, nothing was yet subject to death.

(Card 7) There was Man and all intelligent Creatures that had body, life and soul in all inhabited elemental places, that is, where the Elements could penetrate.

(Card 8) It was the seventh day of general rest; for the Creator, who was resting to contemplate His works, everything remained in itself and was called rest.

(Cards 9, 10, 11, 12) Justice, Temperance, Strength and Prudence were spread throughout the Earth, throughout all the Worlds and throughout the Universe; and the Creatures that had only souls found in themselves Faith and Hope in God and Mercy towards all sentient and insentient Beings; all laws were in motion.

And the Creatures then felt that they lived only in God and for God forever, to worship and serve Him, and they realized themselves as immortal; and the Creator gave the Creatures the right to all things in their Universe, so that they could dispose of them, submitting only to Him who gave them from His mind to make them worthy of Him.

(Card 13) Here begins the second Quire of the Book of Thoth. In this number 13, Man weakened; he stumbled and, seeing Death, he repented. God forgave him, strengthened him and prolonged his days until the number 17, [in which] the number 10 is an allegory of the circle of Divinity, and 7 stands for the true knowledge of Man, [allowing one] to once find oneself in this Divine circle and to imitate this Divine circle with knowledge and wisdom in this lower Universe.

(Card 14) On the previous sheet Man was only weak; on this one he is proud of everything that is not himself; he has misunderstood the intention of the Creator; his heart has hardened, he feels no pity; only pain makes him cry; at last he considers himself Sovereign by right of strength, and not by right of knowledge and wisdom.

(Card 15) He is attacked by worries and infirmities.

(Card 16) He is sentenced: having endured all human pains, he will be cleansed (Card 17) by Death.

(Card 18) Here begins the third Quire. Man, having sinned, is covered with a hairy robe. Deprived of the true light which was given to him, he uses artificial light; his staff indicates that he walks very uncertainly in the darkness into which he has plunged. He seeks what he has lost, but finds (Card 19) only a semblance of true wisdom, building for himself idolatrous Temples, from which he is cast into the abyss by the shining Truth under the hieroglyph of the Sun, which hurls thunder and hail to destroy these houses of unrighteousness.

Man who goes to worship idols so that they may give him material goods (Card 20), Fortune, no longer limits his desires, and his pride increases due to his ignorance. He rides (Card 21) in a chariot with all the attributes of vanity and despotism, in armor, like that vile Alexander, nicknamed the Great because he killed more people than anyone else—people who either never thought about him at all, or wanted to preserve their legitimate power.

(Card 0, zero). Madness. It is here that the center of the human mind is, the true place where the Half-Wise Man resides; for what does he do and how does he judge? To understand this, one must turn to the Fourth Quire; in it the lives of all mortals are recorded by the wise men, and it ends with this phrase:

Man who resorts to cunning to find rest, is punished by the wise Nature with death before he finds it.

In 1788, Etteilla produced a complete “restored” Tarot deck, in which there is not much more “Egyptian” than in the Tarot of Court de Gebelin, but still there is something: an obelisk, pyramids, an ouroboros. In costumes, headdresses, buildings, Etteilla recreated Ancient Egypt as it was imagined by the average Parisian of the late 18^th century, when “Egyptomania” has already begun but no one had yet seen anything Egyptian.

This deck was printed in Paris on large sheets of paper in black and white. Its full title is “The Book of Thoth, or a precious collection of pictures of the teachings of the Tri-Mercury-Athotis, serving the theory and practice of the wise magic of the first Egyptians.” These were copperplate engravings made in the studio of the famous master Pierre-François Basan (1723–1797). On one of the sheets, in addition to the cards, the layout of the box for the deck was printed. These black and white sheets could be bought for three livres. Hand-colored sheets were sold for as little as 4 livres and 10 soles. Colored cards, cut out, glued to cardboard, and packed in a box, cost as little as 6 livres.

Occultists of the following generations accused Etteilla of distorting and perverting the system of Tarot trumps. He himself was sure that it was the “Tarot of the card printers” that was distorted and perverted, and he was the first to try to restore the complete deck of the hypothetical original Egyptian Tarot as the “Book of Thoth”.

In addition, it was Etteilla (and not Paul Christian) who first associated the Tarot leaves with an ancient Egyptian temple. Their placement in this temple reflected important esoteric teachings.

The most “Egyptian” cards of the original Tarot of Etteilla

The Temple of Fire, mentioned in the First Quire of Etteilla’s main book, reappears in his printed works of 1788–90 in a diagram entitled “Table of the leaves of the Book of Thoth, placed in the Temple of Fire at Memphis”. One version of the diagram shows all 78 leaves of the Book of Thoth (Etteilla’s Tarot), while the other two represent them by serial numbers (Etteilla was the first to introduce continuous numbering of all the cards|/leaves). Along the four walls of the temple are leaves of four suits, from deuces to tens. Four small inverted pyramids, of five leaves each, are the court cards and the aces. The large inverted pyramid consists of leaves 1 through 21 and 0. These are the “major hieroglyphs” (Etteilla was the first to use the words “major” and “minor” in relation to the Tarot cards, although he did not define them as “arcana”).

The Leaves of the Book of Thoth in the Temple of Fire

The large pyramid is very interesting as it provides a key to understanding Etteilla’s majors. In the latest version of the diagram the leaves of the four suits have different shadings. The five major leaves are also shaded. Four of them are Virtues (9, 10, 11 and 12). Their shadings coincide with the shadings of the suits they patronize. The fifth, central leave is the Magician (15). It is divided into four parts, each with its own shading.

The Four Virtues and the Magician

The message is easy to understand: the suits (phenomena of the material world) are controlled by the Virtues (spiritual forces), and they, in turn, are the integral qualities of the Magician.

Tarotists of the next generations will readily adopt this idea.

The Virtues form a kind of mandala, under whose influence the suits of the Tarot fall; each of the four Virtues dominates one suit.

The Magician in the original Tarot of Etteilla. 

The wand in the hand and the objects on the altar represent the four suits of the Tarot.

 

To be continued.