Introduction

IN THIS BLOG, YOU READ FROM THE TOP DOWN, GOING FROM ONE POST TO THE ONE BELOW IT. WHEN YOU GET TO THE BOTTOM, CLICK ON "OLDER POST" FOR THE NEXT CHAPTER. IGNORE THE POSTING DATES: THEY ARE JUST WHEN I SET UP THE BLOG. FOR THE REST OF THE TABLE OF CONTENTS (THE OTHER EIGHT CHAPTERS), CLICK ON "OCTOBER" AT THE RIGHT SIDE OF THIS PAGE.

IN OCTOBER, 2024, I AM WORKING TO IMPROVE THIS TRANSLATION, BASED ON COMMENTS BY "PATREEKTHEARTIST" AT THE END OF  http://thirdcahier.blogspot.com/2012/10/blank_3683.html, WHICH I GREATLY APPRECIATE.

Please note that I also have other blogs related to Etteilla, to which the links are below.

http://etteillastrumps.blogspot.com/, transcribing and translating Etteilla's comments, in his 2nd Cahier, on the trump cards of his deck. 

http://neopythagoreanisminthetrot.blogspot.com/ , discussing Etteilla's followers' word-lists for the numeral cards and connects them, by means of Neopythagorean writings, with the corresponding images of the Sola-Busca deck of c. 1491 and the Waite-Smith deck of 1910.

http://templeinmemphis.blogspot.com/ discussing a diagram that is the frontispiece to Etteilla's Leçons Théoreque et Pratique du Livre de Thot in terms of an essay by his follower Hugand, of which I translate the relevant portion. 

http://etteillasangelology.blogspot.com/ translating and discussing the portion of Etteilla's 1785 book Philosophie des Hautes Sciences that deals with the "72 angels of God".)

https://etteillatimelineiii.blogspot.com, "Etteilla and Variants Timeline III". This is an expanded version of a timeline I put together on Aeclectic Tarot Forum, in turn expanding and organizing by date a previous timeline. It contains links to historic Etteilla-related material, including that of his followers, up to the early 20th century.


A. The occasion for this translation.

In September of 2012 "Corodil", a native French speaker, posted on Aeclectic Tarot Forum (http://tarotforum.net/showthread.php?t=180963) his transcription of Etteilla's 3rd Cahier, a work many have wanted to read but few have taken the trouble to either obtain (on microfilm from the Bibliotheque Nationale) or make available. I am not fluent in French, but I did want to read what it said. So I undertook a translation into English, relying on what I know, translation machines, dictionaries, and occasional help from people who are fluent in French. In this blog I am giving again what I posted on Aeclectic, but in a more readable form, in as much as it includes all the corrections I went back and did. Words in italics are as in the original. The French is still available on the link just given. Since it isn't my work, I didn't feel comfortable posting it here. 

ADDED OCT. 2024: The original is now available on Gallica, at https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k312882c.r.

B. Etteilla's introduction

Etteilla begins the book as follows:

Quote:

The Art of reading French Cards, having generally pleased, I believed that I would also flatter the curiosity and the taste of almost all Europe, if I brought to light that of reading the Cards named TAROT, these being in all respects the origin of ours, because they come to us (as M. Court de Gébelin has very knowledgeably told us, in his eighth Volume of The Primitive World) from the first Egyptians. I shall not talk thoroughly here about this Deck of Cards, or rather this invaluable Book, which is familiar to me since 1757, about which I protest that I have found some unique information; however I shall say what is its way of being amusing, in imitation of the ancient Peoples who made this Deck of Cards, formerly named the book of Thoth, their most robust activity, containing generally all their sciences, and particularly their Religion, their Oracles, and their universal Medicine, so that it is easy to explain, by interpreting, like the Ancient Mages, the seventy-eight Hieroglyphs that are contained in this Deck of cards). (*1) To understand what I am going to say, it is useful to have before your eyes the deck of cards named Tarot, and so as not to have trouble with the order which I consider as their numbers and the interpretation which I give to Hieroglyphs, it is necessary to write both on each of the Cards, following the plan which I indicate, promising, besides, to bring to light what is lacking here, so as to have a complete idea of this Book of Thoth, which contains the whole Universe. (*2) ________________________________ (*1.) See in the work, p... nos. 9, 10, 11 & 12. (*2.) It is the true expression of the wisest and greatest Ancients who have come before us. P.S. This corrected Deck of Cards is found, in Paris, at the home of the Author, living at Rue de la Verrerie, facing that of la Poterie, in the new building. Address the Porter.

Etteilla continues by describing the first 22 cards, called elsewhere the "trumps" or "major arcana", followed by the suit cards, 56 of them, and these with both Upright and Reversed meanings.

To continue with more of Etteilla's text, click on the word "October" at right. On the other hand, some background might be helpful, to put his work in historical perspective.

C. Some of the history behind Etteilla's cartomancy (this part written July 2020)

Etteilla's Third Cahier was published in 1783. Despite being called the "Troisieme Cahier", i.e. Third Notebook, it is his first published book on cartomancy using the Tarot deck, after which three more "cahiers" would follow in 1785. Before that he had written a book on cartomancy, or "cartonomancy" as he insisted on calling it, using the 32 card Piquet deck, i.e. the 52 card deck with the 2s through 6s removed.

This earlier work (called above The Art of reading French Cards) had used a deck with French suits, i.e. those called in English Hearts, Clubs, Spades and Diamonds. The tarot, however, used Cups, Coins, Swords, and Staves. Etteilla does not say what the relationships between French and Tarot suits are. But the formula had been articulated in another work, a companion piece to Court de Gébelin's better known essay on the tarot in his Monde Primitif, 1781, by his acquaintance the Comte de Mellet.
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De Mellet, besides agreeing with de Gébelin that the ancient Egyptians had originated the 22 special cards of the Tarot, also discusses how modern card makers debased the "original" Egyptian designs of the suit cards, as seen in the Tarot, by turning them into those of French playing cards. Fortunately the cartomantic meanings remained similar, allowing de Mellet to reconstruct the relationship. Below is the passage (Monde Primitif p. 403, downloaded from Gallica)

"According to them," de Mellet writes of the modern fortune tellers:

The Hearts, (the Cups), announce happiness.
The Clubs, (the Coins), wealth.
The Spades, (the Swords), misfortune
The Diamonds (1), (the Batons), indifference & the countryside.
 __________________________________________________
(1) It is to be remarked that in their symbolic writing the Egyptians drew diamonds to express the countryside.

The words in parentheses are de Mellet's (translated into English). He illustrates both groups, Tarot and French suits, with particular examples. They more or less match Etteilla's own cartomantic meanings, in both the 1770 work and that of 1783.

These correspondences are not what we might have expected in two of the suits. We would expect that since both coins and diamonds were forms of portable wealth, the cartomantic meanings of Coins would have become those of Diamonds. Likewise we would expect Batons to have become Clubs. The Tarot suit-sign in some cards, the Ace and lower court cards (far left and middle, from the Chosson tarot of c. 1736) was in fact precisely a tree limb made into a club. And while on French number cards the sticks look more like stylized polo sticks (as in the Muslim cards that preceded them) than clubs (see next image below), in the Spanish suit-system that probably provided the impetus for the English nomenclature, this imagery of clubs also extended to the number cards. An example, by a Spanish card maker named Phelippe Ayet in c. 1584 (https://www.wopc.co.uk/spain/ayet), is at right above. Such clubs, made from tree limbs, naturally relate to the vegetation in the countryside, as does their color, green. Also, clubs were the only weapons allowed the peasants for self-protection.

But the French words for these suits do not mean the same as the English ones. In French the word for the suit we call Diamonds is Carreaux, most commonly meaning Tiles, as used on the roofs or floors of houses, but also, more generally, anything roughly square or four-sided. But still, why those, whether in the specific or general meaning, to correspond to Batons and indicate the countryside? Without other evidence, we can discount de Mellet's fanciful explanation, because batons are not four-sided figures, square or otherwise. Likewise in French the name of the suit we call Clubs is Trèfles, meaning Clovers. How would that image be connected to wealth or Coins?

Alain Bougearel in his book The Language of the Cards mentions that in French the expression "to have some clover", "avoir du trèfles", means to have some money. One theory is that the expression derives from how certain French coins looked in the 3rd quarter of the 15th century, with trifoils or quadrifoils, as at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Blanc_au_soleil_sous_Louis_XI_le_Prudent.jpg?uselang=en. But there is no verification of this theory. And even if it is correct for why cartomancers associated black three-leafed clovers with money, it does not explain how Batons became Tiles or Squares.

I do not know the answer. But I have a suggestion that fits both suits, and at least is an easy way to remember how each converts to the other, for someone not conversant in French slang. At right are two cards from the Chosson Tarot of c. 1736 Marseille, the Ace of Coins and the Eight of Batons:

Notice that the eight batons form a kind of diamond shape in the center, with small diamonds where the individual suit-signs intersect. Similarly in the middle of the suit-sign in coins is a kind of four-petaled flower that can easily be associated with the three petals and stem of a leaf of clover. In fact the Italian word for the French suit of Trèfles is Fiore, flowers.

For comparison, here are some early French-suited court cards, "Rouen" pattern: (https://www.wopc.co.uk/cards/early-anglo-french-cards)

This is not to deny that the suit-sign actually came from the German suit-sign of Acorns, as tarot historians think (e.g. Michael Dummett in Il Mondo e l'Angelo, 1993, pp. 37-38, for which find "French suit system" at http://dummettsmondo.blogspot.com/2015/07/chapter-1-part-of-4.html).

It is also possible that another aspect of the cards in those two suits, Diamonds and Clubs, exerted some influence on the cartomantic interpretations of the cards. In the earliest surviving Tarot deck, the Cary-Yale, the Bastoni, sticks, are really arrows, with sharp points and feathers to keep them flying straight. In the next deck done for the same family, the Pierpont-Morgan-Bergamo, the Ace of Coins has a shield inside the coin. Another example is from 16th century Spain, the Ace of Coins by a certain Jean Pouns (https://www.wopc.co.uk/spain/ayet).

An example with both arrows and shields is the Sola-Busca deck, where the Bastoni are more like javelins, and the suit corresponding to Coins has round discs much like the kind of shields that fit on one's arms.

On Google Books I found an old dictionary in Google Books (An Universal Military Dictionary, by Charles James, London, 1816) in which one meaning of carreau is a type of arrow trimmed with brass instead of feathers and launched from a balista, which is a very strong catapult used for large stones and javelins..This meaning is confirmed in the online dictionaries Wiktionary and Wordreference (in addition to the others).

I have explored connections between the images of the Sola-Busca number cards and later cartomancy in another blog, http://neopythagoreanisminthetrot.blogspot.com/, arguing that they share a common basis in Neopythagorean number theory. It is perhaps not a coincidence that Pamela Smith and A. E. Waite saw an exhibition of photographs of the Sola-Busca at the time they were designing their famous Rider-Waite tarot deck, and that Waite's divinatory meanings for his suit cards in Pictorial Key to the Tarot largely derive from the Etteilla school's lists of meanings for these cards. They harmonize.

The significance of arrows and shields is that such suit objects influence the meanings attached to cards in those suits. In Diamonds the meanings of "Delay" and "Letter" relate to movement, like that of an arrow. Etteilla's 1770 book is at https://archive.org/details/1770etteillaoumaniere/page/n9/mode/2up. In 1783 he adds "Departure" for the Knight and "Stranger" for the Page, both also related to movement, as well as, in the Reverseds, "Obstacles" and "Waiting". "Surprise", in the 2 reversed, could relate to the action of an arrow, as opposed to hand to hand combat.

In the case of Clubs, Etteilla attaches the meaning of Bourse d'Argent, normally "Purse of Money," to the Ace Upright, which fits one meaning of the suit, but "Nobility" when it is reversed. In 1783 the same meaning of "Nobility" applies again, but this time to the Three. The Ten of Trèfles and Coins get the meaning "House", which would make sense if there were noble houses' coats of arms on the cards. There is also the 7's "Embarassment", which is on the subject of honor.

While in the Sola-Busca the shield suit-signs have lost their connection to the heraldics of noble houses, the same is not true of another early deck, the so-called Tarot de Paris, anonymously done in the early 17th century (10 of Coins at left below). Each suit-sign in Coins has on it a distinctive coat of arms, many of which have been traced by researchers to particular noble houses in France.

This practice in fact goes back to the Visconti decks themselves, the Cary-Yale and Brera-Brambilla, put the same images on the suit-signs as the Visconti had on their coins, a rider on a galloping horse on one side and a dragon-headed helmet on the other (Brera-Brambilla 10 of Coins, center above, and Visconti ducat, below right, the latter from https://en.numista.com/catalogue/pieces126318.html). The lettering on the coin reads on one side "FILIPVS M | ARIA • A | N | GLVS" and on the other "DVX | o MED | IOLA | NI o 3CS o FI - MA", according to the numismatic website. "Filipus Maria" is the duke's name; "Dux Mediolini" is "Duke of Milan". They both are simply Visconti heraldic devices. The latter especially is seen in other contexts as well. The next deck, the PMB, done by the Sforza successor to the Visconti, used a variation on the "sun burst"design, another Visconti heraldic (at right above).

Symbolic designs on a small object are also characteristic of talismans,  i.e. good luck charms. That is another source of meaning for the cards in Coins, i.e. Clubs. They can indicate not only lucky increases in money, but benefits of all kinds.

The other two suits, Hearts and Spades (the latter in French Piques, i.e. Pikes), corresponding to the Tarot's Cups and Swords, are more straightforward. For de Mellet, as quoted, they were "happiness" and "misfortune". De Gébelin said something else, that Cups represented the priesthood and Swords the military nobility (Monde Primitif, vol., 8, p. 379). The two interpretations are not contradictory. Cups associate immediately to religion, as the Cup of Holy Communion. When the suit becomes Hearts, the only change is a certain secularization, so that besides the happiness deriving from loving God, there is that from more earthly love, of parents for children and lovers for each other. From Swords to the suit of Pikes is almost no change at all. But besides the misfortune of war there is its generalization into conflicts of all kinds and the sword of Justice.

All of these sources of meaning in French cartomancy have been developed further, in a systematic way related to the stages in a sequence, four (7-10) for the Piquet cards, and five (2-6) for the others, by Alain Bougereal in the book already mentioned, The Language of the cards: an introduction to French cartomancy, which I recommend for an elegant and systematic account in such a framework.

Other sources of meaning are from the particularities of French court cards. Hearts gets the meaning of blond or light brown hair because of the color of the suit-sign, red as closer to blond than that of black, which in Clubs designates a dark-haired individual in the querent's life..And since the kings are invariably, at least in northern France, shown as older and bearded, they designate an older male in the querent's life, while the Jacks, since they are always young and unbearded, designate a young man or male child. Mature women, of course are designated by the Queens; for some reason, young women and girls are assigned to the 8s.

In the tarot suits the suit-signs are not lighter versus darker: it is the type of object alone that differentiates the suits. Moreover, it is not only the lower members of the courts, the Knights and Pages, that are young, but also two of the kings, in Swords and Batons. You can see the difference at right, where the Kings of Cups and Batons, again from the Chosson deck of 1736 Marseille, can serve as examples.

 

 In such a context, how is the translator to render Etteilla's names for his suits?  Coupes as "Cups," Epees as "Swords," are straightforward, but for me there is a problem with translating "Baton" with the English word "baton." ("patreektheartist" offers this suggestion; it is not out of line, and I thank him for it, as my preference for "staves" needs explaining.) In English "baton" typically denotes a symbol of authority, which in Etteilla's France of 1783 is related to the old order, as for example preening gentleman of the Tarot of Marseille. But in French, bâton has as its primary meaning "stick," which as a piece of wood associates the suit directly with the countryside. Moreover, if you look at his court cards (at right, early 19th century), you see not the baton-wielding gentleman of the Tarot of Marseille, but rather one with a more rustic implement, more like a walking stick than a baton. While Etteilla retained the crown on his card and called him the King, he associates the card simply with "un homme," a man, and had not yet produced his own deck. There, while retaining the crown, he pictured a more rustic implement, which could be used for self-defense on the road, as suggested by his Knight (now simply a man on horseback), or with others in rebellion (as in the Désunion on the card) , or for beating someone, as the word sévère might suggest in the keyword on the King. I have chosen the English word "staves," which was used by Michael Dummett in The Visconti-Sforza Tarot Cards (1986) and before him by Gertrude Moakley in The Tarot Cards Painted by Bonifacio Bembo for the Visconti-Sforza Family (1966) for that suit in that deck, as a translation for Etteilla's bâton, as that word suggests what we see on the cards that he was to produce a few years after he wrote the text (1788 for the cards, 1783 for the text).

So far I have focused only on the cards of the regular suits as they are given meaning n Etteilla's Tarot. As for how his 22 special cards depart from the normal sequence of the French Tarot, a parallel can again be found in de Mellet. For him the sequence describes, from the end (the World) to the beginning (the Bateleur), a descent from perfection in the Golden Age to rank sinfulness in the Age of Iron. Etteilla has simply made the order of the cards correspond to the temporal order, with the seven days of creation first, followed by the virtues of the Golden Age. For more on this topic, including Etteilla's specific reference to the "four ages" in the cards, see my post at http://etteillastrumps.blogspot.com/2012/05/conclusion.html.

Etteilla has made another "correction" worth mentioning.. As a supporter of the French Revolution, he has removed all those cards representing monarchs, including the religious monarch in Rome. Instead of the Emperor and Empress he has put designs more suitable to theme of Creation, one with sun, moon and stars and another with fish, birds, and crawling things. I have written more on this subject in relation to the Second Cahier, at http://etteillastrumps.blogspot.com/2012/05/introduction.html. And instead of the Pope and Popess, whom de Gébelin had called the High Priest and Priestess, he has put cards representing the male and female querent respectively. In his 1770 book, correspondingly, he had invented a 33rd card he called "Etteilla", again representing the querent. At the same time he has made the Hermit into a traitorous monk and the Charioteer into a tyrant.

 

Such is some of the raw material that Etteilla mostly assimilated from previous practitioners but in part invented, to produce his system of cartomantic interpretations of the 32 cards of the Piquet deck and the 78 cards of the Tarot.